The joy of French hospital food

After checking me in, the receptionist, who was wearing an overcoat, said: ‘There is no heating in the hotel. The unit is broken. But it is not cold today so you should be fine.’ Room 357 was cold. Hoping to raise the temperature by a degree, I filled the sink with hot water, turned on all the lights, and switched on the massive telly.

It showed drug squad officers busting dealers in a poor northern French town. After combing through a suspect’s text messages, they bashed down his or her front door and arrested everybody and seized their drugs and cash. Most often it was hashish in small amounts and the drug dealers were in bed. It was poor whites busting other poor whites. The programme was three hours long. One bust after another. Not having watched a television for several months, I was rapt. Afterwards, vowing to take more care in future about the content of my text messages, I took a pill and turned in early.

At six-thirty the next morning I walked through the already busy Marseille streets to the hospital and checked in to a ward on the sixth floor. Here I was shown a nicer, warmer room and told to undress. Was I fasting as instructed? Yes, I said. Then I lay on a trolley and was wheeled to an operating room and rendered unconscious. When I came to, I was wheeled back up to my nice warm room and transferred to the bed.

‘Can I go to the toilet?’ I said to the nurse. I was busting. ‘By all means,’ she said. ‘Let me help you.’ She was elderly and alarmingly breathless but a nurse to her very fingertips. The lavatory was en-suite. She helped me push aside the disposable surgical wear and I stood over the bowl.