Family matters

Spent a day in West Mersea near Colchester this week.

My mother and I were visiting my uncle (my mother's brother) and his wife (aka Auntie Sarah) and we had lunch at the local yacht club.

My uncle was a bit of a daredevil in his youth. He qualified as a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital in London (where I was born) and became a GP like his father (my grandfather), but he was also an amateur racing driver who eventually quit after he rolled his car – a Mk1 Lola-Climax – once too often.

Instead he bought a boat and took up yachting.

The boat is long gone but my aunt and uncle are still members of one of the yacht clubs on Mersea Island so after lunch at the club in West Mersea we walked across the road to where fresh fish and lobsters were on sale outside a shed on the promenade.

We then pottered back to the car and as we drove away we passed a beautifully restored vessel that was part of the flotilla of small boats that brought soldiers back from Dunkirk.

This led to my mother mentioning that my grandfather (on my father's side of the family) was trapped for eight days on the beach at Dunkirk before he and his colleagues were rescued. Like many of his generation he never talked about it so I know little more than that.

(Update: my son, who is more knowledgable about these things than I am, tells me that my grandfather was one of the officers in charge of the evacuation and one of the last to leave Dunkirk.)

My other grandfather (my mother's father) was in the Medical Corp in Egypt during the First World War. He was born and grew up in Keswick in the Lake District where he got a job in a pharmacy when he left school at 14 or 16.

This must have encouraged him to join the Medical Corp (he spent much of the war in Egypt) but it was only after the war that he went to Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in London where he qualified as a doctor.

My aunt and uncle still have the gold medal he was awarded by the Medical School in 1923. Both the medal and the presentation box have been very well looked after and are in perfect condition with not a scratch on either.

Thanks to his pharmacy experience my grandfather was able, as a doctor, to create his own medications for patients. Imagine your GP doing that today!

His surgery was a room with its own entrance on the side of my grandparents' house in leafy (as it then was) Wembley.

I've written before about his disappointment when, in 1948, the Government founded the NHS and effectively nationalised thousands of small businesses like my grandfather’s that had taken 20 years to build up.

My Mersea uncle (his son) retired as a GP 25 years ago and he was possibly the last generation of doctors that still visited patients at home, albeit not quite as much as in my grandfather's day.

According to my mother, my grandfather had a strict daily routine when she was a child:

9.00-11.00am – Morning surgery
11.00-5.00pm – Home visits
5.00-6.00pm – Bite to eat
6.00-8.00pm – Evening surgery
8.00-late – More home visits

The surgery was open six days a week and he was available for home visits every day if required.

At that time, even taking inflation into account, doctors earned much less compared to today when many GPs earn well in excess of £100,000 a year.

I don't begrudge them the money (they work hard to become doctors and have a job that comes with huge responsibilities) but I'm not convinced the service patients get today is an improvement on the past.

Like the loss of personal bank managers (remember them?), someone you could almost call a friend, the eradication of the family doctor (who would think nothing of visiting your home at anti-social hours should the need arise) seems a retrograde step to me.

Anyway I mentioned that my grandfather was born in Keswick. So how did he meet my Scottish grandmother who was born and lived in Bannockburn?

Well, it seems that my grandmother – whose father died when she was four – was sent to Keswick every summer to stay with friends and that's how they met.

Funnily enough her father (my great grandfather) was a doctor as well, a real life Doctor Finlay!

Needless to say the medical gene – which was passed on to two of my cousins – passed me by but I like to think that my grandfather, who as well as being a doctor was a lifelong pipe smoker, would not have been disappointed with what I do.

I know it tickles my aunt and my ex-GP uncle when they see me on television arguing my case and I suspect my grandfather would have been the same because, by and large, we’re a pretty tolerant, non-judgemental bunch.