WHAT DOES THE DOCTOR THINK THIS MONTH?

Ian describes a last minute cruise to the West Indies and spices up his article with a generous supply of humour

Why do some old ladies have white knees?

Many thanks to all of you who commiserated with me about my exploding back. Happily, contra to the rumour mill, I did not suffer a stroke or even a broken leg in India, just a back problem in Birmingham! It settled down fairly well and Management and I decided to take a last minute cheapo cruise in the West Indies. Having obtained my physio's approval, we set of for Barbados and "The Ocean Village" - the cruise liner for those who don't do cruises. It was very inexpensive and everything except alcohol was included. It must be heavily promoted in the Northwest of England and it was a bit like Manchester at Sea. The food was absolutely brilliant with a tremendous variety and always a sponge pudding and custard among the sweets. I put myself in the hands of the Physical Fitness instructor and we spent two weeks working on my core muscles to help the back. After hours of Pilates, my core muscles are strong and the back is happy. The ship, whose chummy captain, Charlie Carr, came from Wigan and was proud of it, had previously been the Arcadia and could well have been re-named The Coffin Dodger as the average age of the passengers was high and there were motorised buggies in evidence. So, why do some old ladies have white knees? Well, there was a great deal of sunshine and several of the senior ladies saw fit to disport themselves topless, sitting or lying with their knees covered by pendulous, browning, long-redundant mammary tissue, totally shielding their knees from the sun and maintaining the white knee syndrome! The ship was quite windy at night and I could not help wondering why ladies who were perfectly happy to parade around the daytime deck in skimpy bikinis (often inappropriately given their body form) should go to such lengths to stop their skirts blowing around in the wind when that which would have been revealed had been on display all day. It must be a girl thing!

We used valet car parking at Gatwick and I was reminded of the over-60s jokes:

Why should the over-60s use valet car parking? Because the valet won't forget where he parked the car

How can you increase the heart rate of your 60+ husband? Tell him you are pregnant.

What can I do for crow's feet and facial wrinkles? Go without a bra - it will usually pull them out!

Where should 60+ year olds look for their spectacles? On their foreheads.

What is the most common remark made by a 60+ year old on entering an antique shop?

Gosh, I remember these.

Is it common for 60+ year olds to have problem with short-term memory storage?

Storing memory is not a problem. The problem lies in retrieving it.

What can a man do when his wife starts the menopause? Finish fitting out the basement - when he has finished, there will be somewhere for him to live.

How about some "statistics". There are 700,000 physicians in the USA and there are 120,000 accidental deaths caused by physicians, an average of 0.171 deaths per physician per annum.

There are 80,000,000 gun owners in the USA and there are 1,500 accidental gun deaths per annum, an average of 0.000188 per gun owner.

So, statistically, doctors are 9.000 more dangerous than gun owners! Not everyone has a gun but most people have a doctor. Alert your friends to this little-known threat and get doctors banned before they get completely out of hand. The author of the above information (the veracity of which I have not checked) ended by saying that he had withheld the statistics about lawyers for fear that the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!

I saw a middle-aged man recently. He was concerned that his father had locked himself in his bedroom, quite convinced that it was a pub and that he was the landlord, pulling pints. I asked the man what his father was actually doing while in the bedroom - the reply - "I have no idea, he has barred me!" Medicine is a wonderful career.

Travel on our roads and, eventually, you will come chevrons painted on the road surface with the instructions "Leave 2 chevrons between vehicles". If they painted the chevrons twice as far apart and instructed drivers to leave one chevron distance, they could save a fortune on paint and labour!

Best wishes to you all

Ian G, Nisbet