Malala Yousafzai. Frank Skinner

Malala Yousafzai

At a time when I needed them most, the NHS saved my life. The doctors, nurses and staff helped me learn to walk and speak again. They gave me a future, as they are doing for so many others across the UK today.

Every life they save is a gift to our families, and our communities. The NHS is fighting for our future and we have an obligation to make their fight worthwhile – to raise children who care for their neighbours, to fight for truth and save more lives.

Many people have said our world will never be the same after this pandemic. Thanks to the NHS, I hope it will be better.

Frank Skinner

I was in Cornwall on a yoga retreat. Yes, I know. It was a passing phase. I pretended it was an attempt to attain some deeper spirituality but, really, I just wanted a flat stomach. Not everyone who does yoga, of course, has such limited aspirations. Some want a nice arse as well. Anyway, my partner, Cath, and I endured the five-hour train journey, mats protruding from our knapsacks, and finally made it to our temporary om from home. We knew most of the people there. We took off our socks and joined in.

On the second night, a Saturday, we decided to hold a mass chanting session at midnight. The start time seemed a tad theatrical to me, but by this stage I had almost completely committed to the vibe. The chanting was to take place in a studio-type building about thirty yards from the house we were sleeping in.

I laid my mat in the studio at about 11.50 p.m. I always found, before any long-duration chanting, I needed a few minutes mumbling as a sort of a ramp. Also, Cath, emanating stress-spores as she frantically searched our room for a scrunchie, was undermining my equilibrium and I needed to get away. I reminded her, with some gravitas, about the significance of the midnight start, even though I wasn’t quite sure what that significance actually was. She assured me that, even if she was slightly late, she’d definitely be there for the chorus.

At twelve, the chanting began. I was annoyed that Cath wasn’t there and that inner rage gave me a sharp vibrato I could have done without. As the group worked themselves up to a crescendo, I felt less and less part of it. My anger, caused by Cath’s absence, had de-yoga-ed me. I stayed to the end but only physically. I was utterly distracted and already working on a few killer lines for the forthcoming argument.

As I left the studio, with my fellow retreaters asking me why Cath hadn’t turned up, I almost literally stumbled upon her, lying on the lawn. She was whimpering and saying she’d broken her toe and was in agony. Someone brought out joss sticks and by their dim light we could see that the big toe on Cath’s right foot was at a ninety-degree angle to the rest of the foot. It looked like one of those trafficators they used to have on Austin A30s. She explained, through the tears, that she had been racing barefoot across the grass, not wanting to miss the first in-breath and, amid the darkness, had accidentally kicked the handle of an upturned cauldron. She’d lain calling for help but her cries were drowned out by the chanting.

My first thought was, ‘If you laugh now, this relationship might end tonight.’ My second thought was that I had to get her to an A&E department and I didn’t have my car. My third thought was that I wouldn’t now be able to use the melodramatic ‘I don’t want my voice involved in any chant that doesn’t involve your voice’ line I had been internally preparing.

Getting a taxi in the countryside is like one of those scenes in Hammer horror films where Peter Cushing walks into a village tavern and, unfolding a small sheet of paper from his pocket, asks one of the bar staff if they’ve ever seen the symbol written on it before. I had to get through a lot of fear, suspicion and downright hostility. I spoke to many people with impenetrable accents who offered information and advice, all of which sounded like extracts from a nineteenth-century ballad. Eventually, after seventy-five minutes, the car arrived.

By the time we reached Truro A&E it was about two o’clock on Sunday morning. I paid the driver the fifty-five quid he assured me was the going rate for that journey. It reminded me of Mr Pickwick buying a horse from a local dealer who received his money ‘with a smile that agitated his countenance from one auricular organ to the other’.

Arriving at A&E was like arriving at a nightclub. Young women in almost no clothes and young men whose testosterone was forming beads on their heavily tattooed skin stood outside smoking, snogging and arguing in the light from the hospital windows. I knew if they smelt incense on me I was dead. Still, if I was going to get brutally assaulted anywhere that night, I could do a lot worse than the entrance area of the local A&E.

Cath and I walked through the throng as we had often walked past bulls kept illegally close to public footpaths on our numerous walking holidays. We were relieved to get inside but soon realised we were among the same crowd. They were just resting between cigarettes. The man on the counter told me he loved me, that I was ‘the funniest man in Britain’ and that we should expect to wait about four-and-a-half hours before Cath could be seen by anyone. I realised I was in a place where celebrity counted for nothing – my own version of Kafkaesque.

There were no seats. I helped Cath to a wall. A woman in a little black dress lay sleeping across three chairs, near to where two men were arguing about something too colloquial for me to understand. Another man was bleeding, quite heavily, from a head wound. I was waiting for Virgil to sidle past with Dante.

Eventually, after what, in fact, turned out to be only three-and-a-half hours, a woman appeared and told us she was the triage. I was very excited by this because I’m always keen to learn new words. I’d never heard of a triage before. She explained her role was evaluating and prioritising the needs of the A&E patients. She smelled of clean linen and competence. I felt Cath relax on my supporting arm. We had found an oasis of calm amid the madness. As she examined Cath’s foot, I asked her about the triage business, about A&E, about coping with abuse, drunkenness and vomit on a regular basis. She smiled.

‘They’re just people,’ she said. ‘We can usually help them.’

All my fear, my moral outrage, my arrogance, suddenly seemed a bit stupid. She was, as far as I could tell from our ten-minute conversation, someone who wasn’t very interested in judging people but was very, very interested in healing them. She didn’t even seem to be judging me for judging them.

‘So, when is your quietest time?’ I asked.

‘When it rains,’ she said.

I considered the implications of that fact. In any other context, I’d have gone on about how outrageous it was that people were obviously going to A&E with problems that they suddenly considered manageable if the weather became a little overcast. But, by now, such views seemed pathetically inappropriate. I knew I’d be barking up the wrong triage. That smile of hers made me feel slightly ashamed of myself. I didn’t want to be Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells any more. I wanted to be all understanding and serene like her. So, in the early hours of Sunday morning at Truro A&E, Cath got her toe strapped up and I got a lesson in compassion, a lesson in acceptance and, ultimately, I suppose, a lesson in humanity. It was the sort of stuff I was supposed to be learning at the yoga retreat. Still, never mind. As long as I got that flat stomach …

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