Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper

I’m mad about the National Health Service.

For a start, if I lived in most other countries, as an eighty-three-year-old I would be bankrupted by forking out for the Everest of painkillers, sleeping pills, soluble aspirins, blood pressure tablets, statins, eyedrops, etc, that I need to take to get me through each day!

But apart from my free meds, I love the NHS because we have a miraculous local surgery whose charming receptionists always manage to find a way to fit one in with an appointment. Glamorous framed photographs of former doctors adorn the sky-blue walls of the waiting room and one only has time for a quick flip through Country Life or The Lady before a smiling doctor or nurse summons you, immediately making you feel better. One particular doctor in fact is so good-looking that ladies need pills to reduce rocketing blood pressure before they even go into his consulting room.

We are so lucky too here in the Cotswolds to have marvellous hospitals with really sympathetic and understanding doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers, to name but a few. Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, for example, cared for me beautifully when, years ago, I was admitted for eight days after attempting to rescue a ladybird in my hall and, upon trying to set it free on the lawn, I managed to fall over some rocks and cut open my leg, which became badly infected. Nor did the same dear hospital ever reprove me a few years later when, after a much too liquid lunch, I sauntered down the garden to feed the fish and managed to crack four ribs and puncture a lung by falling into the pond. Their kindness, care and attention remain firmly in my memory.

Nor have I ever appreciated the NHS more than when my dear husband Leo was dying of that most creepy and insidious illness, Parkinson’s disease. Not just our local doctors, but Lizzie, the darling district nurse, would drop in to brighten our lives and the National Health carers would drive through the darkest nights to help make Leo comfortable in bed. On the night he died, carers Hazel and Jen came and laid out his body, and have remained firm friends ever since.

So today, I am not surprised that National Health doctors, nurses, carers and support staff are risking their infinitely precious lives going into the valley of death on twelve-hour shifts with often inadequate protection. As brave as the Battle of Britain pilots, they are fighting World War III against this horrendous coronavirus.

One wants to clap and cheer them – not just at eight o’clock on a Thursday, but at every second of every hour of every day.

NHS stands for Nicest, Helpfulest Saviours. Please God save all you can.

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