Marvels of therapeutic engineering and the epiphany of the Giant Man

Spectator, The, Oct 25, 2003 by Johnson, Paul

I wandered out of my dentist's, off Sloane Street, a fortnight ago, reflecting on the principles of architecture: that is, the way in which space is enclosed, and forms upheld, by human contrivance. I had walked there all the way from my house, through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, observing the Gothic naves, transepts and sanctuaries of the trees, with their vaults and canopies, the leaves just falling, which do not need to be impervious to rain and can therefore be much more beautiful. Nature does not require ugly durability, having its own system of seasonal renewal. It always uses the finest materials, too, growing them on the premises; unlike the terrace of 'super-luxurious Regency town houses' I observe sprouting in my neighbourhood, whose cream-plaster finish conceals an ugly reality of breezeblocks.

In dentistry, however, the age of false teeth is over, and architectural confections of high-tech artistry are now implanted in one's mouth (at a price) by procedures involving calculations in micromillimetres and metals such as titanium. I had just been the epicentre of such an operation, half-anaesthetised and listening languidly to the whispered surgical conversation. It seemed to me as though I was at the heart of a miniature building site at which one of the glittering stations of that Spanish genius, Calatrava, was being constructed from glass and rare metal. William Blake taught us to see a universe in a grain of sand, and one's own mouth becomes an experimental centre for the latest digital-oral engineering, not without a good deal of whirring, cranking, granging, grinding and electronic pinging, which supplies a mechano-musical accompaniment.

These post-dentistry thoughts took me to Knightshridge, where I suddenly spotted a 52 bus approaching my stop across the angry conflux of roads near the Hyde Park Hotel. Now I am of an age and wealth when taking a cab ought to be a rule, certainly as an alternative to running for a bus. But I am also of a moral generation taught to regard cab-taking, except in cases of absolute necessity, as the high road to ruin, far more likely to have caused the fall of the Roman Empire than excessive hot baths: it was all those chariots to Trastevere and up the Appian Way, to the luxuries of Caracalla and the maidens of the Sabine Hills, which let the barbarians through the gates. So I ran for the bus, plunging into the tumultuous traffic, took alarm, changed my mind, switched to the other foot in mid-pelt, slipped and found myself on the hard street, curiously unable to rise. Another mechanical image immediately struck me: it was as though a key chunk of the motor system of my body, connecting my brain to my right foot, was missing. The old iron-clad, laid down in the same year as the first King George V class of battleships, was not responding to the helm. My supine position attracted the benevolence of a middle-aged couple from Philadelphia, who lived up to the name of their home town, 'the City of Brotherly Love'. They tried hard to raise me up and, failing that, managed, with much effort, to get me into a taxi. If this account reaches them I hope that they will accept my thanks, delivered more formally than I was able to do at the time. Once home, the seriousness of my plight became obvious, and I sat on a chair outside my house while an ambulance was summoned: I had clearly broken my hip and needed an immediate operation.

Of course, if 75-year-old men run around in heavy traffic like schoolboys they must expect fatidical rebuke. But the pursuit of health can be equally dangerous. The great Guardian critic, my much-loved friend Philip Hope-Wallace, then 67, told me one day, 'Paul, I have determined to enter a new regime. I lead an unhealthy life. Too much gin and sitting around in El Vino, too many evenings at the theatre and Covent Garden, followed by more gin-slugging afterwards. Tomorrow, I reform. I am going to a health farm, and then we shall see.' We did, alas. The second day at the place he fell in his bathroom and broke his hip; he was taken to hospital and never left it, dying there with his last ironic joke on his lips.

Now my folly, as opposed to poor Philip's sobriety, was not punished. I fell among bone surgeons who, after an osteopathic synod, determined on a repair job rather than a hip replacement, declaring that my hip was of such high quality that it would be a shame to throw it away. They charged their peer-leader to carry it out, a man who seemed to me to radiate wisdom. Not only did he carry out the operation with consummate skill and success, but, because of the epidural anaesthetic, I was also able to hear and observe it all. The proceedings, making allowance for my semi-stupefied condition and prodigiously active imagination - fantasy-prone even in normal times - had a curious parallel with my experience in dental engineering. The weapons were heavier, however, the materials more elemental, the scale cyclopean or titanic. I felt I was the epicentre not of early 21st-century miracle-glass railway engineering, but of a Piccadilly roadworks job in the 1920s, at a time when the navvies used to tie their trousers with bits of twine just below the knee, and pose for ads: 'Bass is Best', 'Guinness is Good for You'. As a further complication, this particular West End roadworks, as often happened in Mayfair during the Season, had been invaded by a group of Blight Young Things who had escaped from Vile Bodies to hold a Mechanical Drill Party just outside the Ritz. Led by Stephen Fry and assisted by my friend Carla, who has a cameo role in the movie as a nun, their presence as supernumeraries at the operation may account for the liveliness of the dialogue I heard. 'I say, hand me that thingamajig.' 'What, this doodah?' 'No, the what's-it, you ass. Oh, never mind, I'll get it myself. Ah, thank you, nurse. What would we do without women? All right down there, old fellow, eh? Shan't be long now. Let's have that mallet, will you? Oh well, the hammer will do just as well.'