Last man (Almost) Standing

I was in a shopping mall in Piccadilly recently, well it used to be a shopping mall, it’s now just three floors of wall to wall tourist-knock-off-union-jackery-tat, but the most striking element was one of those fish tank foot cleansing operations that most right thinking people run a mile from. The tanks, six of them, were lined up and grubbier than an abandoned aquarium, the poor fish were struggling for clean oxygen in their water and doomed to a life of enclosed filth while chewing the dead skin off people’s shop tired feet. Only one tank was in operation, and an overweight middle aged man was having his extremities cleansed while he swigged on a can of lager; it was as low rent as supposed western decadence gets and I nearly threw up.
Feet should be a private thing; open toed footwear allowed only on sandy beaches and anyone who removes their shoes in public subjected to the strongest punishment in the land. Podiatrists should operate in gloomy backstreets or do home visits, or preferably not at all. Podiatry is a perversion frankly and those that practice it should be on more than just a medical register.
In any case, the young podiatrist examined my right foot in his hand and examined it closely. Again I was almost overcome with a feeling of nausea as he twisted it this way and that, moved his head closer to it, and fiddled with the ball, the heel and the toes. Occasionally he would look up to ask me a question and he seemed confused by the look of permanent horror on my face, my lip curled as I held his gaze and silently wondered just what kind of deviant he was. I think he took my disdain personally and has prescribed surgical inner soles to arrest a chronic foot, back, leg disorder the fault of which he laid squarely at the foot – no pun intended - at the kind of light (beautifully crafted) loafers I tend to wear. He’d asked me to bring along a selection of my everyday footwear (I’m a mod, we don’t do ‘everyday’) and he’d looked at them aghast like I was a coalminer attempting to break the Earth’s crust wearing only ballet shoes.
He may be right of course, but after nearly eleven months of various diagnoses for my pain I’ll wait and see if the new inner soles actually make a difference and that he’s not, as I suspect, just keen on collecting casts and drawings of people’s feet. Diagnosis is the hardest part of medicine I was once told, that’s why ‘House’ is so popular, most of the time it’s literally a mystery, for example poor Junior has been ill for a year now and we don’t seem much closer to finding out why.
The once mighty, albeit cantankerous, beast has seen more horse vets than Desert Orchid but something is terribly amiss. Some have said sand colic, some have said he’s older than we believe, others have said worms. Our local vets have been tried and exhausted with no discernible improvement, quite the opposite, so now we’re looking further afield for an explanation. Monsieur Corbeau used to be a mechanic in the area until ill health forced his retirement, but he’s using his free time now, amongst other things to train horses for attelage, a popular sport here. Natalie bumped into him in the market and they talked about Junior’s plight. Monsieur Corbeau was the most conscientious mechanic I’ve ever met; I still remember his look of horror when I turned up at his workshop with a Camper Van I’d bought on ebay.
“Where have you driven this from?” He asked incredulously, seemingly afraid to touch it.
“Manchester.” I beamed.
“You’re lucky to be alive.” He said and snatched the keys off me in case I was planning on driving it any further.
He regarded Junior as being in a similar state of disrepair and offered to drive Natalie and Junior in his Horse Box to a renowned vet about an hour away.
“This is so kind of you.” Natalie said to him when they returned from the first of two vet journeys.
He looked at her, slightly confused. “Not really.” He said, “It’s what we do for them.” He concluded, slightly embarrassed and handed Natalie Junior’s lead rope.
If only the results were as clear as that. He’s had a number of blood tests, none of which prove anything, only that the second set were worse than the first in some way. If it’s an ulcer, which they can’t apparently determine, without an endoscopy, then the treatment is 800 Euros.   An endoscopy  can only be done in either Paris or Le Mans, either of which are a 6 hour round trip away in Monsieur Corbeau’s horse box and poor Junior must be starved for 16 hours prior to the camera exploring his insides.  The vet, the most recent one anyway, fears it’s a cancerous tumour, for which there is no treatment.
Add to the fact that Vespa has been missing now for three weeks and Natalie is distraught. Vespa has been gone before but never while the hunting season was on, she stayed close to home then, and not while we have a seeming epidemic of foxes in the area, at the last count 52 have been shot by farmers since September. The feeling is that Vespa may have been the victim of a fox, but we just don’t know.
A number of people have kindly pointed out to Natalie that ‘at least they’re only animals’ as if the cloud of frustration and despair will suddenly lift from her and everything will be alright again. I’ve never really understood this kind of remark, people who go around saying that ‘humans are more important and we should take more care of them’ as if you have to make a choice at some point, choose a side, like there’s only so much compassion you’re allowed to show for living creatures. It’s one or the other. Frankly it’s errant nonsense and ignores the fact that animals, especially our animals, are part of the family. I mean for Heaven’s Sakes anyone who really thinks that I’m somewhere in the pecking order above almost any of the livestock we have clearly isn’t paying attention. Besides which both Vespa and Junior have been integral to so much that has happened to us all over the last few years.
Junior tried to come in through the front door yesterday, he was clearly feeling low and needed Natalie to soothe the savage breast as it were, but the look of contempt he gave me when I closed the door on him rather than offer him a seat was so vivid, so human in many ways and you could tell that when Natalie came down to him he wanted to ask a question of her like, “Really, what do you see in him?”

Natalie and the boys go away for a week tomorrow, a holiday which Natalie especially needs to break the cycle of dealing with a fading Junior and calling out mournfully everyday for a cat that may or may not still be alive. It’s all pretty depressing around here at the moment and we figured it was best that they all get away for a bit, try to lift their gloom. While they’re gone I will take delivery of my new surgical inner soles, so really it’s probably for the best that I’m alone at this difficult time. 
NOTE: For much, much more on why Junior and Vespa are part of the family here is my book, published by Summersdale, and available on paper, audio and the sorcery of download. http://amzn.to/16qs5H9