www.wrington.net One villager who worked 6 days a week, decided that Sunday morning would be a good time to have his ears syringed. Another remembers to this day going twice to the surgery late one evening because he was being tormented by a moth which had flown into his inner ear. Asked if she was now better, an elderly lady who had split her finger replied, “Oh, yes, Dr Bell castrated it.” There were no receptionists or appointments, and we didn’t have any truck with names, especially first names, which would have seemed impolite. Patients waited their turn until the door was thrown back and the doctor announced very sharply “Next”. He spoke every word very precisely and crisply, and never used any colloquialisms, not even ‘OK’. As Mrs Bell said, he was abrupt but genuine ! Once, visiting a lady patient in bed, he told her to “get up and lower yourself into your rut gently.” The routine of twice-daily surgery except Friday, and open Sunday a.m.continued year in, year out, and was not abused, though he was met on one night call by a man with a shotgun. This Wringtonian visited him on several occasions over many years. Once he was told there was no treatment and that he must go and sacrifice himself to the community ! On another needing stitches to his hand, the doctor knelt down beside the patient’s chair, donned more powerful specs, made ready the thread and announced, “This is going to be more painful to repair than it was to manufacture.” And late on Christmas Eve 1952 he repaired to the surgery with an infection. In those pre-antibiotic days there was little effective treatment, and so this patient was sent home to bed with the instruction, “If you are no better, call me in tomorrow.” Dr Bell’s out-of-hours pastimes were shooting, fly-fishing, gardening, and anything to do with the countryside. He did not ‘entertain’, he was on no dinner-party circuit. He liked to treat patients’ pets, and once, a rabbit with myxomatosis. In June every year he left all this behind and drove to the north of Scotland to fish in the River Spey (their little dog was named Spey). For this journey he kept a large Alvis sports saloon, seldom seen during the year; survivors of the marque are very sought after today. This was a journey of at least 2 days. While they were away in Scotland produce was sent up from the Wrington garden. In reality, we knew little of Dr Bell. We could be fairly certain that he was a true blue tory; we knew he was dismissive of the church and religion. But what books relaxed him by the fire on winter evenings ? What music moved him – Handelian opera, Bach fugue, the more obscure, esoteric quartets of Schubert or Brahms ? Asked, who knew Dr Bell well, the wife of a fly-fishing companion replied, “No one.” Now in 2010, an age less paternal, more informal, in so many ways less inhibited, the days of Dr Bell and his surgery and patients is so deep in the past, so remote, it seems as though it never was – a little oasis of deference, discipline and politeness, as irretrievable as the rumble of iron-tyred wagon wheels on summer roads, or Mothers’ Union tea on the rectory lawn. One question remains. Is there, perhaps, one last waiting room for us which even the most robust cannot bypass; some far-echoing hall, stark and forebidding - in which, truant from the world, and bereft of friends and all familiar things we shall wait to learn how we are and have been known; to discover the truth and essence of everything ? And will there be a wide, substantial door there, beyond whose threshold time cannot trespass and imagination dare not venture ? And when at length it opens wide and the light floods in, will a superior figure with piercing eye and compelling voice, call “Next” ?