Preparation H Ointment

'Scuse the title, but we have to hook the under-twelves on this site, haven't we?


Well, where do you start? I mean, if your friend has a problem, and he wants to share it with the nation, but wants to remain anonymous, do you, as a wannabe journalist, give your friend an alter ego, pop in a disclaimer at the end of the opinion – or just expose his/her a*se to public scrutiny and be damned?

Well, we don’t talk ...
...talk about haemorrhoids, mostly because we can’t spell them.

For your information, piles are four words up from haggis in the Penguin Pocket English Dictionary.


Sadly, because of our reluctance to talk about the subject, few of us actually know what hammer-heads are. We all hear the myths and the superstitions, but our knowledge is limited to the gross inaccuracies of the plethora of jokes on the subject.
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'Scuse the title, but we have to hook the under-twelves on this site, haven't we?

Well, where do you start? I mean, if your friend has a problem, and he wants to share it with the nation, but wants to remain anonymous, do you, as a wannabe journalist, give your friend an alter ego, pop in a disclaimer at the end of the opinion – or just expose his/her a*se to public scrutiny and be damned?

Well, we don’t talk about piles, do we?

We don’t even talk about haemorrhoids, mostly because we can’t spell them.

For your information, piles are four words up from haggis in the Penguin Pocket English Dictionary.

Sadly, because of our reluctance to talk about the subject, few of us actually know what hammer-heads are. We all hear the myths and the superstitions, but our knowledge is limited to the gross inaccuracies of the plethora of jokes on the subject.

Which is why my friend, on discovering an itch and a little bit of discharge, oscillated between a plook (guid Scottish word), and rectal cancer.

Generally, I think we are too scared of this unknown, and inevitably fear the worst.

There’s a lovely book by Nick Hornby, entitled How To Be Good, in which the principle character is a GP. A punter is convinced he has haemorrhoids, but is diagnosed as having a boil on the bum, due to a cavalier attitude towards personal hygiene.

I can relate to this, given the experience of the wife of a friend of mine, who is an A&E nurse. And who had to cope with a renowned local drunk, who turned up “in agony, it’s my piles”.

You probably don’t want to read this, but he was fine after she had scraped weeks of accumulated, dried-up sh . . . okay, we’ll go no further with story.

Back to my friend, whose only problem was a very itchy a*se. But through lack of education, and the ineffectiveness of the NHS to provide information, he became seriously worried.

He thought seriously about going to his GP, but had this problem in that his GP was female, in her early thirties, and eminently fanciable. His macho, male-stereotypy attitude absolutely precluded him from asking his GP to look at his (defective) a*se.

Unfortunately for my friend – and I mean unfortunately – Prescription H can be bought at Safeway or the Co-op. If it was only available on prescription, then eventually he would have had to swallow his pride, and face (face??) his GP.

However, he bought P-H, looked at the applicator, and thought f*ck this, I’m not shoving this lump of plastic up my bum. I’ll try smearing it on with the finger. The next day was itchier than ever.

So eventually, in desperation, he tried the applicator.

Next day was itchier than midgies in Fort William.

He read the blurb, all about how P-H should work, including the bit about how it shouldn’t be swallowed, and also including the disclaimer that it won’t work in all cases, so sod off and don’t even try a claim.

My friend now shoves Savlon up his bottom on a regular basis. He has no current problems. (He says, though he still hasn’t consulted the doctor-babe.)

His brief encounter with Prescription H was certainly an experience.

But not one to be repeated.

Of course, this review may be totally unfair, given that P-H is marketed in the war against haemorrhoids, and my friend, because of his reluctance to display his a*se to his eminently fanciable GP, is still in limbo between a wee plook and rectal cancer.

Such is life.

But if I encounter anything similar, I'll settle for Savlon on the index finger of the non-eating hand.

© Mike Clark 2002.
 

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