View from the Bridge: 54
by John Morrison
Contents
Whenever an over-worked GP writes a perfunctory prescription for tranquillisers -
instead of listening to what his patient has to say - he unwittingly creates a job
opportunity. Whenever conventional medicine admits to being stymied by some new and
malignant virus, the door marked 'Alternative Therapies' opens a little further ajar. Whenever
a patient is offered a gloomy prognosis, he is susceptible to the soft, seductive
siren voices of complementary medicine.
Alternative therapies seem to occupy the middle ground between established religion
and medical orthodoxy. The Church lurches erratically between laughable anachronisms
and unseemly haste in jumping on the latest barmy bandwagon. Where the Church used
to provide unequivocal moral guidance ("Repent or be damned...") it now offers the merest
slap on the wrist to those who transgress. We in Milltown wince at the pathetic attempts
of the Vicar of Saint Diana's to be hip and trendy. Acknowledging "the sanctity of indiscriminate shagging" isn't giving much of a lead to impressionable youngsters.
And downgrading the Ten Commandments to the status of Performance Charters is unlikely
to bring the doubters flocking back to fill the empty pews in his echoing church.
There was a time when the vicar of Milltown could terrify his congregation with a
few home truths from the pulpit, leaving women weeping, men ashen-faced, children
traumatised and damp. A time when the Devil walked among us, and wasn't just your
dad dressed up. Guilt, fear and sin have put 'bums on pews' for almost two thousand years...
but they don't play so well to the Pepsi Generation.
When church leaders get together now - to swap fashion tips ("Mmmm, purple..."), mull
over vital ecclesiastical questions ("Is there still a place in the Church for blind
prejudice?") and generally try to put the 'fun' back into fundamentalism - the rest
of us just stifle a yawn. And with the doctors offering unpalatable observations ("It's
not good for you, you know, all that crack cocaine on an empty stomach"), there are
plenty of people in Milltown who'll pay good money to hear reassuring platitudes
from a smiling therapist.
The therapists of Milltown are anything but cynical. They mean every word they say,
which is worrying and comforting in about equal measure. It's a comfort to take your
troubles, your stiff neck and your unregressed past lives to someone who will reinforce everything you say with empathy and understanding. But it's a worry that the people
listening so intently to your litany of woes should themselves have only the most
tenuous of toe-holds on reality.
Here in Milltown we're a bit top-heavy with people who promise, perhaps rather glibly,
to heal your life. The newsagent's window is a patchwork of their tiny notices, each
one showing just what professional results can be obtained with a John Bull printing set and an unfettered imagination. You only have to rub your neck wearily in Milltown
to have half a dozen pastel-coloured business cards thrust into your hand.
One day an ambitious entrepreneur - some Bernard Matthews of self-basting therapies
- will grab this unregulated business by the scruff of the neck and create some appalling
multinational conglomerate. The MacDonalds of Meditation; the Toys 'R Us of Transactional Analysis; the Coca Cola of Colonic Irrigation. In the meantime, however, alternative
medicine continues to be an informal free-for-all, allowing otherwise unemployable
folk the chance to earn a crust.
We can all re-invent ourselves as whatever we want to be. After all, is anybody going
to sue if a particular therapy fails to do what it claims to do? "Your Honour, my
client claims that after six sessions with the accused, she had still not been formally
introduced to her inner child". Not very likely, is it?
So Dope Dealer has remodelled himself as a Substance Abuse Negotiator, and the barmaid
at the Grievous Bodily Arms now calls herself a Sex Therapist. Milltown's elder citizens
have the opportunity to waste their old-age pensions on a few sessions of Empire Deprivation Treatment. Post-Keegan Trauma Counselling is available for distraught
Newcastle fans. Even our Town Drunk, trying to get in on the act, is applying for
a grant to teach self-empowerment through binge-drinking.
Having come to terms with her own deficiencies with mop, broom and duster, Willow
Woman is offering sessions on Housework Neglect Assertiveness. She inspires other
women to confront their own slovenly habits head-on, without embarrassment or self-consciousness. She encourages them to stop making craven apologies, when a visitor calls, about
their untidy homes. Instead of rushing around - plumping up cushions, tossing old
magazines into the bin and kicking childrens' toys under the sofa - they are soon
able to survey their unsanitary surroundings, look the visitor straight in the eye and
say, without a hint of apology: "Yeah, it's a pigsty. Who gives a shit? Let's go
out...".
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