give a bonus of a week's extra paid holiday to
every employee who has not been off work through illness in the year.) Whenever I see that advertisement—I hate it so much I have never even looked to see what sadist issues it—of the cheerful family group with the laughing father crossed out with a thick brush as his heart fails while carrying his son on his shoulders, I feel a cardiac twinge, a dabble of sweat in the middle of the back, and a general conviction that my veins are furred up like an old kettle spout. Now whenever I hoist my son up there I feel as`heroic as Casablanca.
I find the stress theory of illness very comfort- ing. I say to myself, in my braver moments (such as when I have just realised that I have been suffering nasty, ticklish, scraping heart pains on the right-hand side), that if a devout nun can con- jure up the stigmata as a physical emblem of her spiritual desires, then a devout atheist ought to be able to conjure away a running nose and a feverish headache. And I do very often. It seems to me absolutely to be expected that the body will gradually grow chipped, shabby and old- fashioned, secreting rust in the flanges and erod- ing in the valves, until it has no second-hand value at all. But 1 never think it for a second likely that my mind might go.
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