Fortune in Misfortune

Last night Benedict Ambrose and I left our post-deluge refuge, a small flat in the Old Town, and rode away in a taxi cab.

It took us about an hour to pack all our things, and I marvelled that in four months so much had floated up from the Historical House to the Historical Flat. Between us we packed seven large shopping bags, two backpacks and one large suitcase with stuff. Down three flights of a narrow turnpike staircase they went, B.A. sighing and groaning as he carried his share. I shifted the pile outside and then by the entrance of a close (alley) while B.A. wrote a thank-you note to the cleaning lady and then fetched the cab.

We and all our stuff just managed to fit into the big black cab, and then we went rattling over the cobblestones of the Royal Mile, bound for the New Town. I said it reminded me of the late 18th century migration of the middle classes from the Old Town to the New. This was a cheering thought in the midst of our no-hard-feelings eviction.

(It's now High Season, and Work needed its "holiday let" flat back, which is perfectly understandable to anyone with a glancing acquaintance with the Edinburgh tourist trade.)

"Fortune in misfortune" is a Polish blessing, and I first heard it in the emergency department of the eye hospital in Warsaw in 2016. Polish Pretend Son subsequently texted it from London, and so I got to read it, one-eyed, too: Szczęście w niesczęściu.  

I thought of that yesterday morning as I first went to the New Town to see my flat-owning friend and her kindly tenants who have allowed B.A. and I to rent the bedroom (with ensuite) my friend had retained for her own occasional use. Yes, B.A.'s brain tumour is back again, and we can't live in the Historical House, and we have to have our stuff out by mid-August, and B.A.'s job has been restructured, but at least we will have a roof over our heads for the summer, and it's in the New Town.

The New Town is to Edinburgh what Forest Hill is to Toronto, Park Avenue is to New York, and Mayfair is to London, so if you are evicted, it's a great place to land. After a coffee, a nice chat, and an inspection of the room, I cheered up very much. Szczęście w niesczęściu, indeed.

When I was 24 and living on cheap hamburger in Toronto's Little Portugal with my best pal Trish, I came up with a comforting theory that as long as someone brought up in a stable middle-class household stayed away from hard drugs (and didn't develop anorexia), she would never be homeless or starve to death. I wasn't sure why that was, but I now that I live in a country with a historic, persistent, obvious and obsessive class system, I know the reason: social capital.

B.A works in the heritage industry and I work for a pro-life media organisation, so we don't earn a lot. This puts us at a slight disadvantage when misfortune comes knocking. However, I was taught  from birth, and B.A. from baptism (long story), an intricate system of social skills that lead to employment in the professions, or marriage to someone in the professions, or at very least friendships with people in the professions. As a result, we are on friendly terms with medical doctors, engineers, hoteliers, lawyers and lots of other practical people who managed to like the study of music, philosophy and literature without being fatally sucked into them, as were we.

It is no exaggeration to say that B.A. is still alive because his brother-in-law is married to a medical doctor. People tell me that my tenacity saved B.A.'s life, and that is probably true, but my sister-in-law's intervention was crucial.* And it is also not an exaggeration to say that we are not incurring the horrible expense usually suffered only by the very poor of living in a motel because we have friends who either live in large houses or own rental property and are willing to let us rent from week to week.

(Why we simply do not take a six-month-lease somewhere in another long story; stay tuned.)

When I woke up in the New Town this morning, I felt terribly smug about the cockroach-like survival skills of the middle classes (provided we stay off hard drugs), and then realised that I was probably thinking more like a Marxist than like a Catholic, so I dropped my smirk and said a prayer of thanksgiving.

*At this point, any reasonable person may reflect that this is very hard cheese on anyone in the UK who does not have a doctor in his family.  Yes, it is.  The National Health Service is touted as a boon to the less-well-off in UK society, and ultimately it is a boon.  But for several reasons, including not enough doctors and nurses to serve multitudes of sick people in an ageing, fattening population, the NHS is neither perfect nor as good as other socialised medical systems.

I do not know why everyone acts as though the only alternative to the NHS is an American-style medical industry. It isn't. I got excellent and affordable emergency care in Poland, and at least one friend got excellent--and free--emergency care in Germany. Socialised medicine can and does work;  the question is how to make it work better for everyone.