I wanted a vasectomy.  I can’t remember now exactly why I wanted one, but my wife assured me that this was the case.  So off I went to the Snodland Surgery.

“You’re very lucky, Mr Simms.  Up till now we’ve not been able to offer that service, but we’ve just struck a deal with a specialist in Rochester.”  I remember thinking at the time what a curious definition of ‘lucky’ the doctor had.

So some weeks later I turned up at Dr. Bong’s private practice in Rochester.  (Yes, I know his name isn’t really Dr. Bong, but it was something like that.)  He had a nice Georgian house a stone’s throw from Rochester Castle.  I know this, because sometime afterwards I climbed the castle and chucked rocks at his house.  There was the plaque by the front door announcing his name.  I opened the door and went in.

To my surprise it wasn’t a reception area into converted offices and surgeries.  It was actually his house.  The Doctor’s wife was walking through the hallway.

“Mr. Simms?  My husband is with someone at the moment, please wait in here.” And she showed me into their living room.  Very posh.  The TV was hidden away in a cabinet, presumably because they were too posh to have it on 24 hours a day.  I sat on one of those joke leather sofas.  You know the ones: the sort that has a built in whoopee cushion that farts at the slightest fidget.

Shortly, I was shown into his surgery office.  Or the cupboard under the stairs, as it turned out to be.  He interviewed me, asking about why I wanted it (he hadn’t met my kids), what I knew about the process, was I sure, etc.  Then it was the drop-your-trousers-and-cough routine. 

Finally he gave me a permission note.  Yes, a permission slip, not for me, but for my wife.  I couldn’t have a vasectomy unless she gave her permission.  Can you imagine the outcry if the roles were reversed and a doctor would not perform a hysterectomy without her husband’s permission?

As it was, obtaining her permission was a forgone conclusion.  She was only sorry that there was all that untidiness still left down there after the operation.

And so the big day came.  It was a Saturday.  We took the kids to their grandparents, who lived a mile up the road from the doctor.  We got there early, which gave my wife several hours in which to work herself up into a nervous fit.  Finally I could take her anxious twisting of my hand no longer.  “Let’s go down to the shops for an hour.”

In Chatham’s cathedral to mammon she saw a shirt that would look wonderful on me.  And didn’t I need a new pair of shoes?  I decided against new trousers as my recent shave was uncomfortable enough in my comfortable loose jeans.

She grabbed my arm on the way back to the car.  “You’re really being spoilt today.”

“Yes, I know, but there’s no need to express the procedure in quite… oh the clothes.  Yes, I see.”

From there we went to the doctor’s house.  We both went.  She was going to drive home.  Apparently it is not recommended to drive back cross-legged.  This time I rang the bell.  We were shown into the living room and we farted onto the sofas.  There was one other occupant, sitting stock still in a farty leather chair.  She would not make eye contact, and she was wearing the guiltiest expression I have ever seen on anybody, and I used to be a policeman.

My wife was so nervous you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was her that was going under the knife.  Thankfully the guilty-looking woman was soon called to help her other now-slightly-less-than-half to the door, and then it was my turn.

I was shown into the cupboard under the stairs again.  There the doctor asked me to undress and put 'this' on.  ‘This’ turned out to be little more than a bib.  At first glance you’d think it was meant to preserve your dignity, but no.  It reached little further than my navel, and was open at the back.  Its sole purpose was to accentuate how ridiculous a man looks naked.

“It’s quite crowded in here today”, explained Doctor Bling, showing me into his operating theatre.  Yes, the other door to his cupboard under the stairs led to an operating theatre with lights and table and trolleys full of torture implements.  And there stood Doctor Bang, with the official willy nurse, a doctor from the Snodland surgery and the Snodland practice nurse.  It appeared that part of the arrangement was for the local surgery staff to learn how to sterilise men.  Learn, it seemed, on me.  I guess that’s why it’s called a ‘practice’.

I was laid out on the table, and the bib laid over a wire frame to hide the dreadful deed from my eyes.  I have never had a problem with needles, though having one stuck where they stuck it made me a tad nervous.  But I soon understood the phrase ‘Numb Nuts’.

With two doctors and two nurses surrounding my nethers, it was a tad crowded, so the official willy nurse came up to my end of the table, held my hand and started to chat to me.  This was to take my mind off things.  I sincerely doubt whether my mind would have been taken off things if she had danced naked whilst talking to me about the merits of shaft-drive versus chain-drive motorcycles.  Though the staff at the business end of the table might have had a more challenging time if she did.

The thing about the local anaesthetic is that it did not deaden the area.  I felt very little in terms of pain, nothing like, say, the pain of the dentist cleaning plaque from your gum line.  But I could feel the sensation of the cutting, prodding, pulling, etc.  It was a novel experience.  A bit like eating Pot Noodles.  An education, but not something I’d want to do again.

So to divert my attention I continued to chat to the willy nurse.  Was my wife here?  How many kids did I have?  How old were they?  The usual chit-chat that serves as conversation between strangers.

And then came The Question.  It is an inevitable moment in every conversation, if it continues for more than a minute or so.  I have come to dread it.  I have considered lying, I have considered making a joke about it, I have even tried adopting an expression that says ‘I don’t want to talk about it’.

“What,” she asked, “do you do?”

“I work in computers.”

“Really?  Because I have this Amstrad computer that me and my daughter use, and she keeps getting an error.  I can’t remember what it says, exactly, but it’s very irritating.  What can we do?”

You can ask someone who cares.  You can ask someone who knows something about Amstrads.  You can ask someone who cannot smell the burnt-flesh odour as someone cauterises his plumbing with what looks suspiciously like a soldering iron.

But just because her boss was waving a soldering iron over the crown jewels I decided to be polite and explain that Amstrads were a little different to ICL mainframes, my area of expertise at the time.

Then there was an “Oops” from the practice doctor.  Not a sound you really want to hear.  There was a sensation I can only describe as that when you suck a stray length of spaghetti into your pasta pucker.

“It’s OK, I’ve got it.” said Dr Bung.  Got what?  Never mind, I don’t want to know.  But the slurping sensation was so unexpected and not particularly pleasant that I gave out an involuntary gasp.

“There, there,” said the willy nurse, patting my hand.  “I know, I know.”

With the greatest of respect, madam, you most certainly don’t.

The procedure complete, loose ends tied and soldered, I was stitched up.  This was a little painful, but I’m a man.  I could take it.

Then they sprayed a coating across my wounds, a sort of artificial skin.  Now, I’m all for the banning of CFC’s, but was it really necessary to use super-heated steam as a propellant?  The pain had me gripping the edge of the table white-knuckled for a good two minutes.  I cannot describe the pain.  I would have told them any secret they cared to ask of me, if only they would make it stop.

When I could unlock my jaw, I told the willy nurse, “That has to be the most painful part of the whole thing.”

“Oh it is,” she said.  “That’s why we don’t tell you about it beforehand.  But you were very good.  You can come again.”

Erm… Isn’t the whole point, I don’t have to?

Then the most macabre part of the tale.  The willy nurse took the swabs and various tubes left over and emptied them into a waste bin.  This bin was in a cupboard that had a door on the opposite wall.  The door was open, so that I could see through the cupboard into the adjoining room.  From the operating table I could see copper pans hanging from a large welsh dresser.  It was their kitchen.  Now, I don’t suppose for a minute why there shouldn’t be a shared waste bin for both theatre and kitchen.  Nevertheless, I would have been very uneasy about accepting an invite to dinner with the Brings.

Beef cobbler, anyone?