“Mighty fine evening, sir. Have you ever heard of Joseph Smith?” asked the taller of the two smart women at my door last week.
Of course I had, I told her. Smiffy was a mate in the RAF way back. Was he here? Go on, where is he hiding? Am I on Surprise Surprise? Come on out, Smiffy.
“No no no,” she said, sounding a bit exasperated. Another Joseph Smith? When I asked if her Mr Smith was by any chance American, she nodded furiously and asked me to think of any Smiths I knew of from west of Rockall. Ah, of course. She must have meant Joe ‘Fox’ Smith, the jazz trumpeter. His soulful solos were brilliant. “No,” she said, a bit sharply. “I was talkin’ ‘bout the founder of our church and, sir, I think you knew that.”
Couldn’t keep a straight face. While I may have known she was on about Joe Smith of the Latter Day Saints movement, part of which is the Mormon Church, why should I make it easy for these missionaries when they come a-knocking and a-disturbing my Big Fat Gipsy Wedding? Realising her sense of humour may still be at departures in Utah, I made some excuse about being unwell after a bump on the head.
That got me thinking how, when someone was acting a bit weird, we used to tell them to go and get their bumps felt. That phrase always intrigued me.
Not just because I was in Stornoway police station – on journalistic business, you understand – and an irate driver came in and loudly protested that the traffic calming measures in Seaforth Road were unnecessarily prominent. In other words, the horizontal sleeping policemen were too fat and, as he mounted them, he kept hearing scraping noises from under his clapped-out Ford Mondeo, his pride and joy.
After suitable advice about speed was given, he left still claiming he’d felt the bumps for months. Not one of the vertical policemen cracked a smile or bent over in kinks – until he had driven off. I then met the same motorist a year later and I asked if he still had his bottom-scraping problem. “Nah,” he said, very matter of factly. “I wasn’t putting enough air in the tyres. When I put them to the right pressure that awful scraping noise stopped. Then my wife went on a diet and lost a few stones. So I think that’s helped as well.” Silly cops. Why didn’t they think of that? Maybe other bumps should be checked out, I thought.
Having the bumps on your head felt was called phrenology. A supposed science in the 1800s, it claimed a brain was made up of 27 segments which could be felt through your skull. When people went to a phrenologist they were said to be having their bumps felt. The ardent practitioners always protested and said there was more to it than that but it died off for being a bit bogus. It was snake oil science – like homeopathy, wearing copper bracelets, aromatherapy and putting ketchup on your burgers as one of your five-a-day. If it makes you feel better, fine, but that may say more about your gullibility.
No sensible person would have anything to do with phrenology. Or would they? My man under the mortar board tells me they have decided to bring back the ancient art of bump feeling for staff and students at a certain college on the island of Lews. Now being marketed differently, of course, it’s no longer a test to diagnose illnesses or to check just how delirious someone is. It has now gone all modern under the banner of head massages.
Nut rubbing is quite popular, I understand. Some bonce ticklers use oils, such as olive or coconut oil, as they feel away. It’s offered without oil for people who prefer not to get greasy or who have to work after a brisk so-called scalp massage. Like college people, for instance. Any student or lecturer who is feeling stressed can make a free 20-minute appointment with the second-year hairdressing students to have their bumps felt. Or, as they prefer to call it, “a relaxing and stress-busting mini head massage”. Shame I don’t have a mini head.
Aw, it was about 16 years ago just now that another bump began to be seen and felt. It changed my life. And that of my wife who was carrying it.
Such a weird time. There was such a lot to learn – and quickly. Going along to the ante-natal classes was, er, different. I was told, nae ordered, to feel my pelvic floor and I had to sort of wiggle that alleged abdominal organ in empathy with wheezing mammies-to-be. Not a good idea wiggling anything down there after a lamb vindaloo the night before.
Still, being an expectant father was sometimes fun. I did get invited to the occasional knees-up. Or, as Mrs X preferred to call it, accompanying her for yet another visit to the gynaecologist.
who are you trying to kid feeling your pelvic floor, something you read about recently and found a sentence to slot it in. The world is oh so full of bumps, little bit more research and you will find some rather attractive!!!