Happy birthday! To me, that is. I'm 55 years old as I start writing this and the occasion seems worth recording, if only because I have promised myself it shall be my last birthday celebration.
I have decided to replace it and to follow an example set by Samuel Pepys. It was on March 26, 1658, that the diarist underwent an operation to remove a kidney stone. Every year after he celebrated the anniversary of March 26 with a dinner, "This being", as he put it, "my solemn feast for my cutting of the stone." And so, in imitation of the most immortal of English writers I hope to similarly celebrate September 3.
The occasion, in my case, will not involve the cutting out of any stones. Instead there will a bit of drilling through my skull and some rummaging around in my brain. As ordeals go, mine (hopefully) will not match up to that of Pepys. Although the explorations by my surgeons will also be without benefit of anaesthetic and the procedure is scheduled to last at least 11 hours - as opposed to a matter of minutes during which, I presume, Pepys was under the knife - the operations are, of course, as different as the three centuries separating them would suggest.
Pepys's operation took place some two years before he began the diary and he seems to have left no description. Perhaps one should be thankful for the omission; I, for one, would hesitate to read such an account out of respect for his powers of observation. But I do recall reading, or being told, a story of how a latter-day Pepysian scholar had dug up the surgeon's household accounts and discovered a clue as to why the diarist had survived. They were said to show that the surgeon in question, Thomas Hollier, had happened to purchase a new knife a day or two before it was used on Pepys. The suggestion was that the apparent good fortune enjoyed by Pepys in being among a minority of survivors of Hollier's practice was due to the chance use of a comparatively clean blade.
I have been unable to establish the veracity, or discover the source, of that story. But the memory of it set me puzzling over the parameters of due prudence in the face of chance. To what odds will pain, or discomfort drive one; how far would one, or should one, gamble with one's life in search of relief? As far as patriotism seems to take us, for example ?
Dicing with death in the name of patriotism is brought to mind by way of a remembered conversation with the commander of an American "Bradley fighting vehicle". It was at the end of the first day of the ground attack against the Iraqis in Kuwait during the Gulf war. I remarked that the war was akin to a turkey shoot in which the turkeys were predictably having trouble shooting back. He answered, thoughtfully, that they had been told during training that those in his position - with head exposed above the turret of armoured personnel carriers - had only a 50% chance of survival in battle conditions.
Would Pepys have accepted the bet if it had been evens on his survival? Would the pain of the stone - said to have been the size of a (small, 17th century) tennis ball - have been sufficient justification for him to share the odds of Bush's boys? Would I have accepted the gamble if they had been the only odds available for a chance to put a (favourable) end to my shuffles and shakes?
As it is, seemingly I have it easy. I am assured by the doctors planning to plant the brain pacemaker, designed to calm the malfunctioning area in my head, that there is only a 2-3% chance of things "going wrong".
Similar odds were given in reassurance by the rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, to the US government and Alan Shepard as he prepared to become the first American in space.
My companion, Ellen, marked my birthday by producing a meal of Karoo lamb which even a bon vivant such as Pepys would have acknowledged as a feast. Two of my guests gave me books by Alain de Botton, showing their fine appreciation of the consolations of philosophy, particularly the potted, in times such as mine. But a more immediate lesson was offered by a third guest, a civil rights lawyer and now a silk, who recently survived a stroke. He described how, on admission to hospital, his neurologist had cheerily advised him to keep his head as still as possible until they had assessed the damage on a MRI scan. In the quiet and measured tone of irony with which he used to spear apartheid's officers in the witness box, he observed that the experience of knowing that a cough, or a sneeze could "switch off the lights" changes one's perspective.
He offered no amplification. But, watching him contentedly join in the feast laid before us, it struck me it does not matter when we celebrate. And the bookmaker has little relevance to the happenstances of time.
· David Beresford is an award-winning journalist for the Guardian and the Observer. He lives in South Africa.
