It is ten a.m. and I have just finished a cup of black coffee sweetened with glucose. Alf recommended it. I have finished massaging my head with the hair restorer Bill gave me and have taken the cod-liver oil supplied by my grandmother.
In two hours I will take four concentrated liver pills, a dessertspoonful of digestive powder and a swig of olive oil, all endorsed by my friends. I will then lunch on nuts and raisins and finish up with a teaspoon of my after-meals digestive powder and a wineglass of tonic.
I will massage my head for the second time and have a eucalyptus inhalation. By this time I will be feeling pretty bad and I will have to lie down to get strength to go through it all again at dinner time.
I blame my friends for my lamentable condition.
A few weeks ago I could eat pork chops and cucumber salad. Now a raisin makes me bilious and the sight of a plum pudding brings on a state resembling sea-sickness.
It is all due to my desire to ‘keep going’.
George started it.
He said: ‘You look white. What you want is plenty of raw liver. It makes blood.’
‘I don’t like the taste of raw liver,’ I said.
‘You take it in pills,’ he said. ‘It’s concentrated. Each pill represents half a pound of liver, and you take four before each meal.’
I did some calculating.
‘That makes six pounds of liver a day,’ I said. ‘A fellow would be likely to get haemophilia at that rate.’
‘Must have it wrong,’ said George. ‘Probably each pill only contains the equivalent to half an ounce of liver. But, anyway, you take four, although, if you like,’ he added, ‘you could take six.’
‘I think I’d better begin with four,’ I said.
‘I think so, too,’ said George.
Next day I met Bill. I told him I was taking liver to keep going.
‘I’ve got just the thing for you,’ he said. ‘Remember the tonic I told you my wife has been taking?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, I’ve been taking it, too, and I’ve never felt better. It’s a prescription from a Collins Street doctor. ‘I’ll get it for you.’
He got it.
‘It’s got plenty of iron and strychnine and arsenic in it,’ he said.
‘Good,’ I said.
‘About your hair,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’re going bald as an egg.’
‘It’s a fact,’ I lamented.
‘I’ll fix that,’ he said.
He went away and brought back a tobacco tin full of a yellow ointment.
‘I made this myself,’ said Bill. ‘It’s a mixture of lard and sulphur. It’s been handed down for years.’
‘What, that tin?’
‘No, the prescription.’
‘The ointment smells as if it had been handed down,’ I said.
‘Mix scent with it,’ said Bill. ‘You rub it into your head three times a day.’
‘Before or after meals?’
‘After,’ he said.
Alf came to see me one day. I explained how I was ‘keeping going’.
‘You can’t beat black coffee and glucose,’ he said. ‘Take it in the morning and afternoon. Do you drink olive oil?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Drink it,’ he said.
‘I will,’ I said.
I was finding it harder and harder to keep going. I got indigestion.
George gave me the powder I am taking after meals and Alf the powder to be taken before eating. My grandmother recommended the cod-liver oil and the inhalation.
But the indigestion got worse.
At an impromptu meeting of friends it was decided that I cut down my lunch to a diet of nuts and raisins.
‘I’ll never keep going on nuts and raisins,’ I said.
‘It’s a natural food,’ they said. ‘Look at the animals.’
But there were no animals to look at.
I began to wish I didn’t have to keep going.
I had to prepare for bed an hour earlier to get through all the things I had to take. Then I couldn’t sleep.
I told George.
‘I can’t sleep,’ I said.
He took me to one side and gave me some tablets. They were the smallest tablets I had ever seen. You’ve never seen such small tablets.
‘Take one when you get into bed,’ he said. ‘It’ll fix you, but don’t tell anyone that I gave them to you. They are prohibited,’ he said. ‘I got them from a chap that knows a doctor and they’re only to be taken when you can’t possibly sleep.’
I took two on Sunday night. When I woke up the house was full of my friends. There was a doctor standing by my bed and it was Tuesday afternoon.
Cripes! I must have slept.
All my friends had their hats off and they’re the sort of friends who wear their hats anywhere.
I could see that it was the narrowest escape from not keeping going that I’ve ever had.
Tomorrow I’m off to the bush.
Keeping going in the city is too dangerous, what with George and all that.