Confessions of a Hypochondriac

When I was sixteen, I opened The Radio Times to see what concert would be broadcast that evening. To my disgust, Radio 3 had decided to put on a performance of Othello. I didn’t tune in to hear it. Even so, I was struck by the hook the Beeb had put underneath the listing:

Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.

I can’t say that jealousy has ever been one of my faults. But, if he’d replaced “jealous” with “nervous,” the Bard would have had me exactly right. I have suffered all my life from anxiety – and the attacks come on almost entirely at random. I won’t try listing all my various attacks of anxiety: they would amount to a shadow autobiography. One of the most notable, though took me on the evening of Tuesday, the 10^th June 1980. At about 9pm, I decided that I would fail my degree, and that the lump on my right testicle was terminal cancer. Subsequent events gave me strong reason to believe I was wrong that evening on both counts. But I did hug myself to sleep on the night with no comfort but thoughts of what music I would have played at my funeral.

As said, the attacks come on apparently at random. Many things have happened to me in what is now a long and varied life that would reduce other men to jelly, but that I handled with admirable fortitude. In 1991, for example, I was in my car with a friend at 3am on the Sunday after the launch of the Desert Storm invasion of Iraq. We had found a quiet lane where we could enjoy our kebabs and share pinches of snuff. Out of nowhere, two rat-faced police constables emerged to demand what we were doing outside one of the main military bases in Kent. I told the truth, and this was so odd, they were inclined to believe me. They still said they needed to search the car. No problem there, you might think – except we had a loaded gun in the boot. Guns were still just about legal in those days, but not loaded and unsecured, and not outside a military base at the start of a war. Still, I opened all the doors and compartments. When it came to the boot, I opened it and tried not to look at the black metal glittering in the light of a sodium street lamp. I looked the officer in the face and made a joke about kebabs. He laughed and told me to be more careful in future where I parked. I closed the boot and went back to my shish with extra chilli sauce. Yes, I was angry with myself, and I made sure never to do that again. But I lost no sleep over the matter.

Some years later, I was in a small aeroplane that crashed in the middle of nowhere. Several people died, but I stumbled out with nothing beyond a few bruises. I felt sorry for those who hadn’t been so lucky, but cared surprisingly little about how close I had come to joining them. The subsequent walk to a settlement was much taken up with reflections on mortality and the variability of fortune. Again, I might have earned an approving nod from John Buchan.

Or, some years after that. I handled a legal matter for my wife. She knows not to stroke my vanity, but was unmistakably impressed by how I advanced a case that was slightly less than perfect, while combining the appearance of being a complete layman with a knowledge of exactly what I could get away with. After my opening speech, plus the promise of what documents I was about to read in open court, the barristers on the other side crumpled and gave us more than we had initially asked as a try-on.

Oh, but I could give more examples – many, many more – and these would amount to another shadow autobiography, this one showing me as a capable and even ruthless responder to and shaper of circumstances. But I have said I will write about my less creditable side. And this is that all my resolution and fortitude have a tendency to abandon me without warning. Here is the latest illustration of the tendency.

As ever, I spent the July of 2025 in Slovakia with my in-laws. On Saturday the 19^th July, we decided to have a barbecue in the garden. As soon as the air was thick with the smell of charred meat, a black cat with bright and evil eyes appeared from nowhere. He loved me. He pushed himself repeated against my ankles, emitting sounds of adoration with every breath. He loved the fragment of burned pork I tossed him. Love only turned to anger when I ventured to tickle his head. I lurched back with a tooth puncture in my left wrist.

I was straight inside with my daughter, attacking the wound with Slovak vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. There was no blood, but the hole was unmistakable. The other guests assured me I was in no danger. A search of the Internet confirmed that there was no rabies in Western Slovakia, and that, except for a single infected badger in 2017, none had been reported in the whole country this century,. A continued search told me that no human in the country had been infected since 1990.

The cat had been apparently fit and healthy when he bit me. He was still apparently fit and healthy when I last saw him on Thursday the 24^th July. After I returned to England, my brother-in-law told me of further sightings of the cat – though he did say he hadn’t been close enough to be sure it was the same cat. Still, my searches had assured me that animals were only infectious when showing symptoms, or not more than two days before that, and that they invariably died within three days of showing symptoms. Since I did certainly see the cat myself five days after the bite, my chances of infection were minimal, even if there had been some initial chance.

You might as well have told all this to the cat himself for the reassurance it produced. I arrived back in England in a state not far from nervous collapse. But I gave myself a long lecture about stiff upper lips, and went about my normal business. I did contact my doctor via NHS Direct on Monday the 28^th July. I received a text telling me that my case would be considered and I should wait for a response. There was none that week, during which I flipped between telling myself to acquire some common sense and updating my will. It didn’t help that the bastard cat had now vanished from the neighbourhood.

At last, on Thursday the 7^th August, my general practitioner called me with a nervous tinge to his voice. He took all the details of the attack, and said he’d call back with advice. An hour later, he did call back, apologising that he’d been on call-waiting for half an hour to a school of tropical medicine. What he then said was that my chances of infection were very small. What I heard was that my chances were greater than zero. What else I heard was that a rabies vaccine was being rushed to the surgery, and that I should be there at 3pm the next day for the first injection.

That evening, I managed to produce all the symptoms that the virus had made its way into my brain – fever, headache, fatigue. There was nothing to be done, I told myself. Another few days at the most, and I’d be foaming at the mouth and scared of coffee. I’d never collect that old age pension, contributions to which had been looted from my earnings over nearly half a century. But I decided to go ahead with the vaccinations, useless though they now were. I had checked and the vaccine offered was a traditional dead virus – not one of those killer shots pushed after that global outbreak of the sniffles in 2020. It had been used all over the world for decades without recorded problems. Come 3pm, I presented my left shoulder, and didn’t so much as grimace when the needle went in almost to the bone. Ditto the following Monday.

Earlier today, my brother-in-law sent me some photographs. The cat had been back in his garden after its owners had returned from holiday and got him back from wherever cats are put on these occasions. I spent half an hour comparing them with the pictures I had taken. At last, even I had to agree that the small patch of white fur on his right flank and the spot on one of his ears were unlikely to be a chance resemblance. A cat still alive nearly a month after a supposed infection would be one for the newspapers. My own infection would be a medical oddity so great, it would be written up in all the journals. Why Keir Starmer himself would feel obliged to put on a sad look when invited to comment on my fate. My brother-in-law, who has always shown me greater patience than his sister has, only suggested that I should think twice in future when in the company of strange animals.

Do I feel better? Certainly not! Once I have posted this, I shall be back to a close examination of those patches of white fur. After that, however, I need to continue with my appeal against an alleged overstay in a Leicester carpark: and who would ever want to stay there longer than absolutely required? Then, I can hope that indignation will overcome anxiety.

Thinking about it, the pattern is reasonably clear. Give me a clear and present danger – pigs sniffing round my boot, scumbag lawyers smirking at me in court – and you can watch me turn heroic: ordered thought, steady pulse, always the right words or gestures to see things through. The danger then is actual, not potential, and facts are there to be handled. I am too busy doing to have time left for fearing.

But turn the threat into something uncertain – a half-imagined illness, the vague possibility that this scratch or that bite might be fatal, those “trifles light as air” – and all solid ground gives way. Instead of acting, I brood. I turn symptoms over in my mind, consult the Internet as if it were an oracle, and conjure futures in which all ends badly. Lack of certainty, far from a comfort, leaves me with nothing to fight but my own thoughts. And those can be scarier than that crackhead who once ran at me, iron bar in hand – another story with a probably illegal outcome.

Something tells me that this will not have been my last attack of nerves. Looking on the bright side, though, I shan’t need to worry about wicked cats for the next two years.