The Weasel

Casualty wards don't strike me as the most entertaining of spots - the three or four hours I once spent in Lewisham Hospital waiting to have my little toe X-rayed, do not stand out in my memory as a dazzling kaleidoscope of drama and human interest - but it seems that television viewers can't get enough of them. The US channel NBC recently agreed to pay pounds 8 million for each episode of ER, a hospital weepie set in Chicago. You'd think that TV stations would be able to economise by showing the same episode over and over again, since it always seems to consist of some unfortunate being whizzed along on a stretcher surrounded by medics bellowing gobbledegook.

From now on, however, I will be able to watch such shenanigans with a professional eye, because ER is one of the few TV dramas to have inspired its own text-book. The Medicine of ER by Alan Ross & Harlan Gibbs MD (Flamingo, pounds 7.99) will transform the most sluggish couch-potato into a cool-eyed trauma specialist. In the future, I will know, that "Saline, D5W!" refers to intravenous drips of saline solution and five per cent dextrose in sterile water (the authors helpfully point out that D5W should not be confused with WD40, which would have an entirely different effect), and that the piratical-sounding command "Crack the Chest!" is a drastic surgical rummaging called thoracotomy. Unfortunately, British readers are left in the dark by the authors' description that this is the "Roto Rooter of cardiac emergency plumbing", but we get the general idea.

Could the popularity of ER mean that these desperate abbreviations will be adopted in general practice? How it would enliven a visit to the surgery if the doctor were suddenly to inquire: "Got any TWTW?" (Trouble with the waterworks). Or give the urgent diagnosis "Two tabs paracetamol quick! We gotta OTBUG!" (One of those bugs going round). However, inevitable as the appearance of a defibrillator in ER, there would come the dramatic pronouncement "TYLABOW!" (Time you lost a bit of weight.)

Still on medical matters, I came within a whisker of apoplexy myself this week when attempting to buy a rail ticket. Of course, I realise it was my own fault not leaving sufficient time - say, two or three hours for the transaction. When I puffed into our local railway station, I had a few minutes to spare before my train arrived. Since there was a lengthy queue at the ticket window, I joined a shorter queue at the automatic machine. Everything went fine until I came to put in my last coin, which happened to be a new 50p. For some reason, the gadget took against the gleaming heptagon. So I tried again. With the veins standing out on my forehead like the pipework on a Richard Rogers building, I repeatedly inserted the 50p and the machine repeatedly spat it out. Eventually, someone queuing behind me blurted, "Won't work mate. They don't take the new 50p."

The "new 50p", I learn from the Royal Mint, was introduced on 1 September 1997. There are now around 400 million in circulation. It is very rare to come across an old-style 50p, which will cease to be legal tender on 28 February, yet Connex South-Eastern, the French outfit which operates our local rail service, has not yet got round to modifying its machines. Despite this farcical inefficiency, it has shown no inclination to suspend the pounds 10 penalty fare imposed on anyone travelling without a ticket. "I imagine they'll get round to changing the machines sometime," mused the Connex representative behind the ticket window. "It depends on when they can afford to do it." I suppose it will happen when Connex has enough pounds 10 fines snaffled from passengers who were foolish enough to attempt to use 50p coins in its machines.

Something similar happened at the Dulwich College tollgate, which, as I have previously noted, is a quaint, if pricy feature of the route between Weasel Villas and the West End. The slot machine at the gate also rejected my new 50p. "It should work," explained a helpful gatekeeper. "There's a bit of a knack to it." So saying, he popped my 50p in his mouth and then inserted the saliva-smeared coin in the machine, which happily accepted it. Easy-peasy. So long as you have no objection to sucking a coin which may have seen the inside of several hundred unknown trouser pockets, the problem is licked.

One of the problems inherent in modern art emerged the moment I set foot in the Art 98, the vast sale held in Islington last week. "These are all Jake and Dinos' stuff," an avant-garde mum told her wriggling youngster. "I don't think you want to see them." Attracted by the grotesque creations of the Chapman brothers, the arty urchin demurred: "No, I wanna look." Well, we were all searching for something. I saw Michael Heseltine pondering long and hard over a stuffed python. Mrs Weasel was tempted by a small, dazzling print in orange and red, mystifyingly entitled Snow by Howard Hodgkin - but I kibboshed that (pounds 2,500 + VAT). I was rather taken by a Matisse print - a nude created with a wonderful economy of line - but pounds 1,300 seemed a bit steep for four crayon lines. David Begbie's nudes moulded from wire netting were a major attraction. At pounds 3,760 for a 1ft-high model or pounds 15,500 for life-size, I have never seen sexier chicken mesh. But the big talking point of the show was the controversial deconstructed portrait of the Queen by Justin Mortimer, described as depicting her "in relaxed mood". Judging by the scribbled remarks in a comment book, most art lovers approved: "Sad, old, fragmentary - it's our Queen all right." Another message growled: "Just how we feel about her. Off with her head!" Still, the Queen can count her blessings. Just think what les freres Chapman would have done.

Flicking through the invaluable reference work, The Encyclopedia of Beatles People, my eye was taken by the slightly scathing entry for Dhani Harrison, son of the great guitarist and avatar. "Reared at George's 33- acre mansion, he has led a somewhat cosseted life, being chauffeured round in a gold Mercedes or various of George's Porsches." But the final sentence suggests that Dhani (Sanskrit for "wealthy") has chosen to renounce this sybaritic existence for the rigours of academic life: "He has decided to study design technology."

As it happens, the latest issue of Vanity Fair offers an insight into the austere student life which young Dhani has courageously adopted. He crops up in a feature on the ultra-fashionable Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, which has attracted a well-heeled "Euro" intake. Harrison Jr is photographed with a mini-skirted blonde lovely draped over his knee. Sadly, we are given no account of his academic progress, but judging by a description of the college carpark ("Porsche, Porsche, BMW, Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche"), the scholarly expat should certainly feel at hom.