Bingham and I lived on the top floor of the Resident Medical Staff Quarters at St Swithin's, a tall, gloomy building containing a couple of dozen bleak bed-sitters and a dining-room enlivened by a battered piano and a picture of Sir William Osler gazing at us chidingly down his sad moustaches. On the table was a collecting-box in which anyone talking shop at supper had to drop half a crown; this was labelled FUND FOR THE BLIND, and underneath in smaller letters _And What a Blind!_ Every six months, when half the house surgeons left, this box was broached. As the Professor's retiring house surgeon had also passed his Fellowship, found a new job, and become engaged on the same day, he asked me to take his night duty for him. I was delighted, because it showed I was capable of accepting higher surgical responsibilities. Also, it made Bingham furious.

There was usually a trickle of emergency cases entering St Swithin's during the night, but that evening I was disappointed to find that the admission-room inside the gate was quiet. About midnight I went to sleep, leaving Hamilton Bailey's _Emergency Surgery_ beside my bed and my trousers hopefully receptive on the chair. I dreamed that I was in casualty, operating with a soup spoon on Bingham's double hernias without an anaesthetic, and I woke with a start to the porter's knock.

'What is it?' In a second I was scrambling out of bed, switching on the light, and jumping into my shoes. 'What's the time?'

''Arf past three.. Case of intermittent abdominal pain. Getting worse over last three days. Mostly subumbilical.'

'Really? Does the patient look very ill?'

'Nah. Came in a taxi.'

I immediately felt sorry: it looked as though I would not have the chance of assisting at an emergency operation. The porter stood picking his teeth while I pulled a sweater over my pyjamas. 'Gall-stone colic I reckon it is,' he said.