Enter Mr Bates. Mr Bates is the bowel specialist who operates with Mr Wong in cases of ovarian cancer, the pattern of whose metastases typically involves the bowel. A former Rhodesian, Mr Bates is large, alternately bluff and jovial; he belongs to a Scottish malt whisky fraternity. I first met him when I found myself in intensive care after the first operation. An unknown man, dressed in brightly coloured sports clothes (it was a Sunday), was bouncing up and down beside my cot. He enquired breezily, “How are you, young lady?” Through the haze of pain, I replied with outrage, “How dare you call me ‘young lady,‘” and demanded that the intruder introduce himself. This act of gross impropriety on my part in the mode of address, or rather, return of address, to a very senior consultant surgeon, who, moreover, like Mr Wong and the anaesthetist, was treating me gratis in a private hospital, enhanced my kudos in Mr Wong’s eyes, and he took every opportunity to remind me of this picaresque solecism. Mr Bates and I became wary sparring partners. I always greeted him with the appellation “Young Man,” and I presented him with unwanted volumes of Marx so that he might correct the vulgarity of his right-wing misapprehensions of the socialist theory of politics and society.