The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight Page B

first year, and made a steady start. He passed his Chemistry and Biology, although he only just scraped through in Biology, attaining a mark of 46%. This led to a conversation with a fellow student that he repeated to me many times.
    ‘What’s the pass mark?’
    ‘45%.’
    ‘What did you get?’
    ‘46%.’
    ‘You’ve been working too hard!’
    Another of his friends used a different approach in following this rather risky attitude to study. He was being examined in Anatomy and was presented with a large bone. ‘What is this?’ asked the examiner.
    ‘A femur,’ replied the student.
    ‘Correct,’ continued the examiner, ‘a femur of what species? Is it the femur of a cow or a horse?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ said the student dismissively, ‘you can forget that one. I’m not looking for honours!’
    During that first year, Alf’s teachers seemed quite pleased with him. His chemistry teacher, Professor Duncan, wrote in his report: ‘Is quite a fair average, not likely to be brilliant but I expect him to be steady.’
    In his next year, 1934–5, he started to slip back. He failed his Physiology and Histology examinations, together with Animal Husbandry. Very poor marks of 36%, 25% and 37% respectively were attained and his teachers were not pleased. Remarks such as ‘not in attendance’ and ‘does not work; very poor’ are evident in his report.
    This is rather surprising. Alf was a responsible and ambitious young man. He wanted to get out into the world, earn his living, and cease to be a burden upon his parents. In addition, he was not one of the band of students who played cards in the common-room all day with the intention of extending their carefree college life well beyond the allotted five years. After a few sessions round the card table in his first year when he lost heavily, the appeal of that enjoyable but expensive pastime died very quickly. In his report of Autumn Term 1935, Dr Whitehouse wrote that he was ‘not in attendance’ for his Anatomy classes. This seems strange behaviour for a well-adjusted young man. While Alf wasnever a brilliant student, carrying off little in the way of distinctions during his time at the college, this does not fully explain his poor showing.
    There was, however, a serious reason. In his last year at Hillhead School, he had experienced severe pain in his rectum that developed into a discharging anal fistula. He recovered from the initial attack but this debilitating condition, which resurfaced in his second year at the college, would be one that would dog him intermittently for the rest of his life. He was so ill in the summer of 1937 that he was admitted to hospital where he underwent a minor operation to clean up the affected area. It was a failure and he was back in the Western Infirmary in 1939 for another attempt at resolving this persistent complaint but, as before, it was not successful.
    This acutely painful affliction, inevitably, affected his ability to concentrate fully on his studies. Without the help of antibiotics in those days, it was not only the pain of the condition that weakened him, he had to endure bouts of severe septicaemia brought about by multiple fulminating abscesses. The only treatment was to go to bed, often with a raging temperature, and bathe the area with hot water in an attempt to keep the infection under control.
    Alf was very philosophical about this blot on his otherwise good state of health and always managed to put a humorous slant into any discussions about it. ‘I may not be an expert on many things,’ he was to say years later, ‘but I consider myself to be an authority on the subject of “Arsology!”’ He spoke from bitter experience, going on to say, ‘I’ve had several operations on the old posterior, all of them agony, but I’ve had enough! No one else is going to have a go at remodelling my backside. This lot is going into the “box” with me!’
    By the summer of 1936 at the end of his third year, he had