The Lady Guide to Modern Manners: 24 January
Dear Thomas,
A friend of mine is proposing to ask her doctor out on a date. She’s managed to find out he’s single. Nothing will dissuade her but I think it’s crazy. Do you agree? Surely she’ll get into trouble for harassment.
Violet Langham, Chester
Dear Violet,
Ideally, she should become a nurse – but all that’s rather old-fashioned and just a tiny bit sexist for our age.
In which case, who are doctors dating nowadays? We should be told. Maybe they’re devastatingly lonely, like midwives, who, for obvious reasons, are least likely to find romance in the workplace. If things continue, the whole breed of doctors could die out.
Seriously, though, the General Medical Council does not allow doctors to make advances on their patients; indeed it might be a criminal offence. But ex-patients are semi-OK. So your friend will have to become an ex-patient and ideally should have been a woman of few appointments. Intimacy springing up over a prolonged disorder is frowned upon. But if he has merely offered a personal demonstration of a few neck exercises on occasion…
That male doctors are wildly attractive to women has always been known. Think of Brief Encounter – Celia Johnson in the refreshment room of the railway station: ‘I’ve got something in my eye, it’s rather painful,’ she says to the woman behind the counter. At once Trevor Howard materialises behind her: ‘I wonder if I can help. I should be able to, I’m a doctor’ – so the great romance begins.
Or Dirk Bogarde in Doctor In The House? For public appearances his trousers had to be sewn up to keep out enthusiastic lady fans – the actor that is, not the character.
Cole Porter’s song The Physician, gives a rather different slant. This doc isn’t delivering: ‘He simply loved my larynx/And went wild about my pharynx/But he never said he loved me.’
The trouble is, some go too far. Complaints by male doctors about unwanted advances from women, many delivered via Facebook and Twitter, have rocketed recently.
Even so, the way people go on these days you’d think it was a crime to fancy anybody. Maybe your friend ought not to hurl herself at him. But why shouldn’t a woman make the first move? Will her favoured doc respond to a bold and dramatic gesture and a certain air of command? Or will he run away? Maybe she should be more roundabout – get him on to a committee she’s on herself or into a voluntary group or involved in a charity effort.
In any case, you might be grateful she’s not running after a DJ or a motorcycle messenger. A doctor, a professional man with steady income and nice hands – perfect, surely?
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
Initially, the indefinite article was only deployed with coffee. With my clever friends we coined ‘a tea’ and even ‘a water’: ‘Would you like a water?’ we’d say at lunch, then shriek at the ludicrousness of it.
Somehow the wind has changed, because only yesterday I said to a friend, ‘Doesn’t everyone say “a tea”?’ and he said, ‘No, they don’t.’
If you’re looking for something farfetched to annoy you, make it ‘a coffee’. It’s not very classy, suggesting one is in a pub or cafeteria ordering measures of drink. To suggest ‘some coffee’ is more gracious and more liberal.
A friend of mine is proposing to ask her doctor out on a date. She’s managed to find out he’s single. Nothing will dissuade her but I think it’s crazy. Do you agree? Surely she’ll get into trouble for harassment.
Violet Langham, Chester
Dear Violet,
Ideally, she should become a nurse – but all that’s rather old-fashioned and just a tiny bit sexist for our age.
In which case, who are doctors dating nowadays? We should be told. Maybe they’re devastatingly lonely, like midwives, who, for obvious reasons, are least likely to find romance in the workplace. If things continue, the whole breed of doctors could die out.
Seriously, though, the General Medical Council does not allow doctors to make advances on their patients; indeed it might be a criminal offence. But ex-patients are semi-OK. So your friend will have to become an ex-patient and ideally should have been a woman of few appointments. Intimacy springing up over a prolonged disorder is frowned upon. But if he has merely offered a personal demonstration of a few neck exercises on occasion…
That male doctors are wildly attractive to women has always been known. Think of Brief Encounter – Celia Johnson in the refreshment room of the railway station: ‘I’ve got something in my eye, it’s rather painful,’ she says to the woman behind the counter. At once Trevor Howard materialises behind her: ‘I wonder if I can help. I should be able to, I’m a doctor’ – so the great romance begins.
Or Dirk Bogarde in Doctor In The House? For public appearances his trousers had to be sewn up to keep out enthusiastic lady fans – the actor that is, not the character.
Cole Porter’s song The Physician, gives a rather different slant. This doc isn’t delivering: ‘He simply loved my larynx/And went wild about my pharynx/But he never said he loved me.’
The trouble is, some go too far. Complaints by male doctors about unwanted advances from women, many delivered via Facebook and Twitter, have rocketed recently.
Even so, the way people go on these days you’d think it was a crime to fancy anybody. Maybe your friend ought not to hurl herself at him. But why shouldn’t a woman make the first move? Will her favoured doc respond to a bold and dramatic gesture and a certain air of command? Or will he run away? Maybe she should be more roundabout – get him on to a committee she’s on herself or into a voluntary group or involved in a charity effort.
In any case, you might be grateful she’s not running after a DJ or a motorcycle messenger. A doctor, a professional man with steady income and nice hands – perfect, surely?
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
WHAT TO DO ABOUT… HAVING ‘A COFFEE’
That is, as opposed to ‘a cup of coffee’ or ‘some coffee’. They started saying ‘Would you like “a coffee”?’ on The Archers in the 1970s and my grandmother couldn’t believe it. At about the same time, I was in the Kensington apartment of a schoolfriend, whose father happened to be Larry Lamb, then editor of The Sun. Their cleaner dropped in and was offered a drink. ‘I’ll have a double whisky,’ she said with a certain look on her face.Initially, the indefinite article was only deployed with coffee. With my clever friends we coined ‘a tea’ and even ‘a water’: ‘Would you like a water?’ we’d say at lunch, then shriek at the ludicrousness of it.
Somehow the wind has changed, because only yesterday I said to a friend, ‘Doesn’t everyone say “a tea”?’ and he said, ‘No, they don’t.’
If you’re looking for something farfetched to annoy you, make it ‘a coffee’. It’s not very classy, suggesting one is in a pub or cafeteria ordering measures of drink. To suggest ‘some coffee’ is more gracious and more liberal.