The doctor has paid the price though &ndash she is now banged up in a cubicle with a fever and

The doctor has paid the price, though – she is now banged up in a cubicle with a fever and an alcoholic with epilepsy.As medical dramas go, most doctors would agree that ER is top-notch for accuracy. I feel quite inadequate when watching it, because the casualty medics seem to be able to do all kinds of stuff that A&E doctors over here can’t – ultrasounds, for instance And of course they are way too beautiful. I have only ever seen them make one other factual error in all the years of the show, and I am an addict.Medical accuracy is not so hot for other dramas. My favourite TV doctor was the GP in Neighbours who used to perform brain surgery There was a doctor in Peak Practice who once treated a cow. I particularly loved the series about the histopathologist, starring the actor from Four Weddings and a Funeral, who used to personally chase villains down sewers. The writers had obviously never met a real histopathologist…A mate of mine once wrote to the producer of Kavanagh QC after one episode commenting that their medical advice was rubbish. They wrote back offering him the job; he now runs a successful company called Second Opinion which specialises in media medical advice.

Carter, give them a call.The author is a registrar in a London hospital. It was waiting for me at the ferry, a long, narrow, heavy box about the size of a coffin. My husband, unloading suitcases, sports bags, golf clubs and groceries from the car on to the jetty, regarded it suspiciously What is it, he said A piano, I said But you’ve already got a piano, he said. I do have a piano in our house on the island, a fine antique mahogany upright with inlaid panels, a pair of ornamental brass candlesticks that swivel in and out, and the name Thomas M Vincent, London, written in curly gold letters on the underside of the lid. It’s the sort of piano against which Edwardian lotharios with handlebar moustaches would loll indolently as they sang “Drink to me only with thine Eyes”, accompanied by straight-backed young women with disdainful expressions.It cost me £300 from a shop in Paisley 10 years ago, and almost as much to have it brought to the island, but it has served me well and I have no complaints. That is, I had no complaints until a couple of years ago when the loud pedal fell off and the E flat four along from middle C went into spasm, which wouldn’t matter particularly if at least three of the pieces I play were not romances in E flat minor.The nearest tuner, according to Yellow Pages, was 100 miles away in Glasgow, but local sources managed to come up with a man located somewhere south of Oban who is used to pianos on islands because he spends a week every year on Mull tuning that robust community’s 90 grand and not so grand instruments.On our way to Iona once we stayed in a small hotel on Mull that had five pianos, four uprights and a baby grand.

I was eagerly expecting a sing-song after dinner, but alas, no one volunteered Do not scoff. Like you, I once derided the notion of an old-fashioned sing-song round the piano, but ever since I accompanied my best friend to Lourdes the summer before she died, I’ve changed my tune.It was a package tour – St Peter’s Pilgrims I think we were called. We had flown from Luton to Pau and then travelled by coach to our hotel in Lourdes past hundreds of gift shops selling Blessed Virgin Mary holy water bottles and Blessed Virgin Mary tea cosies, and we were all feeling pretty jaded It was an Irish hotel. After supper the proprietor, a big jolly man by the name of Jim, sat down at the honky tonk and started to play “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”.What a turn-around. People who looked as if they wouldn’t survive the night jumped up, ran over, crowded round, asked for requests, joined in, bought drinks, fell over, picked themselves up and sang another chorus of “Galway Bay”. We clean forgot about midnight mass at the Blessed Grotto, and kept on singing till 2am.So anyway the piano tuner arrived and did what he could for Thomas M Vincent. It was an old piano, he said, and the damp didn’t help, so I was going to have to forget perfect pitch There’s the rub.

I play by ear, and if the E flat on the piano is three semitones lower than the E flat on my tape, then I’m lost.What you need, someone advised, is one of those digital keyboards that plug in and never goes out of tune. Voil?here it is courtesy of the same Japanese manufacturer that provided my son with his motorbike and my husband with his new rigid inflatable boat.It looks simple. A flat keyboard on a stand like an ironing board but it can do anything, including, if I’m feeling lazy, play one of 50 classic pieces all by itself perfectly. Why bother to learn when you can produce something like this, said my husband, and went into Midi mode (musical instrument digital interface), engaged the back-up split-key function sub mode to the user song recorder memory, tweaked and twiddled a bit and came up with something that sounded like Ashkenazy playing Rach 2 on an 1847 Bosendorfer with his left hand, Oscar Peterson belting out the A train with the right while Dame Kiri, Peggy Lee, and the Midland Radio Dance Orchestra strutted their stuff intermittently at the back.If I put it in the kitchen I dare say it would make me a cappuccino and feed the cat.