Doctor Theatre

There's a phrase amongst actors: Doctor Theatre.

What it means is that if you're feeling really ill, and you have to be on stage that night, you will make a miraculous recovery just in time for the play, will play the role fine - - and then feel really ill again afterwards.

I have this with teaching. It's a strange phenomenon.

At the moment I have a cold. Hardly surprising as I have been associating with lots and lots of student doctors and colds whizz round student communities like a National Germ-Sharing Scheme.

I tend to get colds in two types: the Feeling-Ill type and the Sneezing-and-Runny-Nose type.

This is the Feeling-Ill type and I'm really not enjoying it. But I can override it where necessary. I just carried on working in our office this morning - - but was still aware of the cold, and generally sniffed pathetically from time to time and felt sorry for myself.

This afternoon, as I approached my group of student doctors, I felt terrible. Oh, woe is me, I thought, I am ILL in BLOCK CAPITALS.

Then the session started and every single symptom disappeared for the whole afternoon. The session went well, the students were great, I loved it all.

At the end all the students left the room and suddenly - - - the block capitals were back! OH I FEEL ILL! How can I drag myself back to the dreary multi-storey car park, in the dark and the cold, to my car? Sighhhhhh. O Cruel World (etc).

I'm feeling pretty ill this evening too. I'll work in our office again tomorrow morning, and I bet I'll feel ill during it - but I bet I'll be fine for my teaching group tomorrow afternoon.

It's a weird thing. It's something to do with "performance" in front of other people, I think, that concentrates the mind wonderfully and causes it to ignore the body's grumbles. Doctor Theatre and Doctor Teaching are forces to be reckoned with.