In previous reports of BGS events, I have followed the British way of commenting on the vagaries of public transport to and from the event (it’s either that, the weather or house prices!)

I have no intention of breaking with tradition when commenting on our Scientific Meeting in April,when the Society visited Derry/ Londonderry, where our colleagues of Northern Ireland hosted the 2004 Spring Meeting.

I had to leave the conference early on Saturday morning, missing the multi-disciplinary meeting. The “no frills” flight out of the city of Derry Airport at 8.50 a.m. was full to capacity, carrying as it did, passengers intended for the previous evening’s flight. I was told that these unfortunate souls had boarded their flight without mishap. Their plane had hurtled to the end of the runway on its take off run, only to come to a grinding halt with brake failure. They were herded off the aircraft, clutching their poster tubes and assorted baggage, for the long trudge back to the terminal from whence they had to find no frills accommodation for an extra night, close to the city of Derry. I would welcome suggestions for an appropriate (and suitably dignified) collective noun to describe a collection of geriatricians, baggage and posters in hand, walking down an empty runway in the darkness of the Irish night!

“The Scholars Life”

Sweet is the scholar’s life,
busy about his studies,
the sweetest lot in Ireland
as all of you know well.

No king or prince to rule him
nor lord however mighty,
no rent to the chapterhouse,
no drudging, no dawn-rising.

Dawn-rising or shepherding
never required of him,
no need to take his turn
as watchman in the night.

He spends a while at chess,
and a while with the pleasant harp
and a further while wooing
and winning lovely women.

His horse-team hale and hearty
at the first coming of spring;
the harrow for his team
is a fistful of pens.

Anonymous
Translated by Thomas Kinsella

Derry, as a venue echoes with history, cultural shades and conversation. It was a fitting venue for the presentation of a good deal of scholarly work, for the island of saints and scholars has always valued learning and I commend to you, “The Scholar’s Life”, translated by Thomas Kinsella. There is also a dramatist from that neck of the woods, Brian Friel, who in his work “Translations” has reminded us of the importance placed on language and words..

So, delegates came to “the North” in numbers from the “South”, travelled in from the “East”, and settled for four days in a walled city at the tip of the “Western” Emerald Isle. The meeting encompassed the best of geriatric science and practice in the British Isles, and the BGS President, Prof Bob Stout settles on some salient messages from the splendid conference in his column on page 6. The island of Ireland can be a peculiar place at times and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Tubes of pleasure and death
As I sat with some colleagues from the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday night, two were enjoying a puff or two on their white tubes of pleasure and death, cigarettes. One month before their country had introduced an all nation ban on smoking in public houses, restaurants etc., a first for a country world-wide. A professorial wag remarked that now that the ban was in place, folk have been made aware, for better or worse, of all the other smells that tobacco smoke has masked in public houses over the years.

However, as we listened to scientific work at the conference, some on the subject of airways disease, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, osteoporosis and malignancy, and the burden they put on the older aged citizen, one was moved to think that this prohibition may be one of the most profound changes in reducing accelerated degenerative disease incidence in the successive generations of older patients on part of the island.

Researchers, on your marks, get set...
This highlights again, how focused political will drives changes in health policy, and how public health measures hint at a bigger population health dividend than other individually tailored interventions. Hopefully scholars of (geriatric) medicine are ready to measure the impact of the prohibition over the next number of decades.

In the mean time, some delegates celebrated the fact that the C2H5 molecule has not yet been banned in Northern Irelands’ public houses which catalysed analysis and comment amongst members on the work that had been presented at their conference.

Journalists and gossips
In closing, I should mention that while scouting for my report on the Spring Meeting for this column, Prof Crome grumbled at me for neglecting to report on his section at the Autumn Meeting. I was accused of either playing truant or falling asleep. I use this column to convey fulsome apologies, Peter. I didn’t play truant, and I didn’t fall asleep. I simply had a senior moment during the writing, and forgot. And speaking of having my reporting maligned, I was delighted to be “accused” by delegates who shall go un-named, of being a (medical) journalist. On the “veracity index” (Mori Polls 2003), this puts me at 18% (doctors are 91%). I was also accused of being a gossip. How else might one trade for information and opinion amonst over 460 delgates. Sticks and stones.....!

I am sure we all left with wonderful memories of our visit to Derry. See you in the Autumn in Harrogate.

Kevin Kelleher