The Doctor Wears Three Faces

Book excerpt: As a family, the Bards were always special. In the really bad times of the Great American Depression of the late ‘twenties and early ‘thirties and in the not-quite-so-bad-times of the New Deal which followed, they hung together closely like a bunch of bananas: unfailingly bright, optimistic and funny, totally supportive of each other and endlessly hospitable to others of all ages, races and creeds less fortunate than themselves. The rock of the family was Sydney, the widowed mother. But undoubtedly the mover, the fixer and Unequalled Organiser-of-Others had to be Mary, the fizzing firecracker. And then she married a doctor. She became a Doctor’s Wife without catching one glimpse of the Job Description. Even if she had, she would have married Jim anyway. She had always welcomed a challenge. Which was just as well, for otherwise we would have been robbed of this very enjoyable book in which a ‘mover’ and a ‘do-er’ of a Doctor’s Wife gets to grips with possibly one of the most conservative professions on Earth. It could have been a recipe for disaster. Instead it produced this book—a sure-fire prescription for high entertainment.