Valentine, not just the patron saint of romance, but also of epilepsy

Although the epileptic may get warnings of an oncoming electrical brainstorm, others don’t get such advance notice, and so, as far as the bystander is concerned, the seizure comes out of nowhere, transforming the person they know into someone they very definitely don’t know.

The recruitment form asked a blunt question: “Do any of the following illnesses run in your family?” Then came a list of possibilities beside boxes in which you could write Yes or No. Diabetes? Yes, I wrote. My grandmother had a drawer full of tiny bottles of insulin to be injected morning and night, plus a tiny weighing scales to measure everything she ate. Asthma? Yes, I wrote. Me and my sister could out-wheeze the average hoover. Psoriasis? Yes. Epilepsy? Yes. When my mother read the filled-out form, you’d think I’d characterised our entire family as a cluster of bunny-boiling Ebola carriers.

Incandescent is an understatement. I was to get a new form immediately and write No in response to every one of those questions. Was that clear? She hoped so. None of their business. The idea. The very idea. For a summer job, they wanted an entire familial health check? The impertinence. They had no right and there was no law and to hell with them.