Spoz and friends. Tales of a London medical student 12+

📗 These delightful stories chart the stuttering and at times quite hapless progress of 'the Spoz', (so named by his brother 'the Woog') from Norwich schooldays through his time as a student at a prestigious London medical school in the 1970s. From his initial interview at St Thomas' Hospital - an institution he chose because he had never heard of it and on that rather dubious basis thought he was more likely to be accepted - to his final exams, the book documents the author's painful progress as an immature seventeen-year-old away from home for the first time. Sexually naïve, he devotes much of his time attempting to lose his virginity, while his excessive beer-drinking hampers his success and results in several awkward brushes with the London constabulary. Chronically impecunious and homeless for several months, Spoz devises various hair-brained money-making schemes and ultimately has to take extensive time out of his studies to work on a nearby building site. From there he witnesses the bombing of Westminster Palace by the IRA, while his absenteeism from classes almost results in a premature end to his already unpromising career. While always infused with the author's characteristic humour, the Tales of Spoz offer the reader a more serious yet unobtrusive social commentary on the problems of being a student in that era, charting the often tortuous transition of a group of young men from immature schoolboys to responsible young doctors.