Health scare 2

You remember I told you about my visit to the Medical Centre recently and my worryingly seamless integration into the New Forest Society Of Infirm, Tetchy and Wizened Old Buggers? In a smallish market town like Ringwood, Hants, lots of people know lots of other people and joining a gathering of local folk in a public place like a surgery will mean you are very likely to bump into someone with whom you are acquainted. Such was the case with me and a few others on that day.

I know it is only a platitude (like the French "Ça va?") but why, oh why, do people say "You all right, then?" when they meet you in a place which you would patently avoid unless you were not all right? "Yes, I am quite tickety-boo healthwise, thanks, but as I had a bit of time on my hands, I felt like popping in to pick up where I left off in the March 1999 issue of Mongolian Paperweights Monthly." I then make the fatal (not literally, of course, but at least I am in the right place) mistake of asking how they are and sit there for half an hour experiencing varying degrees of nausea as they regale you with a vivid description of the particularly repulsive medical condition from which they are suffering, sometimes even showing you the affected part of their anatomy. I am filled with an overwhelming sense of relief when I hear my name called and wonder if there is another way out of the building which avoids passing through the waiting room. I'm not bloody well going there again if I can help it; I'll have to e-mail Mongolian Paperweights Monthly and order a back issue.

Health scare

The other day, I went to our local medical centre for a retinal screening. As you will probably know, it's a common precaution to check for diabetic retinopathy and I have it done every year. The point of this account is not to mention the tiny white splurge near the centre of my left eye which the optometrist (I am making an assumption here – she might have been an ophthalmologist or just a retinal photographer) couldn't identify and said the image would be scrutinised and a report sent to me in due course (I wonder if I'll be able to read it). No, this is about something which began to worry me greatly as I sat musing amid the coughing, sniffing, wheezing, dozing, limping, overweight, twitching, wrinkled throng.

I fitted in.

(makes note to contact highway authority with a view to becoming a road hump)