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.