It was the morning after my six-hour "emergency" hospital visit and I was returning there again in the same large mini-cab, behind the same driver, as the previous day. After a scan of my flabby torso, a diversion to find new hearing-aid batteries and being told I must wait an hour for a blood test, I was getting quite tetchy.
Luckily, outside the Queen Mum's building are a number of donated benches where you can smoke, and I joined the leper colony. A mistake: I believe our prime minister leads a coven of witches and if you smoke in the open air they raise heavy rain and a freezing wind, guaranteed to blow out any flame. Eventually, in despair at the weather, I stepped just inside the lobby. Though it should have been perfectly obviously why, two elderly ratbags, one after the other, yelled, "No smoking 'ere". Had I been in my grumbling old man mode, I'd have yelled back, "Piss off, you silly old cows!" but I was too wet and miserable and let them get away with their burst of officious adrenalin.
While I was puffing away but freezing cold on one of the benches, a kindly, middle-aged woman, a fan from the far past, sat by me. She didn't smoke herself, but asked if I was all right. I moaned about my exhausting frustration and she told me that she too was booked by the same departments and was a witness to the long delays. She was shocked that, having obviously entered the portals of old age, I should be left, unsupervised, to travel alone through a long day and miles of corridors and pouring rain.
She pointed out, however, that it was possible to travel from Queen Mum to the blood clinic under cover. If I went into the building opposite, I could travel without stairs, on sloped ramps and helped by handrails, passing the audiology department, to emerge directly opposite the outpatient automatic doors. I was incredibly grateful, and when I entered the vampire's ante-room there were fewer than 20 patients to go. After the test, which took all of five minutes, I was free, and dived into Fountains Abbey for a large dark rum and iced coke. The ordeal was over - for that day, at least.
