I had to go to see the doctor this morning.
This was a nuisance, because of meaning that I had to get up early, and as a sort of knock-on effect, had to finish work early last night.
I did not mind that because I had had enough anyway by then, it was too dark to read my book and my only other reading was the online taxi newspaper, which is gripping reading if you are interested in the VAT legislation for private hire companies, which actually I am, but it is still fairly soporific, and I was ready for bed.
We have a current online taxi plot to prove Uber’s illegality by booking them to come and get us and then providing the receipt proving that Uber, who are unlicensed here, are naughtily picking up in Windermere. We know they are doing this because we see them a hundred times a day, and sometimes they even have the nerve to do it from our taxi ranks, but we have got to be able to provide evidence. Hence, when I got home last night, I downloaded the little App thingy on to my telephone and this morning, after my walk, prepared to use it to get an Uber to take me to the doctor’s.
I have no idea why people think this is quick and easy.
They wanted to know all sorts of things about me, and wanted to send some Push Notifications to my telephone. I do not have the first idea what a Push Notification is, but it sounded as though it had the potential to be irritating, so I declined. Then they wanted my credit card details. I tried to give them Mark’s, because that is always less worrying, but it was having none of it and insisted on my own, which in the end it refused to accept.
Eventually I persuaded it to accept my debit card, but I was getting terribly late by then. It offered me a choice of six cars that it said were close to my house, so I chose one and inexplicably it told me to go and wait on the next street.
I rushed out of the front door and stood where I could see both streets just in case, and my telephone flashed an encouraging little light at me to say that a car was on its way and just to wait a minute.
Note they are cars and not taxis. Ubers are not taxis. Do not ever confuse the two. If you are interested to know why, you can sign up for our online taxi newspaper, it is full of riveting information like that.
I waited and waited, and just as I had decided that I was getting terribly late, and would have to give up when my phone flashed again.
We are not going to come and collect you after all, it said, and as an afterthought: Sorry.
I can’t say I blame them. I would not have bothered collecting somebody for £2.35 either, which was what it was promising to charge me.
After that it was a frantic rush. I arrived at the surgery with less than a minute to spare, and was ushered straight into the consulting room.
It was somebody called a Doctor’s Little Helper, or something, whose job it was to do a Health Check on the beginning-to-be-doddery over sixties.
I was being Health Checked.
There was nothing to worry about. The Doctor’s Little Helper told me so, and smiled, reassuringly, as I came in. She kept smiling and explained, with slightly exaggerated mouth movements, in case I was deaf, that it was all just routine, and I didn’t need to worry, not at all, which was just as well, since I wasn’t.
She measured me and discovered I was 5’2”, which is why I was never tall enough to join the police, who had a height requirement in my youth. Then she weighed me, and discovered I was nine and a half stones. Then she took a blood sample, which she promised faithfully would not bruise, but which has not only bruised but come up in a massive inflated lump, probably because the needle was made of nickel to which I am terribly allergic, so she told a complete fib.
She took my blood pressure and then wittered a lot.
After I few minutes I began to find the fixed reassuring smile terribly distracting. I kept staring at it, wondering if it was making her face hurt, and had to make myself concentrate hard on what she was saying, although frankly it was such rubbish that there wasn’t much point.
She told me I ought to drink two litres of water every day, and asked if I thought I was managing to stay suitably hydrated most of the time. I said obviously I was perfectly hydrated, since I wasn’t dead. Then I wondered aloud why we had a current fad for drinking more water than we needed when nobody would ever suggest that we ate more food than we needed.
She explained that we should drink water even when we were not thirsty because it was good for us.
I said that I thought our body’s own way of telling us that we needed water seemed to have enabled us to survive for thousands of years, and pointed out that no other animal drinks when it isn’t thirsty, and every other species seems to survive perfectly well. I added that it might not be good for us, to drink when we actually don’t want to, and wondered if she knew of any current research on the subject.
Her reassuring smile cracked a bit and failed to reach her eyes and she changed the subject.
We moved on to our lifestyle, starting with my diet, and I interrupted to explain robustly that I didn’t feel in need of dietary advice, which I didn’t, certainly not from somebody a good couple of stones fatter than me. Then I said, untruthfully, that I didn’t drink, since trying to explain my drinking pattern – nothing until Mark comes home and then regular gin and red wine until he buzzes off again – was just too complicated because of needing to calculate how many units I drink a night, on average, and my maths just wasn’t up to it.
I thought afterwards that it was all right to have told a complete fib, since she did that about the needle and the bruise, which is now like a golf ball, and itching like mad..
She beamed her reassuring smile and told me that I had nothing to worry about, and I had to stop myself asking her how she managed to keep it so impressively fixed to her face. Then she dropped it unexpectedly anyway, changed her tone to a softly interrogative one and asked if I wasn’t depressed or lonely, since my husband was away so much.
The urge to say: No, because the voices in my head keep me company, was so strong that I had to smother it back, and what came out was something between a giggle and a choking sound, which made her look at me oddly.
Sometimes I do wish it wasn’t taking me so long to grow up.
Her final query was a tactful wonder about why I didn’t have the NHS App on my phone. I did not bother explaining that it was in case the intrusive spying Government use it to track all my movements and read my secret personal data, and just copied her reassuring smile, which seemed to work less well when I did it, and said Because I Don’t Want It, Thanks.
In any case I thought I had had enough of apps for one day.
She smiled extra-broadly and reassuringly as I took my leave, assuring me that she was sure I had nothing to worry about.
I thought so as well.
I almost asked about the smile, because her face must have been aching, like the poor Queen on a foreign tour.
You will be pleased to hear that I didn’t.
