"Our Best Year Yet!"

Owing to the sort of comedy injury that only comes to the terminally clumsy like me, I had the joys of visiting an Accident and Emergency unit today. And what an experience. It made me very happy that so much of my tax goes to the NHS.

I knew it was going to take a while - I mean, no one going to Casualty can honestly think that they are going to be seen within an hour unless their heart has stopped. And even then it is probably still touch and go (no pun intended) that you will be seen with any degree of urgency. So I stopped off on the way to the hospital and bought a book to help kill the waiting time.

On arrival (and having passed through the labryinth of concrete walkways that makes up the route to A&E and also saps the soul of anyone doing the walk) I had to sit on a red chair waiting for the triage nurse. There were five red chairs, which was a small problem as there were at least seven people waiting to see the nurse. Fortunately there was more than one nurse on duty in triage, so I quickly got to see the the nurse. Well, I say quickly, it was actually about twenty minutes to half an hour. Which sounds like a lot, but given the three and a half hours that made up my hospital visit it was next to no time.

The nurse's detailed examination - that consisted of barking questions at me about how ill I felt and how to spell my name - was certainly worth waiting for. I felt particularly special when the triage nurse took me out back, shined a torch in my eye, and then thrust a form at me and told me to go to reception to get it typed up. Yep, that's right - the nurse's examination happens before you go to reception. Maybe the reason why the triage nurse displayed all the interpersonal skills of Pol Pot with depression was because the hospital ranked meeting her as the warm up to meeting the receptionist.

And the receptionist was far more charming than the triage nurse. But considerably less capable. Which was no mean feat, given all she had to do was type up my details. She needed every word spelling. I was genuinely suprised that she didn't ask me to spell the numeral "3". But we managed to get all the details, through the sort of sterling team work that had made Britain great. And then she said to me that a doctor would see me "soon".

Never before had I realised what a relative term "soon " is. Because not only did I get a hell of a lot of reading done, but I also managed to have the arbitrary, random thoughts that only the deeply, deeply bored can have. I thought about how it was great to live in a country where you can walk into a hospital and receive deeply poor service for free, and also how great it is to live in a country where you have the political freedom to come out and belly ache about that poor service on your blog. I thought about how poor most of the footwear worn by the doctors and nurses was - with one nurse wearing a pair of black shoes so worn down that her big toe was sticking through. I wondered why every tramp in the known world has that pungent reek of urine (do they actually pee in their trousers?). And I wondered why, in spite of everything TV sitcoms and kids comics have taught me, there is never, ever a boy with a saucepan stuck on his head in Casualty.

Then the seemingly impossible happened, and I got to see a doctor. Well, I am assuming she was a doctor. She took me deeper into the hospital and asked me some medical sounding questions, but she was also wearing this terrible pseudo leopard print trouser suit and seemed to speak less English that the Spanish cleaner at work who refuses to learn our language. However, through a rigorous examination consisting of asking the same arsing questions I had already answered for both the triage nurse and the fucking receptionist and then shining another bastard pencil torch in my pissing eyes, she decided I was ok. But probably needed an X-ray to be on the safe side.

Of course, having an X-ray meant waiting once again for another doctor. And said doctor - who X-rayed my now irritable and aching head - was so quiet that I did ponder whether he was actually mute. Another wait, and then it was the turn of Doctor Leopard Print Suit to confirm that the X-ray proved I was "probably OK", but might have a headache for a while longer (presumably she meant because of the wound on the side of my head rather than the pissing stress). Then the doctor wondered off, leaving me with no real knowledge of how to get out of the hospital and into the polluted London air I was now so desperately craving. I had to find a nurse to point me in the direction of the main exit.

That said, I guess I must be fine since I must have met with the whole staff at St Thomas's and no-one seem that worried. And having read the first 150 pages whilst waiting for medical attention, I can say that The Last King of Scotland is a damn good book.