I've just been processed

If you're not feeling well before you go to our 'Health Centre' you'll be feeling ten times worse, mentally, once you've visited it. I believe that last time I went to the Ulverston Health Centre I felt I'd been processed and came back to relieve myself on my blog.

Today is no different. We need to hit out at 'the system' and we can- take something to read.

'The system' is their inhuman method of checking us in - date of birth   followed by "Are you Josephine Bloggs" in front of everyone.

Do we want everyone to know our birthday and our name and even our sex ?

Then continuous rubbish scurries across the screen "This is Dr Rhubarb's practice and your very welcome", "Please put your mobile phones off"  repeatedly that we're forced to watch endlessly for anything up to 45mins as we wait to see our name come up on the screen.  That vital message: "Josephine Bloggs, Dr Frankinstein  Room 7"

Knock knock - "Come in Darling" is the terrifying response. "It's alright Doctor, I'm feeling better now" and there's the scamper of tiny feet down the corridor.

So do you 'have to' watch that bloody screen for 30 minutes if your appointment is late. All the chairs face it, no one chats. Result:  you've been brain washed into a zombie.

I was pleased to discover a solution: I went up to the reception - behind close glass window - and said very politely with a smile " I may miss my appointment as I'm going to read my paper". Followed by "I won't do this deliberately but I can't cope with your infuriating screen".

It worked - I had 30 minutes of lovely juicy reading of blood and gore in Egypt - just what I needed to cheer me up.

And my 'new doctor' turned out to be good which is always a relief - Doctor Johannes Rath - First impressions were very good. He's calm, knowledgeable, curious, with a sense of (my) humour.

I now look forward to my next visit in I hope five years time!

For reflection, though little use at all:

Because I am 78 and was quite ill as a child up to the age of 7: I can still remember the lovely feeling of lying in my own bed with a temperature and having a very fatherly and  friendly doctor visit me several days apart to diagnose, prescribe medicines and check how I was. And this was in the middle of the last world war. Doesn't that sound like heaven?

Now our 'standard of living' has 'gone up' since 1942 when the above happened. Or has it. I'll settle for the freezing cold rooms, the black out, the sirens and bombing rather than the world I live in now where talking to a real human being offering a service is near impossible.

I say this in the context of trying to reinvest a small amount of money and having been passed round and round in the same circles four times in a vicious loop which I escaped from with great difficulty with my job still unfinished. A complete and frightening nightmare for an old person that is becoming less than clear thinking.

At least I can burble on and on to myself on this blog and have the illusion of remaining sane.