Today I had to go for a chest X-ray. I had to go to a clinic I’ve never been to before. First surprise of the day – there are still new clinics to be discovered, even after a year of clinic trawling. This was quite a good start. I like a new discovery. But it got better. Essentially, I turned up, checked in, and was told there was a wait of at least an hour, maybe two, but no guarantees. I sat down as far away as possible from the multitude of scarily frail looking patients with various broken bits and pieces, in case my wheezy chest germs proved the last straw for their camels. Whereupon, the entertainment started up.

We begin with Act I, during which an elderly gentleman with a crutch that he brandishes in the general direction of the receptionist, hopping about on the slightly less gammy of his two gammy legs, has identified that both the water cooler and coffee machine are out of order. There is a lengthy, at points heated exchange. It concludes with somewhat of an anticlimax, however, when the gentleman admits that he wouldn’t have paid for coffee anyway, and he didn’t fancy water, even if it would have been free.

In Act II, at least four people turn up for physiotherapy appointments in the department next to X-ray. There is a sign on the door: ‘We’re shut for lunch, and will reopen at 1.45’. It is about 1.40. All four people look at the sign, look at their watches, make various sounds of a bemused and indignant nature, and leave. They do not return. Five minutes later, the door opens. For the next 40 minutes, a physiotherapist makes repeated forays into the reception area, calling out various names into the abyss. Finally, she gives up. 

Act III involves my phone ringing. I use the term lightly, it vibrates gently, in silent mode, and I answer it with a quiet ‘hold on a sec’, before leaving the waiting room quickly in case I disturb any of the other patients. Except I evidently have disturbed them, because on my four-stride journey from chair to door, I am informed that there’s a No Mobile Phone rule in the waiting room (I’m directed to a poster to illustrate the point, although the effect is spoilt slightly by the fact that the poster is actually advertising an app that can help manage your diabetes). I’m also warned by a woman in many more than 50 shades of purple, that my phone might ‘mess with the equipment’. At which point I scrutinise her closely, in case she’s the same woman I encountered waiting for an MRI scan last year, who was worried that the scanner was possessed, and would suck out her soul. I don’t think it was her, but if it was, she seems to have emerged, soul intact, from the MRI scanner at least.

Act IV is the finalé. I’m called from the wings to my dressing room, and spend a good amount of time putting on my kimono. Eventually establishing, as is always the case, that instructions telling you to tie the ‘two thin blue ties on the left at the neck’ and the ‘two wide blue ties at the waist’ are pretty much redundant when all the ties are white and half of them have been pulled off anyway, I emerge semi-naked for a quick press against a machine or two, and am treated to a flattering wolf whistle from a charming older gentleman, who very nearly loses his teeth in the process, before the curtain falls.

I don’t think on reflection that there was anything much wrong with my chest. But you can’t say that wasn’t an afternoon well spent.