Herself had an appointment with Doc this week.

This was quite an event as she hasn’t been to the surgery in years, mainly because he is at the top of a steep flight of stairs. I think this is his method of weeding out the infirm that he couldn’t be bothered with. If you can make it up those stairs then your legs and heart are in reasonable condition.

I tried a bit of gentle persuasion [i.e. blackmail] and he had agreed to see her downstairs around the back of the surgery. There is a physiotherapy place there and he said he would borrow one of their rooms and see her there.

So we pootled down to the village and were given a cheery wave by a Garda who was officially supposed to stop us and query why we were daring to show our faces outdoors. I parked in the physiotherapist’s car park and helped Herself on to her wheelie-frame thing. All well and good so far. I went ahead to open the door and found it was locked. Bugger.

Someone had seen us though and next thing I heard a key in the lock. I opened the door and there was a woman cowering at the back of the corridor. She was wearing a mask and I then remembered we were supposed to be wearing our nappies but of course I hadn’t brought them. We entered anyway and the woman kept walking backwards as if we were highly radioactive and indicated where I was to dump Herself. Fine.

I nipped upstairs, banged on Doc’s door and told him we had arrived. I went back downstairs followed by Doc [no mask, I might add]. I decided to wait in the corridor so I sat down. The woman reappeared and glared at me in horror. “You can’t sit there!” she ghasped “People come through here. I’ll have to open another room for you to wait in.” I sighed. This Virus lark is very tedious.

So I was given a room to sit in. I had visions of teams in bio-hazard suits coming in to fumigate the place after I left.

There was another chap in the room with me. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a mask either, but that didn’t bother me. No one can accuse me of being neurotic. He didn’t say much. He just gave me a nod and went back to admiring himself in a mirror. I think he was there to get a hat-stand removed from his arse.

I got the impression he had been waiting a while.

Or else he was one of Doc’s failed experiments.