Today, like a part in a well-oiled machine, I attended hospital, was processed and am now home.

The taxi, ordered for 8.45, arrived early. The traffic, where I had anticipated queues, proved to be free-flowing and by 8.55 I was standing outside the main entrance wondering what to do with the time until 9.30.

In the end I sat and waited, talked with one of the wonderful volunteers who stand inside the doors to help people, wasted the time until 8.15 then allowed one of the volunteers to push me through the corridor until I reached Rheumatology. There I was weighed, measured and tested for blood pressure. I have weight, height and blood pressure so was allowed to sit and wait again.

At 8.30, or perhaps a minute after, a doctor called me through and discussed my arthritis, my history of arthritis and which joints hurt. She did this by pressing them all, which was not my favourite bit of the day. I’m pretty sure you could make a musical instrument by linking arthritic finger joints to form a keyboard as a variety of old people went “ooh!” and “aah!”.

Then I taken to the door and pointed to the back of the hospital. Here they X-rayed my hands. They did my hands so they can keep a record as they deteriorate. They did my feet, even though I don’t have arthritis in my feet, because they like to use them for reference too. This involved being told to turn my knees and similar things. I resisted the temptation to point out that if my knees were capable of doing some of the things they wanted I wouldn’t need the X-rays.

I asked the receptionist if she could ring for a volunteer to help me, and one duly arrived, pushed by a man older than me. He was very good at his job and avoided crippling anyone as he manoeuvred through the crowd of idlers and assorted pedestrians that was, by this time, filling the corridor.

I rang for a taxi, it arrived five minutes later and shortly after, I was home.

All in all a very positive experience with very little of the aimless and unexplained waiting that used to characterise a visit to hospital.

The only fault was that, with it being a Bank Holiday tomorrow, one of the battery of blood tests they require can’t be done, so I have to spend another £20 on taxi fares and waste a morning to have the blood tests done next week.

The farming industry works 365 days a year and doesn’t pause for artificially applied holidays because animals still need feeding and eggs still need collecting. But medical staff cannot, it appears, do the same.

Finally, I wrote about it and pressed some mystical combination of keys on my keyboard that wiped out all my words. It seems to happen quite a lot these days and it is very annoying. Fortunately I managed to get them back.

Photographs will probably be from April in a previous year. I like April. I wish it could be longer.