I woke at 6.30 and washed, sat on the bed to put my socks on and immediately felt hot again. This turned out to be due to hot air that had built up overnight, as it was, fortunately, cooler downstairs. Outside it was quite pleasant and the bees wee working happily on the teasel.

Reporting to the surgery for my blood test at 7.50, I asked what time the switchboard opened, because I wanted to book a telephone appointment with the doctor. They didn’t seem too keen, but I played my ace with a symptom I knew they couldn’t ignore. I won’t pass this information on as it would make you wince, but it meant that within 50 minutes I was face to face with a doctor.

I hadn’t anticipated this, and had actually planned on being in work to get the parcels off, as we are slightly behind due to the partial close-down for the heat. I was further delayed by going to the pharmacy to pick up anti-biotics, but still made it to work before 10.00. The anti-biotics are for the chest infection, not the other thing. These days I tend to save a few symptoms until I have enough to make it worthwhile navigating the appointments system.

In the afternoon I managed to salvage the rest of my day off, with lunch fro two at KFC. They were cleaning out the hot drink machine so I had to have  a fizzy drink. As an apology they gave us a very nice, though unhealthy, chocolate and fudge chip cookie. As I said to Julia as we shared it a the end of the meal, it was ironic that it really needed a nice cup of tea to wash it down properly.