I had a phone call just after nine this morning. It was Julia, using a borrowed phone. The good news is that she has been allowed to eat and it was a success. The bad news was that it was only porridge, which is not much of a test of swallowing ability. In my experience you put porridge in your mouth and gravity does the rest.

The even worse news is that she is not being allowed out. She escaped the camera up the nose exam but had a CT scan which revealed a small hole in her jugular vein. It hasn’t closed and is still seeping. They are monitoring progress but if it doesn’t close soon they may have to operate.

In the end, she slept part of the night in a chair in A&E before being found a bed at 5am. It is in a corner of a crowded ward which features a lot of deaf old people, all with TVs up at full blast. They also all seem to have telephones with annoying ringtones and have to shout their conversations down the phone as the TVs are so loud. I spent about seven hours there today and at times thought my head was going to burst.

At least she now has a phone, a change of clothes and a puzzle book – the necessities of modern hospital life.

The medical staff have all been lovely. Can you sense a “but” coming on? The systems are badly designed and  would benefit from somebody posing as a mystery patient and checking the experience from that point of view.

Today, for instance, I looked on the map at reception and tried to find Ward A15. There is no Ward A15, they stop at A10. The next ward is B11. The Bs end at B14. I don’t know how much they spent on those maps, but it seems not to have been spent wisely. There is, I was told on asking, a Ward A15. I was given directions to it and found it. This was fortunate, because at one point the A15 sign on the wall is covered by a discarded cage trolley. When I left, the sign was still covered, and the same abandoned trolley was still parked in front of it.

Then there is the matter of the visitor toilets . . .

I needed the toilet. I’m not allowed to use the one on the ward so I had to ask the way to the nearest toilets for the public. I had to ask twice because they were not well signed, and they were 150 paces away from the ward round several corners and through several sets of doors. That’s a long way for a man with two sticks and bad knees.

The good news is that although it isn’t perfect, we can still get good quality care without having to run up huge debts. If only it was quieter . . .