Blimey, it has taken me 24 hours to calm down after my experience yesterday. Barbara had an appointment at the breast screening clinic. We set off armed with our letter, only to find on our arrival at Nobles we were at the wrong hospital. The breast screening clinic is at the old Nobles hospital. Well sure enough it does give the address on the letter, but frankly when you see Nobles at the top of the letter, you assume it means the new hospital. What is the point in spending millions on a new hospital, then continuing some of the services in the old one, and calling both facilities by the same name? Only our dozy Government could pull a daft stunt like that. Well it gets worse. We then had to drive back to the old hospital with her appointment time past, so I rang the telephone number on the letter which has a Government prefix 685. The girl who took my call did not appear to understand what I was on about. I explained to her what has happened and that we are now going to be 15 minutes late for the appointment. For some weird reason she asks me am I in Coventry. I say, why the hell I would be ringing you from Coventry regarding an appointment ten minutes ago at Nobles. I explained that we were at the Quarterbridge. She asked where the Quarterbridge was. I gasp with frustration. "You don't know where the Quarterbridge is!" She explained that she was in Northhampton in a call centre. Yes the bunch of lunatics running our health service has farmed out our telephone appointments to a call centre based in Northhampton. When we finally arrived at the old hospital, the lady on reception informed us that loads of folk are going to the wrong hospital, yet our health service still are not getting the message.

Well keeping on the health topic I want to conclude today with a little story about donors. Donor cards are back in the news again and whether we should carry them or not. I once spoke to an old lady on this subject, and this was her response. "When I die, they can have every part of my body that will be of any use to them. However, they can't have my heart, for I gave that to my husband over 40 years ago, and no one else can have it."

Until tomorrow then folks Tom Glassey on the banks of the Silverburn River.