Late Friday afternoon: to the Whittington Hospital, Highgate Hill, to have my foot x-rayed.
Grumpy woman on main reception. She insists on finishing her magazine article before looking up and speaking to me. I would like to thank the makers of that magazine (the type which jeers at the looks of celebrities on one page and provides make-up tips for looking like celebrities on the other), for keeping their articles short and to the pointless.
Third floor reception. No one there for about a minute, but I’m not in a hurry so I don’t mind. Besides, this enormous new reception area has a ceiling so high it feels one’s outside, and glass walls commanding a spectacular view of the London skyline – as good as the one on Primrose Hill. It’s the way of many modern office blocks, but not enough hospitals. Who needs to sit around reading magazines when you can gaze out and dream at the capital’s skyline?
A handsome and friendly young man appears at the desk, apologising that he was busy eating his Toblerone. He offers me some. When I go through to the inner corridor of X-ray rooms, there’s another mini-reception where one must await further instructions. The man on this one is eating some of the same bar of Toblerone, handed around by his colleague.
He points me to my allocated door, and I go in. The man taking the X-Rays is short, short on English as a first language (Chinese, possibly), and short-tempered. He barks commands at me like an army officer: ‘Lie down there! No, move up! No! Keep still! That’s it, go now!’
He has no Toblerone to speak of.
