I am not in the habit of knocking the NHS. There are tremendous problems but I tend to think most of them are down to politicians, lawyers, accountants and incompetent middle managers. Bring back the Matron is what I say. Put a Hattie Jacques clone in every hospital. So this is a positive tale of the NHS. Well.. sort of.

A couple of weeks ago my wife, who has a worrying problem with one of her eyes, phoned the eye department at our local monolith of a hospital and was given an immediate, same-day appointment. A good start! Turned out she had nothing to worry about but the specialist who examined her did find some in-growing lashes, suggested they should be ‘lasered’ off and promised to get her an appointment for the task. The appointment came through within days and it was only about a 9 day wait. Pretty impressive. What’s more, the minor surgery was to take place at a smaller, more comfortable hospital in a neighbouring town. All sounds good so far.

So yesterday rolled around – the day of the treatment. And in the morning she gets a phone call from the hospital. They are sorry – but when the specialist over there got his appointment list for the day he said he couldn’t do the surgery because… they don’t actually have the needed equipment there and don’t perform this procedure and why was my wife given the appointment at all? Should have been made at our local hospital after all.

It’s not a big problem. She only has to wait a couple more days. It’s just that it was going so well up to that point. The speed and efficiency had us really impressed… until they cocked it up at the end! Hattie Jacques would never have let that happen. Oooooo Matron!