It’s great to know that you can still hold down a job when you’re grossly unsuitable for it.

I took a trip to the doctor’s surgery today – which wasn’t without its charms. It got me out of the house for about half an hour. My reason for visiting was the second chest infection in about a month, courtesy of the more feckless of my two housemates wandering around the house while simultaneously coughing on the washing up and leaving a trail of used tissues behind him. Regardless of the other, less feckless, of the two telling him this was a bad idea with an immunocompromised person in the house, he did it anyway. I’m going to start spitting in his tea.

I was a little early, but I knew that it didn’t matter what time I finally turned up – I still wouldn’t be apportioned to the now legendary Joan Clarke – legendary only insofar as no-one who is registered with her has actually been subject to her consultation. But nevertheless, I would have been happier not to get Dr. Ogunlesi. Dr. Ogunlesi is, in no uncertain terms, completely unsuited to his profession. Now, in Hull, we have recently had a spate of redundancies in many local sectors – the caravan industry for one – and many skilled and able tradesmen have lost their livelihood. Not Dr. Ogunlesi. He’s still employed and making a general nuisance of himself.

I mentioned that I was now suffering from the second chest infection in six weeks. He noted that I have HIV and so decided that it would be a good idea to get the stethoscope involved. Anyway, after the quickest and more futile once-over I have ever been given, he thought it a good idea to give me some more antibiotics, although his records showed I had only come off the last batch about two weeks ago. The records were wrong, of course, but he argued their merits. And then gave me a prescription anyway.

Of course, the course of antibiotics wasn’t going to be enough, oh no. I had to walk four miles to a different clinic where a chest X-ray would be carried it. But it could only be carried out between the hours of 11 and 2. It was already 12, and so I was told it might be a good idea if I get a move on. I then told him the original reason I had gone to the doctor’s that morning – my ankle is fucked. My ankle has now been fucked for the past two months, and some days, I can barely walk on it. I suggested that maybe my recurring ligament injury was playing up. He shrugged it off. Take two ibuprofen for the pain, he said. And off I went, into the great blue, looking for some radiologist or other.

The only upshot is that the 4-mile-distant radiology shack was staffed by a friend today. Who gave me cigarettes – the perfect complement to a chest X-ray. Cheers, Stuart.