“I FEEL really sorry for them because we’re always slagging them off and they are brilliant,” said our news editor over a cheeky vino the other night.

“I know,” I nodded. “But it’s not them we’re having a go at, it’s the underfunding.”

“I know — but it must be really demoralising for them,” she said.

No prizes for guessing that we were talking about the doctors, nurses, radiographers, phlebotomists and all the other good folk who do their best day in day out in an ever-struggling NHS.

As a paper, of course, we cover stories about waiting lists or patients being left on trolleys in corridors for hours.

But this is the fault of successive governments and years of under-funding, not the people you will meet if you head up to the GWH any time soon.

In fact, this was what had prompted our conversation — I’d spent the afternoon at the hospital having tests having found a lump.

Not a scary lump, it turns out, but all lumps, even if you’re 99.9 per cent certain they’re a cyst, get the full treatment by our NHS, or at least they certainly do here in Swindon.

One minute I’m at the GP’s surgery and within a couple of weeks I’m begowned and being whisked along corridors through a maze of consulting rooms and waiting rooms while the excellent staff make sure there’s nothing untoward going on.

As I say, all of us — by whom I mean my GP and I at least — were pretty sure there was nothing to worry about. But there is something that happens to me whenever I walk through those hospital doors and am hit by the smell of disinfectant. I end up thinking ‘but what if?’.

I’m fairly sure all the other ladies in their hospital gowns in the waiting room were feeling the same as we sat there, patiently watching daytime TV — a programme about a Shetland pony being castrated, would you believe? — and worrying as one by one we were herded between mammogram, waiting room, chat with consultant, scan, waiting room chat with consultant...

But I have to say, although it was busy (and I suspect it always is) every member of staff was warm, welcoming and calming in what for some people will undoubtedly turn into a dreaded scenario and for all of us was unsettling and unpleasant.

“You’ve got a very boring armpit,” said the doctor who performed my scan, cheerily. “We like boring armpits.”

The consultant, again, instantly put me at my ease, chatting away, asking me about my job (my brain had given up on me by this point so I struggled to explain what I do for a living) and I have to say, although I pray the day never comes, if anyone were ever going to have to tell me I had cancer, I’d want it to be him. He just made you feel everything was going to be all right, regardless of results.

So I won’t lie, ladies, those of you who haven’t been through the breast clinic at GWH — it’s not the most fun I’ve ever had.

But it was made bearable by the kindness, efficiency, warmth and humour of the excellent staff there. So if you do end up going along, be assured you’re in good hands.

It’s all over now, Mr Tusk

SO we’ve finally done it. Set ourselves upon the path of no return. A voyage to a smaller, darker kingdom
Yep, Donald Tusk has the Dear John from Theresa May in his hand and Article 50 is off the blocks.
I’m trying not to be gloomy — honest. Perhaps this will turn out to be the very thing that puts the Great back into Great Britain. Perhaps industry will prosper and farmers will flourish.
But it certainly seems to be that the Brexit vote has unleashed a whole lot of nastiness. All anyone ever seems to quote when asked why they voted to leave the EU is the notion that we will have better control of our borders. That means keeping out foreigners. That implies we don’t like foreigners. That makes us a bunch of nasty, bigoted xenophobes.
And that’s certainly not my idea of what makes Britain Great.
So let’s hope I am wrong and the negotiations lead us to a happy, healthy relationship with the rest of Europe and the rest of the world, regardless of race, creed and colour. 
After all, we’re all foreigners somewhere.

It’s just jaw-dropping

ON the subject of health, I’ve been doing my impression of a very grumpy hamster this week.
It has been my first ever experience of a tooth abscess and no amount of moaning, groaning, Ibuprofen, clove oil and whisky has put me out of my misery. The throbbing pain in my ever enlarging cheek would not be quelled.
To make matters worse, I’ve been a little bit, shall we say, slack in the matter of signing up to a dental practice, so when the abscess struck, I was left in a bit of a spot.
I found a surgery taking new NHS patients — but they couldn’t see me for another two weeks. However, they put me on to the Dental Access Centre, which was brilliant and I got seen to within a couple of hours of calling.
The words root canal (yikes!) were mentioned but for now I’m to make do with antibiotics. So the whole experience cost me just short of £30, what with the £19.70 consultation fee and the £8.40 prescription charge. It was cheaper than I was expecting but even so, it’s not to be sniffed at.
I wouldn’t mind so much if I hadn’t heard on the news earlier this week that the NHS is debating whether people with coeliac disease should still be allowed gluten-free foods on prescription.
You what? Gluten-free pizza bases and pasta on the NHS? You must be kidding. Surely there are better ways for our health service’s much-needed funds to be spent?