Lunch and wine-tasting at Boisdale

Cerberus, the dog of Hades, tried to prevent souls from leaving the establishment. The receptionists of the general practice in which I am registered try to prevent souls from entering theirs. Even Hercules could never overcome them; they would defeat him by pressing delete.

Getting to see a GP – I can’t say my GP, because there are 12 in the practice – is another labour of Hercules.

First, the receptionist demands to know what is wrong with me; why I want to see the doctor. Is that not between him and me? No; without telling the receptionist, no appointment can be made. And it is up to her whether or not she considers me worthy of the doctor’s attention. Compared with Ms Cerberus, the average doorman of a club of ill-repute is the embodiment of flexibility.

The fact that I am a doctor myself cuts no ice with her; rather the reverse. Evidently she considers the old tradition of professional courtesy to be obsolete; indeed a manifestation of social injustice in the form of privilege. My attempt to play the doctor card meets with her disapproval. I go to the back of the queue.

Neither does the fact that I attend the doctor only every other year mean anything to her. She is not there to ease my path to the doctor. She is there to prevent him as far as possible from seeing patients. That, at any rate, is the patient’s-eye view of the situation.

In these circumstances, the patient has to lie or exaggerate. He must become expert at doing so. Too gross an exaggeration of symptoms will lead the receptionist to recommend that the patient bypass the doctor altogether and call an ambulance. Too slight an exaggeration will lead to a recommendation that he take an aspirin or see the nurse. A patient has to be skilled these days to see a doctor.

An alternative to lying is to threaten to complain. Though this works in the short term, it is a weapon of declining power the more it is used. It also has the drawback that the complainant, or the person who threatens to complain, might be labelled a troublemaker or difficult patient.

When, finally, you get an appointment (for three weeks’ time), it is awarded as if it were a minor decoration – an OBE, say, awarded for exceptional persistence. You have joined the privileged few. You should be proud and grateful but, on the contrary, you are cross and resentful, if not outright angry. You begin to think, ‘I’ve paid my taxes…’ and then are ashamed of even thinking this cliché. It is all very humiliating – but at least it is equally humiliating for everyone else.

There is only one solution, of course, and that is to go private. In many places, that is not easy: for example, the nearest private GP to me is 25 miles away.

But, for a relatively small fee, patients in big cities can use services such as Doctap (there are others) to see a doctor the same day, without having to defeat Ms Cerberus.

Of course, such services are not for masochists, determined to get their ounce of flesh from the NHS.