Now is it just me, or are chemists getting increasingly nosey? It's ever since the government suggested that we consult chemists for minor ailments rather than troubling our doctors, who are all far too busy with their calculators managing their funds. But as a result, chemists have all become a bit big for their boots, if you'll forgive the pun. You go into your chemist's for a bottle of aspirin, and instead of just giving them to you, they now say, "Why? What's wrong?" They're desperate to get you into that little back room they have now, where they can take your blood pressure and poke around in your underwear. That chilling question when you ask for throat sweets, "Are these for you?" I always say, "No, they're for my mother." But what does the bloke who develops your holiday snaps know about gynecological matters? Mind you if he develops my holiday snaps, at least he'll know what he's looking for. You can't have a bloke stumbling out of a dark room dripping fixative fluids, and saying, "OK, Miss Brand, put your feet in the stirrups, and see what develops."
The other brand new medical breakthrough that I personally welcome, is the advent of the drop-in medical centres that you can now see in train stations. You don't have to make an appointment you just drop in and drop them. The appeal of it is that the person you see doesn't know who you are, so you are not likely to bump into him at the school fate, and watch him refuse your homemade upside down cake on the grounds of hygiene. The only problem with these drop-in centres at your local train station is that I am not absolutely convinced that the people you see are actually qualified doctors. The bloke I saw last time wore a blue cap, and tried to remove my verruca with a ticket punch. If you go in and say, "I am late." They automatically blame leaves on the line of Didcock Parkway. Would you go for family planning advice to a virgin train's medical centre? These drop-in centres have particularly shifty waiting rooms. All the blokes pretend to have a cough to deflect suspicion, that it might be something more sinister. Blokes are just no good at going to the doctor, are they? They don't see illness as a natural part of being alive, in the way that women do, that they see it as a form of weakness so they go in to see the doctor and say, "I've got this pain. Actually it's much better today. In fact, I think it's gone. Sorry to have troubled you, goodbye." But it's the doctor who has to say, "But you've got your leg in a carrier bag." Women make no bones about it -we give it to the doctor with both barrels. Women turn up with written accounts, dates, times, Polaroid photos. That's why homeopaths make such a good living -- it's somewhere that woman can go and talk about herself for half an hour, without being interrupted by another woman talking about herself.