It begins in the waiting room.
you arrive promptly for your appointment at the Doctors surgery and are kept waiting in an inhospitable room full of out of date magazines on a table.
You are then summoned, a half an hour after your appointment time, by a flashing screen mounted on the wall with your name and your GP's name for all to see and a disembodied voice through an intercom saying something like "Second room on the right".
we follow the directions along a corridor to the second door on the right, we arrive at a closed door.
we knock timidly and recieve no reply.
we knock again and an irritable voice bids us enter.
we go in only to be confronted by a figure sitting at a desk writing on a note pad.
we are ignored for a further minute and then a face looks up and an arm waves us towards an uncomfortable chair in front of the desk.
by now we are so seriously intimidated that we can scarcely remember why we have come.