He held out his hand for me to shake. My hand was already full of nuts that I had picked up from a bowl offered by a passing waiter. I opened my hand and revealed my cache. He took one. What a gentleman.

The only time my new “relationship manager” can fly down from head office in Scotland to meet me in London is next Thursday, bang in the middle of my holiday. That’s the way it has to be. When my bankers say “jump” I jump. Otherwise I don’t get the dosh. I know the rules.

At this time of year the spiders in the bath at the cottage are absolutely huge, a full two inches across. I catch them on the back scrubber and flick them off onto the floor and they scuttle away into the space between the floorboards and the skirting boards. Meg isn’t convinced that she is safe even then.

He wants treatment for his alcoholism at home, rather than in the Recovery Centre, because he doesn’t want anyone to know about it.

The child’s gums were so swollen that his teeth had all disappeared. Today, after three days of treatment (with Amoxicillin and Metronidazole), he was completely back to normal. Sometimes we forget the incredible benefits of simple medicines. I was lucky in prescribing the right treatments but the credit should primarily go to the pharmaceutical industry.

I suppose it’s all a matter of cash flow and economic utilisation of staff when builders start a new phase of a job before finishing the previous one. Correspondingly, I suppose that the architect has to delegate to draftsman to see the project through. Equally, when there is a design and supervision fault, I suppose that these things just happen sometimes. The one issue over which there is no supposition whatever is that even more time is lost before I can use the building – and that costs me a fortune.

There was no radiologist in the hospital and, in accordance with the regulations imposed by The Healthcare Commission, the technicians are not allowed to give their own preliminary opinion on whether or not the patient had an acute disc lesion in her lumbar spine. Consequently the surgeon (who was in another hospital at the time) couldn’t offer any treatment other than painkillers. The patient and her husband were furious – and blamed me.

She couldn’t breathe and she was frightened that her throat would close off. On examination I found nothing wrong with her throat or with her lungs.

He wanted to know precisely why his blood tests showed some slight “abnormalities” – results which were a bit outside the range of what the laboratory defines as normal. He wouldn’t take my reassurance that these so-called abnormalities are not of any clinical significance in his case.

She had heard of toxic shock syndrome and was sure she had it. She doesn’t.

Three anxious patients in one day. Is it just coincidence or are these troubled times? Doubtless I shall find out tomorrow and in the rest of the week.

I’m a doctor. He’s a cabinet maker. He comes to me for my help but that doesn’t make me better than him. I couldn’t do his job any more than he could do mine.

His mother gave him £70 (of his own saved money) to spend on taking his girlfriend out to supper. He lost it in the bookmakers at lunchtime. A friend from work gave him his credit card so that the girlfriend would not be disappointed. Certainly the bookmaker wasn’t disappointed – he got £1,700 that afternoon.