I am so used to living under constant pressure that I get taken by surprise when I feel a bit tense.  I search around to see where it might have come from.  Almost invariably I find that it originates in self-pity over something (usually several things on the same day) that I feel I don’t deserve.  And that is what is so pathetic:  whoever said that I deserve a trouble-free existence?  It wouldn’t be much fun if it did occur.  No:  I’ll stick to what I’ve got and, if just occasionally I feel a bit tense, that’s okay.

I hope it works out.  I could pray to a supernatural being but I prefer to follow my own previous routine in doing the necessary preparation and footwork that makes success more likely. 

No, no, no (to quote Amy Winehouse).  Unlike her, it isn’t that I don’t want something.  I do.  I want it very much – but I daren’t hope for it too much.  I shall dance “The Rite of Spring” if Ken Livingstone falls to Boris Johnson next month.

His advice to me was simple and straightforward and so was my response.

Forty percent (FORTY percent!) of the doctors employed in the NHS were born abroad; most commonly in countries who could least afford to lose their medical manpower.  Our ethical socialist government says that the NHS does not recruit doctors and nurses from the developing world – but it does nothing to stop recruitment agencies from doing so.

She didn’t have it.  That meant she got mine.  It’s a tough world in the private sector.

I hope it works out.  I could pray to a supernatural being but I prefer to follow my own previous routine in doing the necessary preparation and footwork that makes success more likely. 

My friend Richard Packard took out my cataracts and inserted new lenses (adjusted to my visual prescription) into my eyes.  It was a strange process, more curious than painful.  I’m just grateful that Richard’s vision was better than mine while he was doing it. 

Keeping him in treatment would be worth a huge amount of money to me – but I can’t do that.  If he doesn’t want to follow the principles of our therapeutic programme, that’s up to him and he can follow his own – somewhere else.

Today I filled in a university research questionnaire on the treatment of depression.  It focussed almost exclusively on medicines that I might prescribe.  I don’t.  I myself felt depressed after filling in the questionnaire.  What terrible things we doctors do to patients in the guise of helping them – and we take it for granted that we know what we are doing.