This morning I had to go without breakfast as I was having a blood test as part of the usual Doctors’ registration medical process. It’s a half hour walk there, but since the previous nurse told me to get more exercise I didn’t take the bus. The test was delayed by the losing and finding again of the paperwork they hadn’t actually told me to bring back. I’m not bothered about needles so long as I don’t have to see them puncturing my skin, so the three separate blood samples were taken without any problems as I looked the other way, then was told off for not pressing hard enough on the cotton wool. That done, I waited for half an our and then saw another nurse about immunisations for China. She was very friendly and turned out to have a son working over there too, so we chatted about life in the far east as she stuck yet more needles into my arms.
I walked back home for some serious lunch and was just sitting down to eat it when I was interrupted by a phonecall from the surgery. Apparently the nurse had informed the receptionist of how long I’d been out of the country and the fact that I was leaving again in a few months and the receptionist, in some remarkable fit of charity, had informed the “NHS Fraud Department” that I was a non-resident and not entitled to NHS care, and had de-registered me from the surgery with a recommendation that I be required to show evidence of having been living in the UK for six months before I can register again at any surgery in the UK. She had evidently taken great satisfaction in doing all this, and was keen to convey this information to me.
Apparently the fact that I am living here and working here counts for nothing, and neither do my years of brain-sapping work in the banking industry, in which I paid a great deal of taxes and went to the doctor about three times in total.
I’m pretty fucking pissed off. Pretty fucking pissed off. Fuck that receptionist, fuck the NHS and fuck the UK.