Last Friday I had an oblique brush with the National Health Service when Registered Charity 1058944 descended upon my Local Doctor’s Practice on Ferry Road for the afternoon.

Not one to pass up something free at the point of delivery the moment the news arrived in the post I programmed my digital organiser to beep at me a day beforehand so I could schedule myself to be at PCHut…just two minutes walk away from the Surgery…at the appointed hour.

The day before, I reset the alarm for half-an-hour before the event. Then off I went to have my upper arm squeezed. Twenty minutes later I returned to work the proud owner of a little card telling me that on 15/9-2006 my blood pressure was satisfactory at 138/80. The card from the Blood Pressure Association tells me high blood pressure causes stroke and heart disease…the major causes of early death and disability. Pity there was no tea and biscuits.

Five years ago on 1st December 2001...a year before Connie died…I bought a gadget to measure blood pressure…the Mark of Fitness MF-74 Wrist-Type Digital Blood Pressure Monitor to give it its full title. I took readings on Connie and myself and noted them in my journal. I was fine at 139/78…with a pulse of 66.

A week later on 6/12-2001 I was 134/92 at 61 and 138/94 at 63 which was beginning to get a little border line. A week later on 8/1-2002 I was up at 140/88 at 61…on the border between High Normal and Mild Hypertension. So I signed up at Hilden Gym.

Two and a half years later on 19th August 2004…and a couple of stones lighter…I dug out my MF-74, treated it to some new batteries and tested myself again. Yo! 118/67…58 pulse. Not just Normal but Optimal.

Two months later on 19/10-2004 I recorded 132/82…repeating at 143/85…but with ‘6 pm + coffees’ in the margin. A year ago on 27/8-2005 my MF-74 recorded 125/66 at 3 pm and 125/67 at 8pm while at 8am on 15/9-2005 I was 142/85…pulse 65.

However in all this time I never took a proper look at the reading I had taken from Connie a year before she died. My heart skipped a beat when I found the numbers at the back of an old journal. On 1st December 2001 Connie’s blood pressure was 157/105 and her pulse 78. Much too high…in the Moderate Hypertension range. Connie died of an aneurysm at the age of 52 eleven months later. One more ‘if only…’ to feel guilty about.

A National Health Service free at the point of use is back in vogue. Apparently it is what the great british public wants and hence what every politician intends to give them…although they differ on the small print and the weasel words like complementary, supplementary and anything else…and insist that they are not saying ‘privatisation’.

Real discussion of Sane Medical Provision awaits new linguistic terminology like ‘Personal Care’…as opposed to contradictions in terms like ‘impersonal care’; ‘Local Provision’…complete with such criteria as ‘delivery within half and hour’s walk for easy access by visiting relatives and friends’; and ‘Health Products & Services Providers’…what difference does the legal structure of the deliverer make to the patient at the point of delivery…Tender Loving Care Ratios; Medical Delivery Miles; and 'Cosmetic, Nice-to-have or Vital’ being more pertinent criteria for the patient.

As the Health Care Sector becomes ever more insurance-driven…via the BUPAs and SAGAs…Medical Provision will shift from product-led to market-led…not by the idiocy of a VAT Approach where everybody sells the unsellable to everybody else…a recipe for a Hustlers Paradise…but by discriminating between End-User Markets…Old People Care and Road Accidents being two prime candidates for Independent Business status…with their own P&Ls and Balance Sheets. A good way for Cameron & Co to begin might be by reading Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis.

But I have no complaints about my NHS Dental Treatment. I was suffering for a couple of days after Tuesday’s session with its gum-slicing to get at the second root canal. But I am now in the final straight of my Once Every 30-Years Routine Maintenance with just two sessions to go. And I will make it to the chequered flag with nothing to pay unless vanity demands a tooth-coloured crown instead of the silver or gold option on offer to NHS Patients.

One rather quaint little quirk of my treatment is that it is affected by Ramadan. My dentist finds it difficult to do her job during Ramadan so this is the time of year when she takes her year’s vacation. No free time-spots before Ramadan in 2-weeks time so I must wait until the end of Ramadan in early November for my final two sessions. In 2036 I will start treatment earlier in the year so I am all done and dusted before fasting begins in the Moslem World.