Dark mutterings toward my doctor's surgery, which has apparently changed its appointment policy. You now can't pre-book an appointment by more than a day or two, and there are very few pre-bookable ones even then. You have to ring up on the day and get an appointment, which means you have pretty much no chance of getting one at a time of day that's convenient to you.

Previously you could pre-book by a week or so, which was great for non-urgent appointments because you could generally arrange a useful time of day, and there were also some emergency slots for booking on the same day if it was urgent. This seemed to work very well for me, although presumably it was somehow less good from the surgery's point of view or they wouldn't have changed it.

I rang up recently and said ‘Hello, I'd like to make an appointment to see a doctor’. My old GP had left Cambridge, so I had no particular preference out of the available doctors; it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to give the surgery the maximum possible latitude to set up whatever was convenient for them. So the above was all I said: I simply wanted to see a doctor. Whichever doctor was convenient, at whatever time was convenient. And at this simple request, the receptionist went all doubtful and said ‘Ooh, er, I'm not sure we can do that’.

I boggle. If you can't do that, why are you even answering the telephone at all?