The village doctor

It took five attempts to reach our village doctor to make an appointment.

It's never easy to get through to Dr Alvarez on the phone as he doesn't have a receptionist.

In the waiting room, we sat reading our tattered magazines, beneath a poster that showed two matches propped up in bed. Apparently, one of them had flamed too soon. It was a euphemistic case of premature ignition. It advised the spent match to see his doctor.

On the other side of the room sat a well-dressed but withered old man, a red Ottoman fez on his head, sprouting a black tassle ... the fez, not his head.

He didn't have an appointment. Every time Dr Alvarez finished with a patient, the septogenarian Pasha shuffled hopefully to the doctor's door, only to return to his seat.

A thirty-something mother with a listless child on her lap didn't have an appointment either. I knew this because a bossy, middle-aged woman with a blue-blond bouffant, agitated by the long wait, boldly questioned all of us in the waiting room.

"Do you have an appointment?" she asked me.

"Yes, I do."

"For what time?"

"Ten-fifteen."

"Well, that's the same time I've got, 10.15!"

Just then a sallow-faced matron sitting opposite us exploded with a dry, wracking cough. Her eyes bulged and her hand hovered over her mouth.

She also had a 10.15 appointment.

The harried but unhurried Doctor Alvarez then emerged to tell us that the woman with the hacking cough was next, followed by Cliona and me.

As soon as he'd left the waiting room Madam Bouffant exclaimed, "And me?! He didn't even look my way."

She passed her hand across her eyes to suggest Dr. Alvarez had faulty vision.

"Am I not fat enough to be noticed?"

I was about to suggest to the young woman with the sickly child that she could go before us when she came up to me and asked if she could go before us.

I wanted to say, "I was just about to suggest that." But I forget the French and muttered something incomprehensible, which I fear made me look inept.

It was finally our turn, a good 60 minutes late. As we entered his office, the mobile phone next to his stethoscope was ringing. He let it ring. Dr Alvarez was a man under pressure but didn't show it. He seemed unflappable, as he sat smiling on the other side of his desk, with a waiting room full of impatient patients.

The phone rang again. This time he answered it and took a booking. He checked the spelling and wrote the person's name in his appointment's diary, a lined exercise book with 12 minute intervals in the margin. The problem was, each of his consultations took a lot longer than 12 minutes, especially as he spent so much time answering the phone.

I asked him,"Why don't you get a receptionist?"

"I've been trying," he said. "I'm waiting on a call back."

As we left, we could hear Madam Bouffant talking loudly on her mobile phone, as the stooped Turk made his way again towards the doctor's door.

Maybe this time.