Unnerved

I have to admit, I find doctor's waiting rooms slightly unnerving.

My local GP surgery has two – an upstairs one with big, slanted, windows letting in lots of light, and the one downstairs, which is really more of a corridor with half a dozen uncomfortable chairs lining one wall. As a child I always preferred the upstairs one – the chairs, décor and dozens of posters warning against various (unlikely) medical conditions hadn't changed much since the late eighties, apparently, and the worn Formica counter behind which benevolent secretaries sat at ageing computer terminals was, if not pleasant, then at least vaguely reassuring in a room filled with old people and germs. Recent building work, however, has seen the familiar notice boards disappear – gone too are the old counter (replaced with ugly white melamine) and most of the chairs (the elderly are still there – I remain convinced that they haven't shifted since 1996 at the very least). Now I'm the last one to reminisce about what was (lets be honest) a slightly odd mix of NHS publications and brown, beige and grey eighties interior design, but the same period of work has changed the downstairs slightly too.

As I descended the spartan white breeze block stairs, I noticed that a laminated paper sign had been replaced with a smart new plastic one – it read “Downstairs: Nurse, Doctor's Offices, Toilet, Seminar Room, Garage”.

The garage I found, with a similarly smart notice stating that yes, this was the door to the garage. It also stated “No Entry” in what I considered to be a rather impolite font. Excuse me, I thought. I am the taxpayer. I funded this entire place through my NHS contributions. Who are you to tell me where I may and may not enter? It was at this stage I realised that, never having been gainfully employed, I have never paid taxes, and subsequently the sign owes me no respect whatsoever. I avoided its smug gaze and inspected the corridor.

Noone could have said, a few years ago, that the corridor was guilty of anything but being a slightly bland, nhs standard corridor. However, in its current state it may well be considered by The Hague to be a crime against architecture.

Someone had painted it canary yellow. Now I have nothing against canary yellow – it's a bright, cheerful colour, and I would be perfectly happy with a kitchen, small bathroom or even a sunny conservatory decked out in its friendly hue. The thing is though, people in general (and the English in particular) don't go to the doctors for cheerful and bright. They go to sit quietly in a corner for a moment, reassured by the clean white/reassuring blue walls before being diagnosed with the common cold rather than marsh ague/denge-denge fever/anterior spleen syndrome they suspected from their searches on the internet/reading the Daily Mail and shuffle off to the chemists for some prescription drugs, then home for a cup of tea.

Then there was the wall itself.

In the finest traditions of the NHS, it was adorned with a mixture of leaflets on sexual health and alcoholism. Looking at them, I can only suppose that these were aimed not at myself but the syphilitic alcoholic brickie who laid the wall in a fug of mercury and whiskey, should he return to the scene of the crime. The damn thing pretty much meandered the length of the corridor, with an amplitude of several feet. Matters were not helped by the change from brick and plaster to those misted glass bricks about halfway down. Taken in with the canary paint job, it rather made me feel nauseous.

The sign continued to forbid me access to the garage, in a snide manner.

In desperation I looked to the heavens, trying to ignore the distressing brickwork. I discovered to my astonishment that, despite the corridor being dim enough to raise a decent crop of mushrooms by, the ceiling was littered with light fittings of blue glass, clashing horribly with the wall.

I was even more perturbed to notice that, for no readily apparent reason, someone had jammed a large paper clip between the bulb and the fitting, immediately above the fire extinguisher worryingly marked DO NOT USE ON ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT.

So, to summarise – syphilitic alcoholic brick layer, an interior designer who appears to have been on acid when perusing the colour charts, and a worryingly cavalier attitude to electrical safety (and that coming from a mechanical engineer – our basic attitude to the stuff is 'lick a finger and test the contact').

Unnerved was putting it mildly.