I had thought that getting rid of hemorrhoids would be a matter of employing skilled consultants and anaesthetists in a well managed hospital. That can be achieved using our private services and I have enough money saved to pay the big costs of jumping the queue.

I did just that last two Mondays ago and the result was a brilliantly happy experience going to the loo. Unfortunately pleasing your backside doesn’t necessarily please your front side or your prostrate. They have been very cross not to have been on the conversation I had with my GP or my urologist and the net result that I couldn’t pee for a few days.

Eventually , after a five hour discussion with 111 on Sunday, I got round to University College London nearish where I live. Brilliant A&E, fabulous doctors and within an hour of arriving I had gone from “taking the piss” to having been returned to normality, albeit with a little help from ongoing technology.

I now have two weeks to live with tubes inside me and will by the end of this month have a front side as happy with life as the back side!

There is some sense in trying to jump the queue, especially if you have a job to do and don’t want it hindered by pain and blood loss. Losing blood leads to anaemia which I have had most of this year, it does not make for bright thinking!

But there is also sense in waiting your turn, maybe I could have done that in retrospect, though I suspect I would not have had such an expert job on my colon!

These are the odd things that you cannot plan ahead for. I guess it is why we have tax free cash from our pensions – the kind of emergency that it’s necessary to pay to get things done.

But what is more important is that we have hospitals like Kings in Nunhead and UCL at the bottom of Camden that make us still proud of our NHS.

When I left Kings I wrote them a thank you blog and I am still so proud they kept me going. Now I am doing the same for those who have looked after me in UCL. I was discharged on Tuesday and I lost no working days as I had my computer set up by the window that looked me out on the City.

Many thanks to the NHS and thanks to the consultant I had who helped me in the private world. We have no idea how good our NHS is, till we find the cost of going private and the deficiencies of a private service I bought that deals with your backside exclusively!