It was Sunday and we were just about to go home after a long afternoon spent taking the mothers to lunch and then for a trip out in the countryside. Having dropped the mothers off at about 6pm, we called at some student houses in the centre of Birmingham. Heather was taking a bag of rubbish out of one of them to put on the pavement, ready for collection the following morning, when she stepped down awkwardly onto the pavement and twisted her ankle badly. She was in a lot of pain and so I loaded her into the car and started driving home.

The pain increased and so we decided to call in at the A & E department of our local hospital, ‘Heartlands'. I had been there before, but only from Coleshill. I knew the route but, I soon realised, only the route from Coleshill. For some reason I had never noticed which area of Birmingham the hospital was in. And so I hadn't a clue how to get to it from where we were in Birmingham. It was like one of those bad dreams where you know that you have to get somewhere, but have no idea which way to turn. My sat-nav was on the blink and so after we had got ourselves hopelessly lost, I had to stop the car so that Heather could look at the map and guide me to the hospital. It turned out to be in Bordesley Green, a not very salubrious area of Birmingham.

Heather hopped into reception and, having gone through registration, was provided with a wheelchair. We were asked to go through to where treatment was carried out, so that Heather could be given some Paracetamol. As we arrived, one of the nurses was saying that she had already been on duty for 10 hours without a break. An administrator replied that she had worked 12 hours the previous day. I asked if that was normal and was told that it was - it was caused by ‘government cut-backs'. When I said that the government was telling us the opposite, they just looked at me. The nurse said that it was all give on their part and it had to stop.

When we arrived, a group of about six East Africans speaking a combination of French and, I guess, Swahili were wandering around the corridor waiting for their relative to be dealt with and all talking on their mobile phones. Then there were a couple of young Asian chaps, one of whom was in a wheelchair because he had broken his leg playing football. They were the type who wanted to be noticed and so somehow managed to take up a lot of space. They either talked and argued loudly with each other or talked on their mobile phones. The injured one had two mobile phones and was alternating between them, talking to his girlfriend, to his friends and to the chap who had kicked him after he had fallen over. Then he ordered curry and chips to be brought in to the hospital for himself, whilst all the time moving his wheelchair around the waiting room, using his one good leg to propel himself.

A big chap sitting next to me told me that he had managed to cut off the end of his finger. As he said, "at least it's one less nail to cut". A lady and her husband arrived shortly after us. She had reached out to catch a ball, only half succeeded, and now had an out of joint thumb which was at right angles to its normal position. It looked really weird. She was followed by a man wearing wellington boots and shorts with his arm in a sling and accompanied by his 12 year old son. It turned out that he was a single parent and was complaining about the wait - he had to get his son to bed and up for school the following morning, although it seemed that he had injured himself the previous evening.

The next to arrive was a young Asian man who was well-dressed, but in handcuffs and accompanied by a large policeman. He had been in a fight. They sat out of sight, around the corner from us - the naughty corner, I suppose. He was followed by a very happy elderly man on a trolley with blood all over his face, but who was feeling no pain. In a rather slurred voice he was thanking the ambulance staff for looking after him and insisting on shaking their hands. As one of them said to us later: "that's why we wear gloves". Two young police-women turned up next with their 15 year old Asian captive, also in handcuffs. He had been trying to escape through a hedge, but a police dog had stopped him in his tracks by biting him on the arm. They had removed the dog and then had to remove the bits of hedge from his clothes and hair.

Patients kept arriving in the main reception area and an hour after we got there it was full, with queues going out of the door, as there were not enough reception staff. A little later, we were told with great apologies that there had been no doctors there so far that evening, but that they had now finally arrived. And so people started being seen, although I saw no consultant there to supervise the junior doctors.

At this point, the man in the wellington boots started talking to the Asian lads who took up too much space. They started complaining that when they had been arrested a while back, the police had called them ‘Pakis'. The man in the Wellingtons said that the English police were rubbish. When some of his mates had been involved in a fight on holiday in Spain, the Spanish police had broken it up and had beaten up everyone who was in the area, him included, even though he hadn't been involved in the original fight. He said the Spanish police were the best in the world. None of us quite saw the logic of this. Then the large policeman emerged from the naughty corner and asked Wellington man which country had the lowest crime rate in the world. The answer, it seems, is England. And which city has the lowest crime rate? Yes, Birmingham. Wellington man gave up on the Spanish police.