Early CT scan means howler monkeys bring their festive hits - Susan Morrison

This month they were tuning up in the background. It didn’t help that I’d been offered the chance to hold the scan off until January, but, like an idiot, I’d turned it down and went for the pre-Christmas Western General Scan offer instead. This meant that the howler monkeys could run out some festive hits.

This meant that due to my stupid planning, I’d be wandering the festive landscape wondering if the scan was lit up with sinister fairy lights. Told you, my imagination really does run riot.

Well, I thought, It’s Christmas. That’ll keep me busy. It also helped that I had done precisely nothing for the festive period, beyond buying a gift for my best friend way back in July. I was pleased with that bit of forward thinking. I put it away, very carefully, somewhere in the house. It’s just I can’t quite remember where.

My other coping strategy was to drink irresponsibly. Thought I might drown the monkeys in a sea of gin.

Both plans were simple, brilliant and effective, but sadly, they couldn’t be combined.

There was a time when I could. Back in the 80s, fresh from the office Christmas lunch, having downed enough to put a small Viking raiding party under the table, I could still hit the shops to grab last minute gifts that were fun, exciting and surprising. Especially to me, who couldn’t remember what exactly they were until they were unwrapped. Yes, I could drunk-wrap, too.

But Bus Pass Susan now can only manage a glass or two of chilled white wine and it’s snooze time. Believe me, even John Lewis takes a dim view of someone having a quick forty winks in the queue.

So nothing for it but to put up with the boys in the band and head to the Kirkgate

There’s a lovely lady I see out and about sometimes One of those fine women who you know would be great at dealing with a skint knee, a bully or planning a D-Day landing. She is always smiling and we always have a bit of a chat.

She spotted me and waved “Here,” she said. She put a penny in my hand. “Just found this and you know what they say. ‘See a penny, pick up, pass it on and have good luck’.”

I suggested I give it back and we’d both have a bit of luck, but no, she said, you take it.

Trust me, when this determined woman tells you to do something, you do it. I put the penny in my pocket.

My phone rang twenty minutes later, less than a week after my scan. It was my consultant. Oh, she said, the scan results had literally just popped up on the screen.

It was clear. The monkeys mooched off.

There are so many grim tales around the NHS right now that it’s good to remember that it's mainly made up of great, kind people like Lesley.

She took the time to call. I can’t thank her enough. And that penny stays in my pocket.