I knew it was tempting fate to say that the weather had improved enough for us to start running clinics again. After another download of snow on Tuesday night, the only thing we're currently running is short of appointments. We've been forced to reschedule so many patients that we're now booking up clinics for March. Patients keep telling me that they don't want to make a new appointment until they know what the weather's doing, and I have to tell them it's not a problem - we've got nothing available till the spring. Although now I've said that, we'll probably get a monsoon in April.

So after two days back at the retinal screening coalface, I spent yesterday in the office, phoning patients to rearrange their appointments. It provided me with a couple of interesting moments...

Firstly I phoned a man half an hour before his appointment time to tell him we were having to cancel. His wife said he wasn't there. I said "Oh, has he already left for the appointment?". She said "No, he's out of the country".

I was a little annoyed that they hadn't bothered to tell us, but as my colleague pointed out, maybe he was flying back in in the next twenty minutes. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I followed that with a call to an elderly female patient, whose phone was answered by a much younger voice. I asked if I could speak to the lady in question, and she said "No, she died a few days ago". You can't really argue with that. Her appointment had obviously been cancelled by someone a lot higher than me.