Thanks for the reassurance. I've been feeling a bit pathetic for not having acted upon it already, and it's creating a bit of a vicioous cycle, as you might guess!
Fuck knows how the people who are less able to function than I am get on.
I get Mrs A to ring them, I have real problems just making the call let alone dealing with the faceless entities at the other end of the wire.
Do you have anyone that knows the situation that could do this for you, last time I rang my GPs surgery I almost had a melt down....and that was before the call.
More than once in the past appointments suddenly became available, it seems its often just lazy / incompetent scheduling rather than availability.
Hope it gets sorted