Sue Arnold: I'm happy to be a smiley face in my hospital

'Thanks to my Girl Guide training, I'm always prepared ? Walkman, book, knitting and sandwiches'

There's a big poster behind the outpatients' reception desk at my local hospital. It shows two faces, one smiley, one grumpy. The smiley face represents all those people who have kept their appointments; the grumpy one represents all those who haven't. Last year 52,000 people failed to keep their appointments at the hospital, which, according to the receptionist, whose maths is better than mine, works out at about 175 a day.

Logically the waiting room should have been full of happy, smiley faces – we being the wise virgins, after all, who had kept our dates. Not a bit of it. I've never seen such a dismal crew, but then waiting for two hours to see a consultant in a noisy, draughty corridor smelling faintly of cold shepherd's pie is liable to knock the smile off even the most dedicated optimist's face. "I'm sorry you're having to wait," said the receptionist, "but because of the likely no-shows we always have to overbook."

I'm not sure why she addressed this remark at me, since I was one of the few people present who did actually have a smiley face. This was not because I'd kept the appointment but because I was listening to Kenneth Tynan's diaries on my portable radio. I never mind waiting in hospitals, because thanks to my early Girl Guide training I'm always prepared – Walkman, cassette, radio, recipe book, newspapers, knitting, sandwiches, I could happily stay overnight.

Anyway I had just got to the bit where the Tynans go to stay with the Oliviers for the weekend and they're given a room with separate beds. Halfway through the night Vivien Leigh creeps into Tynan's bed. Reluctantly he rebuffs her, whereupon Ms Leigh huffs impatiently and gets into bed with his wife.

There must, I'm sure, be a clever way of making people keep their appointments – like, for instance, charging a deposit, refundable when the patient shows up. I'm warming to this plan – are you listening, Mr Milburn? If there were a £10 deposit on every hospital appointment and 52,000 no-shows lost theirs, that would mean an extra half a million pounds in my local hospital's kitty. Multiply that by the number of National Health hospitals in the country and you're talking big bucks.

A doctor friend dismisses the one billion pounds Gordon Brown has pledged to give to the NHS as mere sticking plaster, saying of the Government's grandiose talks of choice: "Okay, so they can fix you up with a triple bypass in Barcelona next Tuesday. For a start, who gets the air tickets? And, believe me, that's just the start. What about hotels? Can you bring your wife/dog? Will your records get there in time?"

Personally, I belong to the school of thought that prefers the familiar devil. For all its shortcomings I'm fond of my local hospital, which may not be as clean and efficient as the ones in Germany, or offer cassoulet and suppositories with everything like the ones in France, but it does its best.

They have recitals in the Atrium at lunchtime. "Lovely, isn't it?" whispered the woman beside me. "And did you know you can play bingo outside the pharmacy while you wait for your prescription?" "What a great idea," I whispered back. We followed the directions to the pharmacy. "There you are," said the woman pointing to a video screen next to a palm tree which was currently displaying four flashing red numbers. "Sixty-four, sixty-five, clickety-click and two fat ladies." I said gently that I thought those were the numbers of the prescriptions that the pharmacist had just done, but the woman was heading down a corridor marked gynaecology.

Trundling slowly down the corridor came a wheelchair accommodating a very old, very frail white-haired gentleman pushed by a handsome young white-coated hospital porter, possibly a Turk. Beside the wheelchair, carrying a portable drip, was a very cross woman. They, too, stopped beside the gynaecology sign. "This is ridiculous. We've been looking for endocrinology for half an hour and I'm getting fed up," said the young Turk. "I've no idea where it is either, but I can tell you something – my husband isn't pregnant," she replied.