The novelty of living in a place where a policeman called Ambrose lives in a house whose door you can knock on if you need him will never wear off on me.

I’ve asked around and no one here can remember any crime, aside from years ago they seem to recall there was a murder. But except for the odd murder, policing in West Cork usually consists of an old person having a broken oil burner and Ambrose taking them a portable heater.

The doctor reminded me of Dr Meade from Gone With the Wind when he’s about to start amputating limbs

It’s rather like an episode of Heartbeat, and feels as though one has gone back in time by at least 60 years. Every time I drive past Ambrose’s house with its Garda sign above the front door, I feel a surge of happiness.

There is also a doctor in a tiny bungalow at the end of the high street. I thought it was a good idea to pop by and introduce myself, in case I ever needed him. An English lady was sitting behind the reception desk looking very flustered as I went in. She said she was usually the nurse but the receptionist was off sick so she was the nurse and the receptionist that day. She was delighted when I told her where I was living. ‘Oh, you’re my new neighbour!’ she said, revealing that she lived a few doors down from me, which is to say, two farms and a hundred acres away.

‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ she said, nodding to the ramshackle arrangements. ‘It doesn’t look much but it’s terribly good here, honestly.’ I said I bet it was.

Papers were heaped up everywhere, the phone was ringing constantly. She snatched it up at one point and said ‘Hold the line’, then put it down, then called over the desk into the waiting room, then turned back to me. ‘It’s not what things look like, is it?’ she said. I said no, it wasn’t.

She started to register me as a patient, mumbling: ‘Oh dear, no, that’s not the form.’ Then she came out from behind her counter, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards her. An old lady was hobbling from the waiting area, making her way through the narrow corridor of the reception area to the room beyond.

Her left leg was swollen to the size of several legs, and purple. The nurse made a face and pulled me out of the way as the old lady struggled past. At that moment, a grey-haired doctor emerged from his room. His hair was standing on end, his glasses were falling off his nose, his clothes were crumpled. He reminded me of Dr Meade from Gone With the Wind when he’s about to start amputating limbs without chloroform.

I peered into the waiting room and it was full of older people, mainly ladies with bad legs propped up.

I told the nurse I wouldn’t bother them further. But she clung on to me and cried out: ‘Doctor, this is my new neighbour!’ And the poor haggard GP, bent over as he stood there, looked at me over his spectacles and barely changed his expression, perhaps just twitched one eyebrow. He couldn’t have uttered a word of greeting even if he wanted to, I don’t think. He hadn’t that much strength left in him.

‘Honestly, I don’t want to bother him,’ I whispered at the nurse. The limping lady was nearly there, so I told her I’d come back another day. ‘Really, I’m very low maintenance,’ I explained. ‘I only need some HRT every six months.’ I got a piece of paper out of my bag to show her the brand and she insisted on getting the doctor to write me a prescription for it. I don’t know how this came about but anyway it did. After ten minutes of frenetically tapping into a computer, she said right, that had gone through to the chemist.

I thanked her profusely and made my excuses as the phone started ringing again and another old lady was brought through the door limping.

I walked the few paces to the pharmacy in the little row of shops that makes for a high street and said I was there to pick up. The pharmacist looked at her screen and informed me there was only a few weeks’ supply – was that right? I said no, I usually got six months. Well then, she said, I’d have to go back. I said I really didn’t want to. Could she not just ring them? The pharmacist fixed me with a traumatised stare, and said: ‘No. I’m not ringing them.’

I decided that in the grand scheme of things, and given the situation, and the state so many people seem to be in, it really didn’t matter if I went without HRT.