Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.

My sense of loathing of parasitical private health providers has not diminished over the years and until today I have avoided any temptation to have to use any of them. But like so many others, I have concluded that principles alone cannot make me well and I have finally succumbed. I’m going private.

As soon as my GPs concluded that there was a probability I might have undiagnosed ADHD and, obviously, have had it forever, I was optimistic I’d been seen sometime soon. Pre Covid, waiting times were around 18 weeks but there has been a fair degree of slippage to the extent that it’s now between 3.5 and 4 years. And it took me a year just to get on the waiting list. Numerous online tests suggest a serious issue has always existed and, quite honestly, I need to know.

I’m going to have to pay someone to do the assessment at substantial cost to myself, which rather turns my stomach. I have nothing but admiration for people who worked for our NHS but nothing but contempt for those who work for run for profit health corporations. But, in order to preserve what remains of my sanity, I’m to have to line their filthy pockets.

My loyal reader will know that I have longed for an explanation or explanations for why I am like I am, from my constant fidgeting to this motor in my head that just won’t switch off, even during the supposed hours of sleep. Why can’t I sit still for long periods, or concentrate properly or follow what to others appear to be simple instructions? Somehow, quite unlike me, I’ve been very patient but with time running out – and I definitely feel my time is running out – I’ve acted.

Sorry to be such a hypocrite but desperate times call for desperate, unprincipled measures but I hope you understand. I won’t be making a habit of it – in fact, I’ll be campaigning harder than ever for a Labour government to save and rebuild the NHS for everyone – but I can’t go on anymore. I can see my depression every day, as if I am looking down on it, bubbling away, trying to bring me down. If any of my mental woes have been caused by ADHD, then I want an expert to tell me.

It can’t change anything that’s gone before, but I might have an explanation as to why I was so shit at school, how I was so bad at understanding stuff at work and why life often got so fucked up, I might have a better end of days. A sort of better late than ever.