Waiting Around

 Doctor's Waiting Room - everyone's gone outside for a smoke

I have abandoned ship whilst our new batteries are being wrestled on board and below decks into a space just big enough to accommodate them and requiring Houdini skills to reach. I prefer to be well out of earshot of the 3 men doing this job on a humid 35 degree day. Each of the 2 batteries is nearly 70kg and they have to get the dud ones out first.
Yesterday we visited the doctor to get some advice on the gammy knee. This entailed a phone call to make an appointment which is my least favourite thing to try and attempt in French. I had a brain fade, suddenly not remembering the word for appointment which is, the virtually unforgettable, 'rendez-vous'. So, I said (in French) I wanted to 'see' the doctor which apparently doesn't translate well. There was a longish pause then the person on the other end said, 'but why?' So I then had to launch into an undoubtedly unnecessary description of symptoms. Eventually we were given a time of quatre et demi. I thought I'd misheard as everywhere else we've been in France seems to use the 24 hour clock so I had to re-check in the stupidest way imaginable ie by counting to 4 in French. That's why I hate phoning. Face to face you can at least do the charade thing.
Not that the appointment time means much. We arrived a bit early (big mistake) and there were 4 people in the waiting room and one in the consulting room Approximately every 30 minutes the doctor's door opened and out came doctor and patient. They shook hands, wished each other a good day and then the next patient in line would stand, shake hands with the doc and disappear inside. Round about the same time yet another person would enter the waiting room, say 'Bonjour', shake hands with the people they know then fill the  recently vacated chair. The arithmetically adept of you will have worked out by now that we had around a 2 hour wait. Goodness knows what time the poor doctor goes home. She would have made up a bit of time with us though as we were a bit short on small talk although she did establish where we were from, how long we were in France and how often we'd been, that we had a boat, where we'd been on it and where we were going, She also did a pretty thorough examination and gave some good advice. All for 25 euros and then 14 euros for 3 items from the pharmacy. My only slight concern is all that hand shaking.
Batteries successfully installed. 'Some days you really earn your money,' said one of the battery men wiping the sweat from his brow. I think the doc earns hers every day.
Tomorrow we cast off.