Here we are again, approaching a Milltown winter. Last year’s floods have left everyone feeling twitchy. Those of us who waded through their homes, knee-deep in muddy water, will never look at rain in quite the same way again.

We used to enjoy the percussion of raindrops on the roof. It was vaguely comforting, especially when we were snug and warm inside our little terraced houses. But not any more. Now the rain sounds like the beating of war drums, as the Zulus laid siege to Rourkes Drift. It’s disturbing.

We used to pull the curtains every evening, and bolt our doors, secure in the knowledge that we’d locked out most of life’s unpleasantness. We could sleep soundly in our beds, untroubled by thoughts of intruders. But, as we’ve discovered from painful experience, there’s not a lot we can do to keep floodwater out. The sandbags may look business-like, but they’re pretty ineffectual - like the pills that Dr Harris hands out to the most persistent malingerers who fill up his waiting room. Yes, an Englishman’s home is supposed to be his castle, but now it feels like we’re living in the moat.

Whenever the town darkens beneath an armada of storm-clouds, and the river threatens once again to burst its banks, a little group of cagoule-clad locals convenes in silence on the old packhorse bridge. They glare balefully down into the swollen river, hoping to bring down the water level by will-power alone.

What have we done to deserve all this rain? Have we made the gods angry? If so, what will the next affliction be? Well, if Bob the postman is anything to go by, it could be a plague of boils. This isn’t something he’s keen to talk about, even to Dr Harris. Especially to Dr Harris. But there’s a lot of legwork involved in a rural round. After delivering his letters, all Bob wants is to sit down, put his feet up and read the Milltown Times from front to back. For the last few days, though, even this simple pleasure has been denied him.

Left to his own devices, Bob would probably just suffer in silence. That’s a man’s attitude to illness in a nushell: if you ignore it, maybe it will go away of its own accord. It’s the same attitude that Bob has adopted with all the vehicles he’s ever owned, which is why he’s never managed to sell any car for more than half what he paid for it. Due to his parsimonious use of engine oil (always a false economy, as wife Cath keeps reminding him), Bob didn’t make a penny when he got rid of his last motor. Worse, he had to pay the guy from the breaker’s yard to tow it away.

Once Cath had found out what was troubling Bob - by a process akin to reading braille - she packed him off to see the doctor. Bob went, with a show of reluctance. He knew that Cath was right (as she keeps reminding him) but felt obliged to put up a fight for the sake of appearances. His immediate fears were unfounded, thankfully, the waiting room being so full that he had to stand.

At this time of year there are plenty of people in Milltown who are happy to spend quality time in a friendly, germ-laden environment. Old biddies, mostly. What’s the point in cranking the central heating up at home, when the doctor’s waiting room is so warm and welcoming? There are dog-eared magazines to read, full of recipes and knitting patterns. There’s a tank full of goldfish: more entertaining than the daytime TV they’d be watching if they were at home. Apart from Countdown, of course, and that nice Richard Whiteley. There used to be a machine that dispensed hot coffee until Dr Harris twigged why he was dealing with an outbreak of scalded lips and fingers. Yes, if these hypochondriacs aren’t ill when they arrive at the surgery, they’ve usually managed to pick up a sniffle - or better - by the time they leave.

Dr Harris can only spare about five minutes per patient, before writing a prescription for some harmless, sugar-coated placebo. But the other patients have no such constraints upon their time, and are happy to sit around, discussing their ailments and recommending home-grown remedies. Who would have guessed that a hot water bottle filled with Lemsip could have such a pleasantly analgesic effect?

This is what a lot of doctors seem to have forgotten. Older people want someone to listen to them, to take their problems seriously. They want a doctor who will lean back in his swivel chair, press his fingertips together and give his undivided attention to an elderly lady whose main complaint (apart from her aching joints) is that her children and grandchildren don’t come to see her as often as they should. They say that time is a great healer. And a few minutes of a doctor’s time - plus a little uncritical empathy - often do more good than a handful of pills. After taking their regular cocktail of tranquillisers, some of his patients forget their own names.

And what happened to Bob? Well, Dr Harris gave him a tube of ointment, and an inflatable cushion that looked like an outsized donut. He’ll have to apply the ointment himself (as Cath keeps reminding him), but the prognosis looks good. In a couple of weeks he’ll be as right as... well, as right as rain.