UUntil I woke up at 2am in the middle of an orchard with a child as covered in bites as if I was trying to share a tent with a sack full of feral cats, I didn’t really appreciate the extent of the UK’s pharmacy shortage.

For years the government advised people who had trouble getting an appointment with their GP to just go to their local pharmacy instead. After all, pharmacists can often prescribe medication faster than doctors, have better control over their stocks, and you can pick up a pack of condoms and a couple of those petrol-tasting lozenges at the same time. If your case isn’t urgent, we were told, don’t bother the poor doctors with your flaky feet or sore throat, just take a little trip to the high street and get some medical advice from someone behind a counter full of hairbands and lip balm. This scheme even had a nice little name: Pharmacy First.

However, almost 1,000 pharmacies have closed since 2017, mostly in poor and rural areas. In May, the National Pharmacy Association warned that almost 50% more pharmacies had closed in England in the first four months of 2024 than in the same period in 2023, partly due to a real-terms funding cut of up to 40%.

So when I typed “pharmacy” into Google Maps on Saturday night, the nearest result was 10 miles away and of course it was closed over the weekend. Despite being privileged to live in the middle of Oxford, last year when I had pneumonia I had to visit three pharmacies in one week and get several days’ worth of antibiotics to cover all the treatment.

I reckon thousands of us have been in desperate need of antihistamines, sunscreen, Dioralyte, folic acid, plasters, Deep Heat and Sudocrem (hopefully not all at once – unless you’re one of those people who really go nuts at festivals) this summer, only to find that our local pharmacy has either closed or drastically reduced its opening hours. Why? It’s a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme: rising costs and devastating funding cuts.