What I saw at a Christmas market this weekend was heartbreaking

We all get a great deal out of the NHS, and therefore we should all put into it, writes Harriet Williamson

The NHS is there throughout our lives – from birth to death – and sometimes we take it for granted (PA)

On a Saturday jaunt through London, my partner and I stumbled across a small festive market, complete with an elf on stilts festooned with Christmas lights. Wandering past the stalls, I noticed a woman wearing a Santa hat and a “save the NHS” T-shirt, holding a collection bucket. And I felt terribly sad.

No shade at all intended to the people who give up their weekends to campaign for our NHS. They are taking action. What is so depressing to me is that the National Health Service, once the envy of the world, is in an entirely avoidable position that has resulted in people being out with collection buckets in defence of it. The NHS has healed us, and now it is the wounded one.

When I was 19, the NHS saved my life. While I was unconscious in intensive care, wavering on the boundary between being and not being, I’m told that a nurse gently washed my hair. The skill, the competence and the kindness of NHS staff enabled me to go home less than a week later.