Out of hours pharmacies

I got caught out last night with a batch of test strips which didn't work and no other strips in the house. Every time I put the strip into the meter it gave me an E-1 error (Aviva Nano). The chip in the meter was the correct one for the batch and the expiry date on the strips is 30 Nov 2011. Of course I had to discover this at midnight last night. We had been out for dinner earlier and I had to guess her carb intake so had no idea if her reading was high or low. I tried the strips in two different meters and got the same error in both so not the machine that was faulty. I couldn't find a pharmacy that was open so eventually was saved by our 24 hour Tesco store which had a new testing kit on the shelf which I could buy. Their pharmacy is closed from 9pm with boxes of strips and all other meds locked up.

I remember a number of years ago having to find a pharmacy at this sort of time and there was always one in the area open 24 hours. They'd take it on a rota basis with answerphones set for after hours telling you which one in the area was "on duty" that night. Clearly this doesn't happen anymore. Our nearest A&E dept is 12 miles away and I'm not sure they would have given me strips without seeing Jess and probably wanting to poke holes in her and do all number of tests before issuing any strips.

So my question is, are there no out of hours pharmacies anymore?

Thanks, I did look at that last night. All the pharmacies listed for our area close at or before 9pm. I also found a site that would search for 24 hour pharmacies, it returned 0 results for our area, very helpful (not) :?

Jess has no awareness if she is high and hypo awareness is hit and miss during the day, zero hypo awareness when she is asleep. If it had been a regular home meal I wouldn't have worried too much as her BG is quite reliable and predictable with the pump provided I get the carbs right but as it was a meal out with a guess on carbs it was a lot more tricky to know if I had got it right. Incidentally her reading was 13.1 mmol/L which is too high but would have probably been okay for one night. But without testing I had no idea what it was.

I've notice the same thing with the batteries. It takes more batteries anyway (2 as opposed to 1 on our old Accu-chek meter) but also they go flat very quickly. I guess the light has something to do with it. I've had a meter replaced once already because of a battery problem with it. But this time it looks like the strips are to blame. I love our meter but was just completely thrown and quite surprised that there don't appear to be 24 hour pharmacies around here anymore.