Despite the gorgeous spring sunshine and the surprising glow of unexpected warmth to the day I have had a bit of a disagreeable adventure today.
Since I am now formally recognised as an Old Person, and would be allowed to join Saga if I wanted to, I had a letter a couple of weeks ago from the NHS.
‘Now you are an old biddy,’ it said, ‘you need to come and have a mammogram.’
I could barely express my delight.
Of course I think this is a jolly sensible thing to do, and am pleased to live in a country which not only provides this service, but which also kindly sends you a personal invitation to take advantage of it. All of these things are Good Things.
Despite the obvious marvellousness of the occasion I was not thrilled at the invitation.
Regular readers might remember that I have no objections whatsoever to removing my clothes in order to be photographed, I have the distinction of belonging to one of the very few families in which the children consider it their responsibility to endlessly remind the parents about the dangers inherent in posting naked photographs on the Internet.
I would like readers to know that there are different sorts of naked photography.
There is the sort done for a magnificent giggle with youthful photographers whose creative sexuality and fascination for life leaves you joyful and entertained and secretly rather relieved to have grown up.
Then there is the sort done furtively and with embarrassed glances at the rest of the waiting room to discover that nobody will meet your eye. This sort is done by an excruciatingly tactful nurse who whispers at you as if you were recently bereaved, and then proceeds to squish your boobs in the chilly middle of a large display shelf resembling a baking tray with an upturned casserole dish on the top of it.
You know you are for it when they say in kindly hushed tones: “There might be a little discomfort.”
How correct she was.
The nurse told me afterwards that I had done very well, which puzzled me enough to enquire how on earth it was possible to perform badly at such an event. She gave me a nurse sort of look, and said to believe her, it was, which intrigued me all the way home, maybe some people burst into tears or refuse to undress, or worse, fling their clothes into a jolly heap and skip about the room in a joggling state of disreputableness.
This possibility did not occur to me until afterwards, which is probably just as well.
When I got home I was distracted by opening emails and hanging out washing, and accidentally set the house on fire in a careless misfortune with the gas stove and a tea towel. I resolved this problem quite quickly even though Mark was not at home, and when he got back I explained it was due to the invasive trauma of my medical experience, so he made a pot of tea and sympathetic noises instead of rolling his eyes and laughing.
Once I realised that I was traumatised I felt quite pleased with myself and considered the possibility of taking the night off work and self medicating with a couple of glasses of wine, but we haven’t got any money and Mark says we are drinking too much at the moment and have to cut down, so here I am on the taxi rank after all.
In any case there is absolutely no point in having a trauma if you are self employed, it would have to be a pretty awful trauma to be worse than the credit card bill.
I don’t have any naked pictures to hand.
Have a picture of the Lake District.
