"Good to go..."

My dentist, the tooth fairy, looked at me askance and in his direct manner pronounced that my teeth were “good for a man of your age” and as long as I remembered to floss the ones I wanted to keep, unlike his Mark, the receding gums should be just fine. He then produced a bill which was large enough to secure him the best table at Le Caprice and guaranteeing him the finest wines to boot, before opening the surgery door and with a tinkle of a bell shooing me out into Covent Garden.

My doctor, Graeme, on the other hand, was more matter of fact; after much prodding, poking of quite a personal nature, some feeling up and down, a couple of gag inducing “ahhs” with an ice cream stick and those statutory tappings across my back he declared a prognosis, in his soft Australian accent, like a less than impressed veterinarian asked to pronounce on an ageing race horse: bunion left foot (from my mother), bunion right foot (from my father), varicose vein left leg (Trooping the Colour), varicose vein right leg (State Opening of Parliament), scarring right thigh, buttock and inner groin (unfortunate “incident” involving the spikes of a church fence late of a night and a lot of rain, Northern Ireland), eyesight 20/20, hearing right ear good, hearing left ear – not so good (Serb shells, any shells for that matter, are loud), blood pressure of a marathon runner, weight 81 kilos (surprising given a weakness for lunching) and the hair loss, well, what did I expect at 46? I stared back at him, did he have highlights in his cruel and unruly mop of strawberry blonde thatch? “Good to go young man!” and with a patronizing but not unfriendly pat on the shoulder indicated the rather personal interview was over. I was fit and off to Rome … on foot.