Standing in theatre mid-case, an anaesthetist, bored now that his patient was asleep, eyed me as a new staff member and started chatting. It emerged in conversation that I was soon to be forty. He could not believe it. ‘No way,’ he said, wearing his theatre cap as if he thought he was George Clooney, though he was probably closer in age to George’s father, ‘there’s no way you look forty.’ He paused a moment. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but do you have children?’ ‘No,’ I replied, my standard answer to a first-day-on-the-job standard question. He pointed his finger at me in triumph. ‘I knew it, I knew it, that’s why you don’t look forty.’

I wanted to take his George Clooney cap and tourniquet his neck and explain that if he only knew the half of it I should look at least eighty, but I didn’t, I blushed a little, smiled as if I had not a care in the world and put up another bag of saline.