A lovely day, waiting for a train in the sun, a friendly, rural town station surrounded by shrubs and flowers. Chatting to a teenage girl who was perusing an archery catalogue, she's doing Duke of Edinburgh and loving it. We talked about archery and dressmaking and she told me she wants to join the RAF. Why? I asked, Because I want to fight she said. Astonished, I stared at her, she was about 14 or 15, articulate, open, bright, together, petite, pretty, feminine. Why would she want to fight? You might have to kill people I said, and her gesture clearly said she was quite happy about that.
I was on the way to a hospital appointment, the latest saga in the mission to sort out my most unmentionable problem, the thing I talk about to nobody except the doctor who is treating me and the people he sends me to for tests. I don't tell my best friends, or random acquaintances, or family, certainly none of my nearest and dearest. I cringe at the thought of it and wipe clean my browsing history in case anybody should see it and realise I've even been researching it. And it took me 10 years to even mention it to a doctor, and probably wouldn't have done even then, except something else happened which exacerbated it, and as all those bits of me were being examined, prodded, poked and generally violated, I took the plunge and confessed to this most horrid and embarrassing problem.
And they have been wonderful, treating me with courtesy, dignity and humour, and the chances are it will be sorted. My consultant said he can't fix it so it will be like it was when I was 19 but, hey, if he can fix it at all it will be fab.
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