I suppose it's a foretaste of the future that medical matters seem to be featuring more and more in my life. What with signing up to the Biobank and taking up the various check-ups the NHS is offering, I've seen more doctors and nurses in the last few months than in as many decades before.

Not that there's anything wrong. The tests and pills and reviews aren't to cure anything serious, but to stop me getting ill in the first place - a proper health service rather than a sickness service.

The latest development is the arrival of the discreet kit of low-tech cardboard and plastic for providing samples (by post) for the now regular bowel cancer screen.

It all makes a useful rehearsal for whenever decrepitude really strikes, getting into the groove, as it were.

You might even say, in the style of Mme Defarge, that I'm going through the motions.