Just as well I was feeling like a lie-down

Having signed up as a guinea-pig for a medical research project on preventing heart attacks, I was invited for a full session of tests yesterday. So the whole afternoon was spent lying down doing nothing much.

But I did get to see some of my arteries on an ultrasound monitor (the excitement soon wears off after that first "Well I never" moment). And then there was over an hour of enforced relaxation, holding my breath when told to, inside an MRI machine. Since one's enclosed in a plastic-lined pod (rather as one imagines some airlines might dream of using, to squeeze more passengers in), there's nothing to look at and nothing to listen to, Except, that is, for the ongoing cacophony of beeping, whirring, chugging, humming and blaring, interspersed with A Voice instructing "Breath in - breath out - stop" from time to time. The electric trains of my childhood tended to make similar noises, though not in surround-sound, and often providing similar opportunities for mind-wandering as they stopped for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere.

Well, that's another of life's less risky adventures de-mystified. They'll want to do it again in a few months' time. Better take care of my heart in the meantime, I suppose.