Here I am, demonstrating that major surgery need be no bar to looking elegant and well turned out!

I slipped a couple of discs in my spine over the summer and they got worse and worse until in September one of them ruptured and I had to have emergency surgery. I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about the success rate of spinal surgery before I had it, so I'm very thankful that mine seems to have been so successful. I'm left with sciatic pain down my leg and in my bum, but compared with how I was before and what might have been, I consider myself fortunate.

There is one thing that continues to prey on my mind. I was most definitely sporting sensible drawers when I was wheeled into that operating theatre and I awoke to find myself sans them. Which means that the surgeon was treated to the sight of my rosy red rump poking cheerfully up at him. Charming. I thought that with my childbearing years behind me I would be done with such unexpected invasions of modesty, but apparently not.

Friends say I should try to put such thoughts out of my mind. Coincidentally, I bet that is what the surgeon is trying to do too.

Anyway, I now face the grim spectre of returning to work in the next couple of weeks. The swines, do they not know I have a Christmas journal to complete??