Well, last Tuesday I did go to see the consultant about my MRI scan results. He showed me the pictures of my shoulder and pointed to a large white area. “This is a calcium deposit,” he said, “about 2.6 cm by 2.7 cm.”

That sounds big, I thought. “That’s big,” he said. “Too much to get rid of by injections. I think we have to operate.” So I’m booked in for second half of September. (Not all of it, just one day.)

I told number one daughter about this. “Where did the calcium come from?” she asked. I didn’t know, I hadn’t thought to query its origins. I was thinking more about getting rid of it. I checked on-line and found that the calcium is excreted by cells, but the cause is not entirely known.

Bearing in mind the gall stones I had last year, it seems clear to me that there is only one answer: I’m fossilising from the inside out.