Women my age, still working, are generally trying to pay off the costs of children, divorce and perhaps make up some of the 30 years of super contributions disrupted by the birth of the very same younglings who complain about older people they’re working alongside.

As you know, I am a big fan of irony. But really?

I’ve been a pretty useful volunteer at other ages and stages, but this isn’t one of those.

We, their parents, were among the first generation who mixed paid work and child rearing. We invented that wheel of insane perpetual motion that is mixing paid work with parenting. Frankly, I’d like to apologise for that one.

Have I said too much? Rant over.

Which brings me to incontinence.

I have far too often bragged to my skinny friends that I have a pelvis of steel.

They may have buns of steel, but my pelvis, she’s served me well.

That was until last Saturday when I lifted 10kg box of apples, coughed and farted.

I kept coughing, but was rendered speechless with fear of a new and unpleasant feeling in my jeans.

I believe it was Billy Connolly who famously said “never trust a fart”.

In that moment, gone forever, the absolute liberation of letting one rip.

Gone too, the joy of dropping a silent but deadly lentil-powered, dirty rotten hippy of a fart.

I blamed myself for a week mastering the making of corn fritters. Corn fritters with coriander. Corn fritters with chives. Corn fritters with cottage cheese. Served with smoked salmon and a mountain of salad.

Apparently, once you reach a certain stage, it’s probably unwise to eat corn fritters three nights running …

Sometimes you might think I make this stuff up.

I don’t.

Last week’s visit to my GP could easily have been you.

My white coat fever is responsible for extreme rushes of extraordinary, high, blood pressure.

An hour before a cardiograph, I was my usual, hyper-stimulated self.

I am well and truly over my quite irrational and uncomfortable fear of my lovely GP.

A brandy would not go astray. Hand-holding has even been offered.

But who needs drugs or alcohol when a conversation can lead down an unexpected track, or, in my case to the dense bushland out behind Patersonia’s history-soaked landscape.

As we sat and waited on the miscellaneous ‘70s vinyl chairs in our doctor’s hallway, a youngish bloke explained how he’d come to lose his big toe.

“Chainsaw”.

Yep, that’ll do it.

Chuffed, he said he even managed to drive back into Launceston.

“Do you want to see?” he said.

Sure did. I am a curious creature.

Off came his sneaker, sock and ever so slowly he lifted away the wound’s dressing.

Don’t faint, I thought.

There it was. His right foot, minus his big toe. Skin neatly pulled over, folded and stitched down, sort of like a tacking stitch.

It had been a four-week, work in progress, he said.

The first tidy up of remnant flesh was makeshift, followed by trimming, shaping and fashioning a respectable toe stubb, he said.

Too easy, I didn’t say.

I had my ECG, tetanus and whooping cough vaccination, a lovely chat with my doctor and before you could say mother’s little helper, I was back out in the real world.