Met Birgit Clark and Alex McGuire this morning in the Golden Jubilee hospital, Glasgow (why was I there? more about that later) where they were organising a fund raising event for charity.

They will be cycling from London to Paris in the first all women event of this kind to raise money and awareness for cancer organised by Action for Charity.
 
Both work in hospital in management and have friends who have had the disease. Birgit ( right) has   personal experience having recovered from breast cancer.
 
Meeting them and seeing how enthusiastic and full of health they were allayed some of my own fears about my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon later.
 
So I signed for a knee replacement after dithering for a year.
 
Met one woman in the queue who had her knee done six weeks ago.
 
“How did it go?”
“Nothing to it,” she says. “ There was an awful lot of clanking and sawing but they give you 'happy juice' and you don’t care…”
The man sitting next to me in the queue visibly jumped.
“ You mean you were awake?”
 “ Oh yes’ she says.
 
Later I mention this to the surgeon.
“Sometimes I get patients who want to watch the whole operation on screen, " he says.
 I assure him I would not be one of them