Innocently, a friend asked this question and my heart sank before either of us had answered:
When are your MRI scan results due?'
When are your MRI scan results due?'
You see, we didn't know if it was directed at my partner or me.
That's middle-age for you. The fact I feel about thirty - and I know I keep saying so - like it might re-wind the many, many years in between then and now - doesn't make me thirty any more. Nor my man.
We were stood side by side and a dawning realization that our friend could have asked either of us made us give a wry smile to each other and I made some light-hearted joke about romance at our age, yet the reality was - and is and remains - that we're not getting any younger and these sort of conversations creep up on you.
He has a chronic Sciatica problem and I have a torn cartilage in my knee. Honestly, middle-aged Rumpy-Pumpy can be more like a rampant game of Naked Twister.
We never the leave the house without a stock of painkillers. Not to mention detailed plans of all the nearest loos, by the way - not for the three year old, but for me. Yet despite much younger ladies than me occupying Tena territory, it is something that - as yet - thankfully eludes me. [I know you really wanted to know that!].
So our rather fledgling relationship is being put to the test. We're both a bit embarrassed about these things arriving on the scene, aware that a partnership of twenty or so years of commitment might find them challenging. However, by now, we're also of the 'take it or leave it' frame of mind that comes with being worn out older and wiser.
You see, by our age, you would think that men and women would be nice and settled with their kids gone, not crippled up with two energetic young children about. By rights, a man might feel he's done his bit and it's time for some peace and all a woman might ever want in the world (as well as to be able to eat and drink anything she pleases and it not make her fat and to go to bed early with her man, a baking electric blanket and a good book) is to not be on crutches.
Plus what they both definitely would like is to not have cancelled their Private Health Insurance, having paid it for years and never needed it, just at the age they do!