LAST WEEK:

“And what, Mrs Anderson, do you do as a job?”

The doctor addressed his question to my crumpled, yellowing (and greening)  hand.

“Oh, nothing”.

What???? Well, it’s complicated and embarrassing and I don’t know where to start or finish, so…..EPIC FAIL.

“That’s a good job”. He was definitely using a figure of speech.Sarcasm, even.

But it IS a LOVELY job (mostly) so why am I so pathetic about talking about it?  It’s partly about not wanting to seem pretentious – more about the fear of being unmasked in the middle of Trauma Outpatients as a despicable IMPOSTER, given that I do not (yet) have a ten-book deal with Penguin.

THIS WEEK:

The optician seemed satisfied with the thickness of my cornea. Next, came the test I had dreaded.

“And you say on your form, Mrs Anderson, that you are a ‘writer'”.

I am almost sure I didn’t imagine the inverted commas and the questioning upward inflection of his ‘statement’, although I was rather distracted by the proximity of his nose (hair) to mine.

“Yes.”

I stared at him defiantly, aided by the dilating drops he had thoughtfully squirted onto my eyeballs to prevent  me from blinking incredulously when he revealed the price of sharpening my fuzzy edges.

Afterwards, as I made my way into Costa Coffee to consider how many family heirlooms to flog, I may have felt confused about why they were selling pastel  raincoats and outsize control pants,  but I could hold my head up high(for as long as I could tolerate the triple halo-effect strip lighting).

I had owned up. Things were becoming clearer already.