An old and good friend of mine recently suffered from a serious attack of ulcerative colitis and was in hospital for some days. Luckily, with excellent medical treatment and good doctors, he recovered and is back in good health again.

He sent an email to friends the other day, drawing attntion to a newspaper article which said that recent research had shown links between the bug which causes ulcerative colitis - fusobacterium - and bowel cancer. With a coincidence which never ceases to amaze, I also received, on the same day as his email, a test kit through the post from the local bowel cancer screening unit. Apparently bowel cancer is the the third biggest cancer killer in the UK for men of a certain age, and I was on their list.

I was initially in two minds whether to bother or not with the kit and mentioned it in an email to my friend. He replied straightaway, saying that he'd been sent one at the age of 60 (he's now 63) and he'd ignored it. "Ignore it at your peril", was his reply.

So I've been humming "Poetry in motion" to myself for the last 3 days, wielding wooden spatulas and sealing flaps - and thinking how lucky I am not to work as a technician in the local bowel cancer screening unit...!