"Merry Christmas!" said the red and gold foiled card from my doctor's surgery. "You are due for a smear test!"

This is the first time I have had a Christmas card from my doctor, though I have been registered there for five years. I hold it open in my hand with rapidly beetling brows, wondering if this year they have had an unexpected budget surplus and decided to spend it on festive greetings for all their patients or whether they kindly decided this was just the most appropriately seasonal way to break the news to me that soon I'd be staring intently at the wrong end of an industrial sized tub of KY and thinking of England. The surgery has thoughtfully put a booklet called 'Having A Smear Test' in with the card. On the front is a blonde cartoon woman in a green jumper, giving the thumbs up with one hand and pointing to her vag with the other. I look on the back; it is 'Cervical screening explained for woman with learning disabilities'. Also available; 'Keeping Healthy Down Below: a picture book'. For all those planning a trip to Australia, presumably.

I have no doubt that amongst the people reading this now only because they came here looking for 'Fiona Bruce in stockings', 'secret lockaway core', 'Peter Ebdon's hairdo', 'sniff my snatch' or any of the other search requests my logs show for this week that there are one or two loyal, long standing readers who can recall the last time such a compelling invitation came my way, three years ago. The excessively jovial doctor who kept inviting me to view the speculum and who pronounced my cervix to be 'peachy', all the while humming 'Knees Up Mother Brown'. The hard of hearing receptionist who forced me to yell the words SMEEEEAR TEEEEST in front of the entire assembled Orthodox Jewish Wellman clinic, causing a huge and illuminated pointy sign to descend from the ceiling over my head reading I'VE HAD SEX.^* Each and every single horrendous moment lovingly recreated in painstakingly crafted prose for your entertainment alone and probably quite wisely lost in the Great GFDC Meltdown of earlier this year.

It was that which reminded me, in possibly the most roundabout way possible and with once of those sickening stomach lurches you get when you're in a lift after having eaten four Snickers bars for lunch, that today is my 6th year blogging anniversary.

Coo.

^*That last part may be a bit made up