Before my dad shook a six the month before his 90th birthday, he told us about his encounter with The Nob Nurse.  (Obviously, he didn’t tell us after!).

In his final years he was moved a fair few times from one nursing home to the next.  In part this was to get him closer to the family support of myself and (primarily) my sister; but in part also because he was a cantankerous old bastard and the nursing staff would have been only too glad to see him move on.

Anyroadup, towards the end he told us about a presentation that was done in one of these homes to groups of old gimmers by visiting healthcare professionals on the subject of incontinence – a matter warm to my dad’s heart and kept even warmer in his nappies.  He told us that in her talk the nurse displayed a bladder bag to be worn externally and connected by a tube to the tin soldier.

My dad asked how it fitted on his pipe end and the nurse suggested a private appointment with him.

“Yes please” he said, sensing, I suspect, an opportunity to get his todger tugged (and I for one don’t blame him for one moment).

Now at this point I ought to flag up a spoiler alert, not because this account will enter a level of gruesome and lascivious detail for which I am renowned, but because it doesn’t.  You see, quite unsatisfyingly for you all, I don’t know how his story ended.

But I do recollect what he said about the 1-2-1 appointment and I remember him telling us that the nurse gave him a plastic template with holes of various sizes punched through it, the principle being rather like those gauges they have in the jewellers to determine ring sizes.  “One” he said “you could have pushed your fist through”.  Quite embarrassingly for him though he sheepishly pointed to the smallest.

Now this is where I have to start disappointing you, if I haven’t already.  (I think they call this “sitting you on the horse and not giving you a ride”).  Because there must have been an atomic explosion next door or something equally as distracting because I can’t remember what he said after that.

You’re probably thinking “Well, don’t come pestering us with half a tale!”.  All I can say is I’m not looking forward in a few years to The Nob Nurse confronting me with that template.