One Fort In The Grave, with KEITH FORT

I HAD a bad day on the health front the other day.

I kept getting these unfamiliar pains in the left breast - well, not pains exactly, aches.

Just sixty-five so was I already approaching my sell-by date?

The unfamiliar sensations were enough to trigger me into panic. Was it angina? A defective heart value? High blood pressure, perhaps. Oh God! The doc did mention it was a bit high last visit.

Got to do something about this. No good lying in bed worrying about it. Now, where's my other sock? I searched high and low, inside my pant leg, under the bed, rummaged through my stock of bedside literature. All to no avail. No blue sock. Still confused and waiting for the next "ache" I found a brown sock.

Now, where can I discover the worst? Where can I get an immediate authoritative diagnosis of my condition? Without joining a 10-year NHS queue or going private with a second mortgage?

Who can tell me what's wrong? And in simply language. No valvular this and arterial that.

Of course! I should have remembered! The Charity Shop.

On the bus into town a bloke opposite starts giving me funny looks. Am I sweating? Going white? He leans forward.

"There's something wrong......" "I know I'm on my way to ...."

"....with your socks. One's brown and one's blue."

Least of my worries, I tell him.

At the British Heart Foundation charity shop I sweep past the bric-a-brac, a framed painting of Emily Bronte, the 50p stainless steel goblets I once brought for eight quid each back in the sixties, and headed straight for the leaflet rack. There they were - a set of 18 booklets on everything from Congenital Heart Disease to High Blood Pressure and Coronary Angeoplasty.

"How much are these?" I asked the assistant. "Free," he replied. I took the lot.

Straight to the flash cafe on the corner to start reading. My God! What DIDN'T I have?

Then I suddenly realised. I'd been so preoccupied with trying to discover what was wrong with me that I hadn't felt the "ache" since getting off the bus and passing a little wind.

It was when I stood up and saw myself in the nearby mirror that my suspect heart actually skipped a beat.

I looked again, not really wanting to. Yes, there it definitely was, a lump in my lower left abdomen. Already in a state of agitation I went into a mind-numbing panic.

Here I was worrying about the old ticker and it was something else entirely. Only one thing for it.

The bus couldn't get me home fast enough. I dashed into the bedroom. Dropped my pants and underpants and there it was. My missing blue sock.