It's only a little lump, probably a spot, so there's no need to worry about it ... but I will, until my doctor has given it the once over.

"Looks to me like a spot, could be an insect bite," he'll say. Or that's what I hope he'll say and then, reassured, I'll apologise for wasting his time.

What I don't want to hear are the words that have been buzzing around in my head over the weekend: "Hmmm, don't like the look of that. Have you been out in the sun recently?"

"Yes, yes of course I've been out in the sun recently. Who hasn't?" I'll think but won't say.

Instead I'll admit that yes, I have been out in the sun, and yes, I did get a wee bit sunburnt, which is why bits of my facial skin are presently peeling off and dropping like confetti on his surgery floor.

I would probably be in his surgery right now, hopefully being put out of my misery, were it not for the fact that Monday was a bank holiday so I couldn't make an appointment.

Instead I've been obsessively monitoring the lump's progress. Last thing at night I carefully examine it under my reading lamp. Is it getting bigger? Redder? Lumpier?

Then I say my prayers, the prayers I only say when I'm confronted by possible evidence of my own mortality.

"Dear Lord, sorry I'm sometimes a bit sharp with The Mother but I honestly do my best to be a decent human being under very trying circumstances, especially now this lump's come up on my arm and I'm just a bit worried about what it might be ..."

Then I go to sleep and in the morning we go through the entire ritual again (minus the prayers). Is the lump bigger? Redder? Lumpier?

"Why are you scratching your arm?" says The Mother over breakfast. "You'll make it sore - and haven't we got enough flakes of your skin on the carpet already?"

I don't like to mention the lump. The last time I found one, on my neck, and went to see my doctor, I was told it was probably a "fatty lump".

"Well I could have told you that," The Mother had said when I'd reported back. "Fancy wasting the doctor's time for something like that."

When I told her I'd been sent to the hospital for an X-ray, just to make sure (and yes, it was a fatty lump), she went on and on about the part I, and others like me, were playing in the downfall of the NHS.

So, I'm not expecting any sympathy from that quarter but this time The Mother has some practical advice.

"That looks like a heat lump or an insect bite," she says as I continue scratching. "Go put some calamine lotion on it. It'll be gone by tomorrow."

Oh, to have The Mother's simple trust that all will work out well.

When I think she's not looking, I find my copy of the Pears Medical Encyclopaedia on the bookshelves.

I start to browse. Here we are in the M section.

"What are you looking up?" says The Mother who has appeared unexpectedly at my shoulder.

"M for melanoma," I say unhappily. Well, a trouble shared and all that.

"You'd be better off looking under H," The Mother replies briskly. "H for hypochondria."