Surgical Television

My sore eye recovered, but I thought I'd better remain on the couch for a few days, watching TV, in case I had a dangerous relapse. While idly channel surfing, I came across a reality show about a cosmetic surgeon in California. It's not the sort of thing I'd normally watch, but at the exact moment I tuned in, a woman who was about to have breast enlargement was sitting with a group of friends, all of them Californian glamour models. And the models all removed their tops to demonstrate how good their own breast enlargements had been. So I thought I really should keep watching the programme for a while, for research purposes.

Unfortunately, the show moved swiftly on to the operation itself. I was surprised to see the surgeon making an incision in the woman's navel. Then he slid a tube from her belly button right up inside her abdomen and into her breasts, and inserting the silicon from there. Apparently this produces less scarring. It was however, rather grisly to watch. In fact by this time I was regretting watching it at all. The programme tricked me. One minute it was all 'Hey look at my breasts' and the next minute it was gruesome surgical procedures.

However, if a character in any of my books ever needs a boob job, I now have a lot of background detail to write about. Personally, I think an entry point underneath the arm seemed a less troublesome approach than going in through the navel.

* Says new breast-enlargement expert Dr Millar *

When Agrivex goes shopping with her Aunt Malveria in Camden Market, I think she'd take her new clothes home in this bag -