I am always doing rather silly things.

But on Wednesday, in the car park of the place where I work , I did a spectacularly silly thing which threatened to engulf my weekend.

What happened was this: I arrived late on Wednesday morning. The world was hectic, the level crossing was closed, the traffic stacked up. By the time I arrived in my school’s oversubscribed car park there was one slim car parking space left.

Regulars will recall that I do not drive a slim car. I drive a very large and battle weary people carrier which is wide and proud.

We bought it in July, and I have become a little smug about parking. I can get that baby into any space, just you watch me.

So: I took up the gauntlet, and began manoevring into it with infinite patience and newly acquired accuracy. Very soon, I was sandwiched neatly in.

Now to get out of the car.

This posed a problem. The two front doors open outwards, and it is many long years since I was a size zero.

Actually, it is never. It would be easier for an elephant to slip gracefully past the Wedgewood display in Harrods than for me to inch through the gap between my door and the next car.

But I had a plan B. My bus has very impressive back doors. You press a button, and they glide back to free any housewife-in-a-tizzy with Jeeves-like assurance.

I know, I thought, I’ll just open the back door and climb out through that. I can reach in to get my bags and be in school in seconds.

This I did, not without some contortionism.

Getting the bags out was a challenge worthy of one of those team-building weekends that multi-national companies pay so much for.

I could make money out of this, I thought, briefly.

I crab-stepped my way between the two cars, stolidly ignoring the fact that my stomach was taking a lot of quantitive easing.

Now for the boot.

It was time to get all my enormous files from the cavernous space at the back of the car: the bibles of my overstuffed profession.

I was flustered. I was late. Sandwiched between the school fence and the back of my bus, I was conscious of curious children in the nearby playground,  drifting over to investigate my plight more closely.

I raised the back hatch- a weighty monolith by anyone’s standards- and managed to lever out all the paperwork I needed.

And then I pulled the hatch down, with jolly-hockeysticks gusto, onto my skull.

For the rest of the day, I sported an egg-shaped bump on my head.

On Thursday, I woke up feeling really quite original. I think it’s called concussion. But I elected to ignore it because casualty is time consuming, un-family-friendly and inconvenient.

By Friday, things were getting uncomfortable. But I continued with my policy of tactical ignorance.

This morning, I could ignore it no longer. One call to a doctor and I was dispatched with all speed to Casualty.

Three hours later I was home again, with a box of pills and a diagnosis of concussion.

It’s miraculous, this age, with everything they know about health. Four hundred years ago I would have had a colourful choice of healthcare, depending on how much money I had in my pocket.

With enough hard cash, I could summon the physician, who would have been attached to a great seat of learning, with a degree and a license.

He often wore some strange clothes, including  a bird-like mask to protect him from diseases: and would be as likely to consult one’s astrological chart as he was to look at the symptoms in front of his nose.

But the middle classes would have headed straight for the apothecary. He, too, had his own accreditation: he would have been a member of a guild, a craftsman, who knew everything there was to know about herbs, and would use them to help. This could be useful, but it was also open to some quackery.

And it was the apothecary who supplied poison when it was needed, as poor Romeo found out  so fatally.

If I had needed any surgery, it was straight to the local barber, who would saw anything off for the price of a pint.

I exaggerate, of course. I’m sure he asked much more than that.

Hospitals are funny places. Sitting there in casualty, I recalled many of the other times I walked through the doors of a hospital.

I never really knew our National Health Service until Maddie made her presence felt.

When it was time for her to be born, I was living at the foot of Dartmoor, near Plymouth.

She wasn’t for coming out, and we spent a happy day, after I was given the drugs to hurry things up, in a nice maternity room, talking animatedly to a succession of really interesting midwives.

But still, nothing happened.

As the witching hour aproached, staff became serious. It was time to bring baby out, whether baby liked it or not. An operation was in order.

On trooped a crack team of baby deliverers, all Navy surgeons and anaesthetists, every one equipped with rapier-sharp wit.

We brightened up. We were in humorous hands.

A delighted Phil was dressed in greens, and could have passed for one of the surgical team. This suited him very nicely.

The next hour was a string of one-liners and wisecracks which engrossed me absolutely, so that I laughed my way through my first serious op.

Anaesthetic has its uses.

They gave Phil one job. When we pull the baby out, they said, you’ll be the first to spot its sex.

You must shout, they told him, with jubilation: “It’s a boy!” or alternatively:”It’s a girl!”, depending on who emerges, bawling, into life.

Phil stood, primed and ready, as the surgeons worked their magic.

And as Maddie emerged, scarlet and furious at her change in circumstances, he shouted with all the pomp and theatre of a brand new father: “It’s a boy!”….

And the rest is history.