I MAY look as though I have come off second best in a duel with Machine Gun Kelly, but I am pleased to say that the pending surgery I spoke of last week appears to have been concluded satisfactorily.

I have been left with what look suspiciously like four ragged bullet holes stitched across my belly, but the troublesome gallstones which have bothered me hugely for the past several years have been whisked away as I slumbered like a little fat baby.

Not so long ago, the procedure would have seen me kippered, with a vast rent in my side where the surgeons would delve and fish away in my bodily cavity to their hearts’ content, before tossing aside the unwanted offal and cobbling me back together again.

Now, they just poke four small holes in one’s belly, into which they insert what look suspiciously like drainage rods, along with a little camera, via which they can lop off the gallbladder and drag it out through the belly button.

The old way meant a stay of several days in hospital, with a large and ugly scar as a reminder, but the modern keyhole method usually sees folk packed off home the same day, with four little scars rather than one big one.

I fully expect to be passing these off as bullet holes to credulous great grandchildren in the years ahead, along with some unlikely tale of derring do, unless the present grandchildren let slip that my tales of my youth are not always fully kosher.

“I used to believe that when you got lost in the woods once, half a dozen owls picked you up in their talons and carried you home,” said a granddaughter with a shake of her head,

I was booked in for my operation for noon, and sternly resisted Mrs Hextol’s entreaties to take washing and shaving accoutrements, pyjamas, slippers, dressing gown and the like on the grounds that I would definitely be home in good time for tea.

My only concession to hospital protocol was that I donned my very best and newest pair of underpants, for everyone knows you cannot go into hospital wearing suspect undies.

The pristine pants stayed in place for as long as it took to enter the ward, where I was instructed to whip them off immediately and replace them with a pair of unisex paper knickers, which then spent my entire stay trying to work themselves ever deeper into my fundament.

Because I was having a general anaesthetic, I was instructed to have nothing to eat after 7 o’clock on the morning of my admission – and that day I didn’t wake up until 7.10am.

I didn’t think much of my enforced starvation at the time, but as the day wore on, the pangs began to strike, especially when the nurse told me that morning surgery had over-run and it might be teatime before I was wheeled into theatre.

I just lay there twiddling my thumbs as time slid by like slow motion molasses, and was grateful to the kindly nurses who brought me reading material of the kind you only find in hospitals – ancient Country Lifes, a hefty volume listing caravan sites throughout Europe, and a treatise on the black-tailed godwit in an earnest bird book.

I devoured them all, but the literary intake failed to assuage my hunger, and I was even thinking of eating the troublesome paper pants when the call finally came at around 5.30pm.

I half expected them to say I was being sent home, but they were not so cruel, and I was soon sedated and stretched out for the operation to proceed.

I woke up to the news that I was to be kept in overnight, and through my drug-induced haze, I am sure I heard Mrs Hextol shouting in triumph: “I told you you should have taken your wash bag!”

I was allowed home the next morning, but not without a final drama.

The cannula used to infuse drugs via the back of my hand was left in situ until the last minute, and I asked a nurse to remove it.

This she did, applying a thick wad of lint and a plaster to my hand, but after a minute or so, I glanced down and saw I was liberally fountaining blood, which had drenched my trousers, shirt, the seat I was sitting on, the floor and much of the rest of the ward.

Hasty patching was required before I was finally allowed home.