I am cursed to wear compression socks. Spare a thought for me this summer

I don’t mean to boast, but I’ve got lovely legs. They are easily my best feature. But – there’s a but – while my right leg is simply perfect, and my left leg is good down to the knee, what comes below that is a proper old mess.

It was more than 30 years ago, playing in goal in a cup tie at Amersham Town, that I broke my left leg. “Impressive,” said the radiologist of the X-rays. I spent seven months in plaster and it was a year before I could walk without a stick. Even then, I wasn’t out of the woods.

The varicose veins soon came along thick and fast. I was told I’d have to wear a compression sock for life. In order to avoid that, I had a couple of operations, which helped for a while, but now I’m back to a compression sock. Mine aren’t the kind of things you can just pick up at the airport; oh no. Mine are class 3, the most viciously compressing of socks, available only on prescription or from specialist online suppliers at prodigious cost. It’s as tight, bluntly speaking, as a duck’s arse. To get it on of a morning, I need a tub of Vaseline and three blokes off a local building site. If there’s no one available, I have to fight it on myself, gasping and cursing. It’s a great workout, but a terrible start to the day.

And spare a thought, if you will, for compression sock wearers at this time of year. In shorts – or a skirt or dress, for that matter – there are no two ways about it: they’re not a good look. And the class 3s only come in that awful beige, the ghastly attempt at skin colour that is a match for no one’s skin.

The one consolation is that, while my instrument of torture makes for a terrible start to the day, it is a wonderful way to finish it. Oh, the relief when the bastard thing can be peeled off as I make ready for bed.