Mr Vroom, the unlikely lustful man living down the lane and at the bottom of the hill, is not the only one I have weighed up as a potential candidate to estinguish my ardour. I have noticed that the flames which ignite my spirit blaze the stronger in a directly proportionate way to my loneliness.

In the middle of last year's coldest spell, when the temperature outside was getting very close to the one in our marital relationship, I fell ill with a mysterious pain in my chest; I had hardly ever paid attention to having a chest at all, what with the minuscule size of my feminine attributes in the area, so I got rather worried about having a heart attack, on top of being surprised about having a heart at all.           

My new doctor is roughly my age, and sporting the raw signs of somebody who has no children of his own: for a start, he shows immense patience with mine (I am always astounded when that happens); secondly, he genuinely appears to be interested in me as a person rather than the parent of those two pests.

On that fateful afternoon when we ran out of oil, the AGA gave up its ghost and I resorted to the hair-dryer to stop our extremities from developing frost-bites, I was feeling rather sorry for myself. 

He touched me lightly on my shoulders to turn me towards him, the better to listen to my rattling chest. 'I am going to send you for a little monitoring', he soothed in my willing ear. 'And if anything wrong is picked up, I shall have those blue lights outside quicker than you can say 'hospital'.' 

My body was electrified by his fingers: why bother with an ECG when you have handsome doctors doing all the work? Moreover, it was the tone of genuine concern that really switched on my imagination. Are all women attention-seekers? How do I know? I do not pursue members of my same sex, but I would guess that a little attention is like a drop of elixir to reinvigorate a lonely soul. 

Dr Touch did not and will not know, of course. His otherwise brisk manners had something clumsy and childish about it, that made me feel like I wanted to strip off in front of him and sit on his lap, just to embarrass his public persona. 

Unlike my fitness instructor, all muscles and taut limbs, Dr Touch had the humility and tangibility of a real man, with a little podginess around his waist and a receding hairline. Handsome, but real. 

I gave no outwardly signs of appreciation, bar a tiny quiver. My ECG was fine - which made me wonder about how much machines pick up from a human body, when obviously my emotions and physical arousal had gone undetected. Still, at least I know that I have a perfectly working heart,  and a sexy GP. 

Was it all in my mind? Perhaps. The best affairs always are.