Would you? No, really. Would you?

So, following on from my last post, and the realisation that my skinny jeans will never fit me again - not because I have a few pounds to shift around the middle but because I am over 40, have had 2 children, and my shape is now pretty much 'my shape', dammit, unless I stop going to the gym in which case things are only going to get worse - I have a question for you.

Plastic surgery.

Would you?

I'm asking because, out of the blue, one particular provider of this service has started advertising on the radio. Perhaps this not quite as shocking as the 'Want Longer Lasting Sex?' ads I first spotted in Australia last May and which have now been sighted in London, heaven help us, but still, it is a bit of a departure from the more usual holiday / breakfast cereal / mortgage provider ads that break up the music on Capital FM in the mornings.

It's been a few years, I admit, since adverts for the Harley Clinic escaped from the back page of womens' magazines and started scaling the walls of the escalators on the Tube, but radio ads? This is surely just one more sign that these sort of procedures have stopped being the sort of thing that only film stars and footballers' wives indulge in, and that they are now much more mainstream.

In fact, now I think of it, I've lost count of the number of ladies in my gym changing room who flounce about in their dental-floss pants looking far perkier than they have a god-given right to.

And, out at dinner with my mum and sister yesterday evening, the subject came up again. My mum - wisely - kept schtum on this one. I say 'wisely' because the woman has been blessed with inordinately good genes and inhuman willpower when faced with bread. If I make it to 64 looking as good as she does (which is probably around 14 years younger than she should), I will be grateful indeed. And I will also have given up chocolate and chips, and let's be honest; that's never gonna happen.

However, my sister and I - both blessed with the willpower of your average donkey faced with a punnet of strawberries - are much more open to the idea. After a few minutes thought (oh, OK, I've been thinking about it for ages), I decided I would go for a boob job, and possibly a face lift, but definitely no more. Definitely. (Though I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few thread veins that appeared post the boys. And... oh, you get the picture. I have a list).

And Footballer's Knees wanted something completely different, but I won't tell you what this was until the end as it makes too good a closing line. And don't jump ahead!

One thing my sis and I were agreed on though is that what is stopping us right now - apart from the lack of cash and a subsequent lifestyle in which we could show our 'home improvements' off - is the fact that you need to go under a general anaesthetic for these operations. You can die under GA's. Or, almost worse, wake up, and not actually be able to move but be totally conscious and feel everything.

I know that's supposed to be a myth, but I used to work with a woman that it happened to, so let me tell you when I had my appendectomy 18 months ago it was top of mind as I lay on the gurney outside the operating room and they made me count backwards from 10... What always amazed me is that this thing that happened to my ex-colleague was not the first thing she told people when she met them. You know; "Hi, my name's X, and I woke up halfway through an operation and could feel and hear everything! Nice to meet you, by the way."

So, I'm wondering. Plastic surgery - and I'm not talking botox or fillers here. If you could, would you?

(Oh, and Footballer's Knees is just a big show-off. Whilst I was talking about breast implants? She was keener on the idea of a breast reduction.

How we came from the same gene pool, I'll never know.)