But there’s a very good reason for arranging that appointment straight away – quite simply, smear tests save lives. NHS cervical screening alone saves as many as 5000 lives in the UK every year. Cervical cancer is one of the few types of cancer which is actually preventable. A smear test works by detecting abnormal cells which are likely to develop into cancer, which means they can be treated BEFORE they ever turn into cancer.

Parenting in 2016. It’s an expensive business. Our local nursery fees are over £16.5k a year (double for two). As a lowly in-house copywriter for a mostly unknown publishing company, this was far more than my annual take-home. Add to that the additional time or expense required to cover inset days, training days, two full weeks over Christmas and all manner of sick days (if a child simply coughs in the vicinity, the shutters come down, gas masks go on and a keyworker paints a red cross on your child’s face).