This column first appeared here, in the Sunday Times on 21st June 2020.

A while ago, I found a lump under my right breast. Wait, don’t go, I swear you’re safe, this column isn’t going where you think it’s going.

I was living in a foreign country at the time. The kind of foreign where nobody sells the tea I recognise, the language looks like hieroglyphics, the directions inexplicably use north, south, east and west instead of right and left. And where I didn’t have a doctor or any medic...