The best bit about being told that you don’t have cancer is clearly, that you…Don’t. Have. Cancer.

Unfortunately, the not-so-best bit is that the clinic where you go to receive that news is full of other people who might not be leaving with the same news. And the thirty metre walk through to the exit, past those eleven people whose lives may be about to change forever is perhaps the most unsettling and saddening moment of what has just been a very unsettling few weeks.

Mostly, I’m not worried about getting old. These day I worry more about things like losing my job at 56 than I did at 36. My commitments might be fewer, but the chances of finding anyone else to employ me grow slimmer every year, despite a track record of making my employers wealthier and their cultures broader.

Then there’s the creeping hypochondria. When I first planned this website I was going to have a ‘lump of the month’ section in the menu to account for and explain the physical abnormality that was bothering me most at the moment. Up till a couple of years back my only health concerns were the occasional backache and paranoia that my unerupted wisdom teeth on the right would give the same problems as the ones on the left had a few years back.

And then came 2018. Watching my dad pass away with zero dignity in a hospital that didn’t really care. And my routine hernia repair went wrong, bringing complications and my first trip in an ambulance. The doctors fixed the emergency, but there’s still some funky plumbing and ever since, I’ve been jumpy about the next big health scare.

Remove the freak accidents, Covid-19 and being mauled by a bear (unlikely in a Sussex Tesco) and the modern human being is basically left to two miserable endings; cancer or dementia. My mum died of one and my dad of the other and neither made it easy to pick a favourite.

I have absolutely no fear of actually being dead. I’ve enjoyed my time, done more than I ever hoped and watched my step-son grow into a far better man than me. The world won’t miss me, nor I it. But, while death is fine, the process of dying looks increasingly miserable as I get closer to it.

So, what can we do as beings who are lasting longer and increasingly expected to live by a series of oak-aged, beard-oiled, So-Cal acronyms – YOLO, FOMO and TIFO (which I just made up – ‘Till I Fall Over’)?

Part of me feels like I should be winding down and looking for ways to enjoy life like I always wanted to. But I’m not really sure what that relaxing thing would be.

My biggest remaining ambition is to create an army of giant ants and take over the world, but that’s gonna be a full-time thing and I’ll need an extinct volcano, some start-up funding and maybe a laser beam. Until I decide whether Patreon or Gofundme are the most appropriate places to raise a few million for the Chitin-coated Ant-based requirements stage, I’ll probably stick with being a manager in insurance.

But I did have one idea on the way home from the clinic that might solve the ‘not afraid of death, but I’d like to avoid the dying please’ quandry. It’s a new business called Five-Fifteen, inspired by the film Quadrophenia, which for my generation was something of a rite-of-passage.

The start and end of the film sees our hero Jimmy at his wits end at Beachy Head. In the final scene (spoiler alert) we see the scooter he stole from Sting go over the cliff and smash to pieces on the rocks. The assumption is that Jimmy went with it, but if you were watching carefully at the start of the film instead of trying to get your hand under a lumpy teenage jumper, you might think differently.

Anyhow, my plan is to offer a service for the terminally-ill Generation Qs who would rather die with the wind in their hair than gurgling swear words at the patronising staff of a nursing home. A sort of octane-boosted Dignitas, if you please.

Customers of 5.15 get picked up from home in a Mad-Max replica V8 Interceptor (mixing movie icons is fine here because there were no decent motors in Quadrophenia) in the middle of the night, plied with Jack Daniels and Newkie Brown rocktails (the working man’s Margherita) and driven to Beachy Head. On arrival they are given a choice of an old Vespa or Triumph Bonneville, the appropriate mods or rockers clothing, some suitably strong ‘medication’ and, at the appointed hour of, er, 5.15 are pointed in the direction of the cliffs.

Given the choice of withering away your dignity with dementia or feeling your body cancerously consume itself from within, then a couple of laps of the clifftop, followed by one final moment of freedom as you hurtle towards the cliffs at 37mph (Vespas might be cool but they’ve never been quick) is surely a more dignified way to end it all.

Maybe it’s a suggestion too far to wonder about having a camera halfway down the cliff to get a snap of grandad’s last wide-eyed smile as he plummets past the Polaroid – in the style of a theme park rollercoaster – but it would be good to have something other than the broken handlebars for the kids to put on the mantlepiece.

Is it a bad thing to think like this? Are we allowed to be flippant about our last few moments on earth? After this week, I’d say yes because if the only thing we allow ourselves is fear of dying then everything that happens in the last third of our lives is affected by that.

And the truth is once you conquer that thought, then the other mid-life stuff gains new perspective too. Seriously, does a wonky wisdom tooth really matter that much? Would losing my job at 56 really be something so bad that it has to consume so much of my thinking? And should I not be spending my lump-free moments making the most of the good stuff that goes on around me?

Next month, my new idea for a Saturday night TV series – Itch of the Day, featuring misbehaving former footballers and rock band front men and their STDs.

See you on the cliffs at half four (got to leave time for a final emergency piddle)?