Yesterday, I experienced paraspinal lumbar injections with the benefit of full consciousness and a fair view of the near-live xrays guiding the surgeon's enormous needles. I realised, again, that the horrible but brilliant 'Green Wing' is in fact a documentary. Erudite observations on right L1 vertebral facets are interspersed with bickering about whose turn it is to buy the bourbons, who Crispin from Radiology is boffing, what else Joachim Phoenix has been in (and he did sing those Johnny Cash songs himself you know), and exclamations like, "no, just keep pushing it in 'til you hit bone." I suppose we've all been on first dates like that.

I was a big, brave boy and focussed my attention on the pretty, wavy lines on the ECG. Oddly, my pulse stayed around 60bpm. I get more excited than that when Simon Cowell is threatened by some geordie pit-bull whose 30 stone, walrus-voiced daughter has failed to appreciate the Wildean wit on which her deranged dreams have been impaled.

The local anaesthetic and steroids injected into my spine didn't achieve a great deal beyond making me walk like Douglas Bader for the rest of the day. What, some kind soul said to me, as I was tottering and teetering around the ward in a backless gown, enjoying the cool draught on my nethers, contemplating my numb legs and the news that my lumbar spine was more compressed and curved than it was a year ago, would Action Man do?

This is, you'll understand, an arbitrary segue into something that has been troubling me for no good reason. The fact is, I'm not sure what Action Man would do, and this makes someone of my age feel adrift.

He seems to have lost his way since the end of the Cold War. Once he had his dignity, his NATO jumper, his DMS boots and his FAL rifle. Look left and right, find the Germans / Russians, lock and load, rappel from the Christmas tree to an enfilade position, butt of the FAL hard into the shoulder, commando grip on trigger and barrel, drop the filthy Hun / Red with a double-tap, pull the cord in your back for a valedictory flourish, then back to Sindy's / Barbie's tea-rooms for sexless banter.

This behaviour belonged to an age when East and West were organised in their hatred and followed the rules. We knew where to point our guns, tanks and ICBM's. Anything more complicated than that could be sorted out by a few cryptic words from George Smiley at a dead-letter drop on Hampstead Heath.

Now what have we got? Spooks are so demonstrative and urgent all the time, never finding time to play chess with double-agents in Soho attic rooms. As for Spooks Code 9, they're like S Club Juniors to Smiley's Bob Dylan. Such are the thoughts that mill around in the forebrain while the hospital porter gamely pushes you the ten miles or so to theatre while reciting his 10,000 word thesis on why static caravans are the future of holidays.

These days, Action Man, stripped of his military certainties and still denied genitalia, is flouncing around in baggy pants and Oakleys, rescuing dolphins from tuna nets, smuggling tofu into school canteens, trying to stay on a skateboard and looking like someone's dad dancing at a wedding reception. The peace dividend really isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Random ramble ends. I think the opiates are wearing off.