Name: Grandpa legs.

Age: They’re a new thing. They sound like an old thing, but they’re a new thing.

Appearance: Yucky.

Don’t tell me – this is what all the cool kids want now, isn’t it? Really skinny legs, like Grandpa’s. It’s one up from the thigh gap, the bikini bridge and whatever they hashtagged the mons pubis during those six weeks when everyone thought that was the new fatty site of interest. No, not quite.

Oh. What, then? Demand is growing among men for varicose vein removal. They wish to wear shorts, and go cycling and swimming without feeling self-conscious about their knotty blue legs.

Never say “knotty blue legs” to me again. OK, sorry. But that’s what’s happening. A Staffordshire clinic says that men now account for a third of its patients, up from a fifth in 2012.

Vanity, thy name is Clive! Why Clive?

I don’t know. I hear “shorts” and “knotty blue legs”, and I think “Clive”. I see.

I should have just gone with “How vein!” I think maybe, yes.

Isn’t it a massive operation? I remember when my actual grandpa had his done. It was a general-anaesthetic-and-weeks-of-recovery job. The technology has improved since days of vascular yore. It’s now usually laser treatment under a local anaesthetic. You can get it done in your lunch hour.

And still have time for a sandwich? I don’t know about the sandwich. But if you’re getting your legs lasered to look good in shorts, you’re probably off carbs anyway.

Good point. So, is this progress? Men starting to feel insecure about their looks as women have done for centuries? Or is it not? It is not.

That was easy. Progress is not to be measured in the increase of neuroses or the indulgence of absurd vanities. It is to be measured in the pumping of healthy blood through healthy veins into active, joyful old age, not the ripping out of body parts to serve a mindless new aesthetic.

I see. Also, missing out on your sandwich at lunchtime is just stupid.

Do say: “I love an intact circulatory system in a man!”

Don’t say: “I don’t like to be able to see it pulsing away just under the skin, though – sort it out, could you?”