“Dear loving Aunt Aggie, Please help! For the last year I've suffered from terrible incontinence. Whenever I am out shopping I have to rush home for the toilet. It's embarrassing. One of these days I'm worried I'll be ‘caught short’ and end up wetting myself. What's worse is that I'm only 45, I think I'm far too young to have this problem. I'm too embarrassed to go to our family doctor, and I can't face telling my husband. What do you suggest?” — from Desperate Dilly, 45, London
Loving Aunt Aggie replies: I sympathise, dear, I really do. Don't feel too bad about it, incontinence is a common problem, and can even effect younger people. So it's not unusual for a much older woman like yourself to get caught short, and it's a question of knowing how long to be out and about. Try not going too far from home or if visiting a strange town make sure you have a map of all the local toilets in the area.
Alternatively you could use incontinence pads, but I suspect you've already tried these unsuccessfully and that your friends and family stay away from you for the smell, in which case there's not a lot you can do except stay in the house next to the toilet bowl and keep a bucket of disinfectant and a mop handy.
Hopefully the neighbours might get used to the smell emitting from your house and not complain for some time to the Environmental Health Department, who incidentally are authorized to alert other authorities such as Social Services. They can easily have you forcefully removed from your home and put in suitable alternative accommodation, where you will have to spend the rest of your days being looked after by qualified staff until the funeral undertaker arrives.
Don't worry, I'm sure your family will still come and visit you, although I doubt they'll want to spend much time with a smelly old woman who wets herself.