The other week I had to undergo some first aid refresher training, which brought to light just how little I’d had to use my life-saving skills since I first qualified a year or so ago.

Aside from a colleague who asked for his hand to be bandaged – and, to be honest, I think he was just after some attention – I’ve not had to spring into action very much at all. Which, of course, is as it should be. No-one wants anyone to get hurt just so I can get some practice in.

It did, however, make me wonder just how well I’d translate what I’d learned in the classroom into real life. I mean, it’s all well and good pounding away on top of a plastic dummy (stop sniggering at the back) but in the heat of the moment of a proper emergency, would I just go to pieces?

Funnily enough, the weekend after that refresher course, my first aid experience was actually called upon in a small way. I was watching the boy playing football on Sunday morning when from the corner of my eye I saw a lady just keel over.

After that split second of thinking “I’m sure someone else will sort this out if I just stand here”, I quite literally sprung into action, along with several other parents who were watching the game. To be brutally honest, we were getting beaten so it was somewhat of a relief to be able to concentrate on something else.

The lady, who was in her 70s, seemed to have fainted momentarily. She wasn’t unconscious, which meant I wasn’t able to put her into the recovery position – I admit a very slight pang of disappointment here – and she did want to get up.

I was having none of it. While others telephoned the ambulance, I insisted she lay flat on her back on the damp grass and made her put her feet up on a foldaway chair liberated from another nearby granny.

Ignoring her insistent pleas of “I think I’m quite all right now” I talked through her recent medical history, asked what she’d had for breakfast and – because it’s important to be friendly to stop the patient worrying – inquired if she’d had a skinful the night before.

The paramedics took over and I stepped back, glad that when an emergency occurred I at least wasn’t frozen to the spot or running in the other direction.

Then, lo and behold, on Tuesday night as my daughter and I were walking to pick up the boy from Scouts we came across a man lying prone and motionless across the pavement. I pelted over to the man, yelling: “It’s OK mate, I’m a first aider! Don’t move! What’s happened?”

He peered up at me from beneath the front bumper of his car, a torch in one hand and a spanner in the other. “I’m fine, mate,” he said.

Still, better safe than sorry, eh?