I’m afraid it’s turning into tales from the hospital bedside at this end readers.

As soon as my poor old feet touch the lovely comfy carpets of home, another medical disaster comes calling and I find myself being whisked off to hospital again.

So, here I am again and, as it looks like I’ll be here for some time, this visit, I shall be writing to you for the next several weeks from the wonderful Occupational Therapy Department at the good old Oswestry Orthopaedic – bless ‘em and love ‘em – who are kindly allowing me to compose my weekly rant on their computers. They’re trusting sorts around here . . .

But it takes more than hospitalisation to silence me, folks!

So – and I promise this will be the last time I mention the medical for a while – but to keep you all in the chaotic loop of my lunatic life, I’ve managed to contract the thing anyone with artificial joints most fears . . . a multiple joint infection. And the more replacement joints you have, the more fearful you are. This is exactly the monster I was referring to when I wrote the other week that ‘infection is the monster that chases me through my nightmares’.

I wouldn’t mind but I’d only been home from the last surgical saga a few days and was looking forward to getting my abandoned life back in order and spending some time at home when, lo and behold, I woke up one morning with infection raging through my mutinous body. Several bits of me had turned impressively scarlet and I knew with grim certainty that I’d just picked up my one-way ticket back to hospital.

That was a week ago now and I’ve since had a knee, an elbow (had to be the brand new one, didn’t it?), and a shoulder surgically washed out and a permanent port fitted into my neck to take strong antibiotics straight into my heart. Yikes. I asked a nurse why they can’t be given through a vein in my arm and she said, “because we’re basically giving you surgical Domestos and it burns little veins out within a couple of doses.”

I decided not to ask any more questions!

So there you are, the latest entry in my catalogue of calamities. It’s a good job I’m hospital-hardy, or hearing that I might be here for six weeks could have been a tough one for a fidget-pants like me to swallow.

Luckily hospital has it’s good sides; free chocolate bourbons, complete idleness and permission to wear pyjamas in the daytime . . . Sounding institutionalised?

No, just plain old lazy I’m afraid, but it helps!