his week I broke my wrist and dislocated my thumb while filming a bike race segment for a show I’m working on. It’s too embarrassing to go into details, but let’s just say that the disparity between potential danger and subsequent injury has never been wider. Nobody on the shoot foresaw any possible way anyone could hurt themselves, and so I was faced with the humiliating implication that my lack of coordination was something not even a detailed risk assessment could account for. It’s difficult to know how you will react to injury until it happens, and I can report that it turns out I overreact massively. I saw my thumb looking as if it wanted to emigrate from my hand, and I had to be given gas and air. My wife didn’t even have that when she gave birth to each of our three boys. I walked off the site to be taken to hospital, where I was put in a plaster cast and sent home. I’m going to be absolutely honest: I was quite looking forward to the sympathy when I got back, and much of my journey was spent practising sorry-for-myself faces and holding up my broken hands like a sad T rex. On opening the door, my wife’s first question was whether I could wipe my own arse. I said I hoped so. I was pretty sure I could, but part of me was tempted to pretend I couldn’t, just once, for a laugh. But I wasn’t sure she would find it funny, so decided to leave it. I have since discovered – and this may sound like the least insightful observation on anatomy – that opposable thumbs are really quite useful. I am unable to button up trousers, though that rarely comes up while working from home. I am unable to open boxes, which thanks to my online shopping addiction has been happening a lot since the lockdown; I do not have enough strength in my hands to turn the key to our front door. My wife has pointed out that it’s not my inability to do these things that’s annoying – it’s the fact that I seem to be enjoying it. The most upsetting thing in this whole saga has been the dispensing of hot sauce. I use a squeezy bottle of hot sauce on pretty much everything bar my breakfast cereal (and once on that, too, just to see). I don’t think I possess talent in many areas, but one of the things I am exceptional at is ascertaining exactly how much hot sauce is required to be squeezed out for the amount of food on the plate. There are a number of factors to be considered, including absorption, structural integrity, and level of flavour intrinsic to the foodstuffs. I have been forced to ask my wife to do the honours, and it has been a shambles. The sauce wastage has been criminal. I haven’t said that to her directly, but I think she can tell when she clears the plates away. (Obviously I am completely unable to assist, because of my injuries.) Today I had an online doctor’s appointment. It’s the first time I’ve been naked from the waist down with a doctor without being asked. It felt liberating, but midway through I became paranoid that somehow he knew. He told me that the fracture wasn’t too bad, and that I could lose the plaster cast and move to a splint, which would give me more use of my hand. This runs the very real risk of ruining the Holiday From Helping Out that I have been enjoying over the last few days. Still, it might be worth it for the return to hot sauce normality.