Goodly moaning, fellow Gutter dwellers. I greet you well.

I really did my best to get on here yesterday, but I found my domestic duties taking precedence, due to Her Indoors somehow coming by a detached patella.

She struggled through Christmas Day and Boxing Day with it (I am recommending a Victoria Cross), believing it to be a common or garden bursitis.

Not so. It being impractical at this time of year to get a doctor's appointment, I took her to A&E - which was filled to the gunnels with 'flu-stricken foreigners (as I suppose, from their heavily tanned appearance).

It took some time for Her Indoors to be seen, and the detached kneecap diagnosed.

I always thought detached kneecaps were dealt with more or less on the spot, but Her Indoorses insistence on doing everything short of running a marathon over Christmas has caused a lot of swelling, which must be reduced first. I have to take her back in a couple of hours to have the patella put back in place.

Nothing serious, then, just more aggravating, if very painful, for her.

And a lot of housework, for which I have never been trained, for me.

My normal tricks of simply turning the hoover around, or leaving a duster out, so as to feign domestic activity, won't work. She's home, watching.

Closely.

And I am having to help dress her.

Now, fellas, we're very good at undressing women. It is an innate skill that we are born with - but have you every tried dressing one?

You wouldn't believe the discoveries I've been making. There are all sorts of unsuspected and mysterious things to be done, that are entirely in contention with the natural inclinations of a man.

What a man thinks, and has thought since puberty struck, should be taken off he finds must be put on.

It is all very perplexing. And the man, poor creature, must then go about for the remainder of the day haunted by the fact that he has dressed that which should be undressed. His friends would be shocked, were they ever to find out, and would certainly shun him in case of homosexual tendencies.

So here I am, about to run the hoover over the carpets, then to engage in that to which I am constitutionally unfitted, as I ready Her Indoors for a return to the hospital.

Woe, woe, and thrice woe.