This week I'll be mostly all fingers and one thumb

Ouch.

My weekday apartment is just round the corner from the hospital, so I've always figured that if something dire happened to me during the week, I'd at least be able to drag myself round to the A&E ward with - say - my severed leg in a carrier bag and ask them to stitch it back on for me. For this reason, I haven't bothered getting any plasters or antiseptic cream in, because who needs that when you've got the States of Jersey health service on 24 hour standby.

So a couple of days ago when I cut my thumb on a tin of grapefruit segments, it didn't come as much of a surprise to find that I had no plasters in the place. I checked anyway. This was no ordinary cut - it was a man cut. (You've all seen the 'man cold' bit of video on YouTube that's doing the rounds?)

I was on the verge of putting my severed thumb in a carrier bag to take round to the hospital when I decided instead just to stick the little bit of skin back down again and see if it would stop bleeding. It did. Although it would start again at the drop of a hat: when typing, doing the washing up, putting my shoes on, during meetings about regulatory changes to Foreign Exchange deal confirmation. That kind of stuff.

You take your thumbs for granted, and then having to do things without one of them for a couple of days is a bit of a mare. It makes you wonder how the rest of the animal kingdom get by without their opposable thumbs. I mean, fancy being a cat and only being able to bat at a ping-pong ball, but not being able to flick it with your thumb and put some side spin on it making it curve across the carpet. Or being a cheetah pounding gracefully across the plains hunting down a tasty looking gazelle only to find that you have to claw and bite at your dinner rather than getting a good hold on it like one might with a KFC.

Anyway, I must stop there and get something to wipe all this red stuff off the right hand side of my keyboard.