FOR just about the first time in my many aeons at the Courant , I was obliged to ring in sick this week. I feel perfectly fine, but my wonky knee and hip are proving sadly inadequate for the thrice daily scaling of the daunting south face of Hallgate.

I have trotted up that slope like Nijinsky for well over 40 years, but in recent weeks, it has become as formidable as climbing K2 with a Derby winner on my back.

A two-minute trot has become 10 minutes spent swimming in a black sea of pain, which the finest medical brains in the North-East – I hope – are trying to solve.

I am also considering suing Hexham Town Council for reducing me to this sorry state with its multi-coloured car parking spaces swap shop, which continues to confuse and confound.

However, thanks to the miracles of new technology, I am able to stay in touch with the outside world from Hextol Towers, without being lured into the living death of daytime television.

It has been my practice every Monday to put out the wheelie bin before setting off for work, but given my enforced idleness, I allowed myself an extra half hour in bed this week.

As I was considering putting one foot out of the duvet, there was the hoot and clatter of the big wagon reversing into the estate, and the Hextol bin went uncollected.

Some men also turned up to do something so important to the estate drains that it required half a dozen burly blokes, several vans and a generator, although the task seemed to require five men to stand around with arms folded, while another was lowered down the manhole.

It was difficult to know who was more distressed – Mrs Hextol; at the disruption caused to the carefully arranged gravel beds disguising the two manholes, or the dog who was in a paroxysm of bristling outrage at these yellow coated invaders of her jealously guarded territory.

As I write, it is debatable as to who would do the workmen the more damage if they fail to put every tiny pebble back exactly where they found it.

My only previous spells off work without being on holiday were two three week absences when I was the innocent victim of road accidents.

The first came over 40 years ago, when I was acting as despatch rider on my BSA 650 taking copy from the office of the Macclesfield Advertiser to our head office 12 miles away in Stockport, when a car shot out of a side road and sent me soaring many feet into the air.

It smarted a bit – well a lot actually – when I landed after what seemed an eternity on my hip, and my legs were a bit of a mess. I was cosseted by Mrs Hextol – we had been married less than year – and she nursed me back to full fitness and work.

About a decade later, I foolishly agreed to take part in a rallying event at the old Lambton Lion Park, and ended up in a 140mph collision which saw me dragged unconscious and bleeding from the twisted wreck.

I was a bit dodgy on my pins again for the next three weeks, and thought I’d get some fresh air towards the end of the second week by going fishing, very much against Mrs Hextol’s advice.

I waded out into the North Tyne, and was fine for 20 minutes, but then came over all queasy.

The 10 feet back to the bank over slippery rocks suddenly felt like 10 miles to my shaking legs, and when I finally made it back I lay on the bank for quite some time contemplating my foolishness.

After both accidents, I was warned by the medics that I would probably pay for my injuries in heavy coin in later life, so the chickens would appear to have come squawking home to roost,

Having me home during the week is proving a trial for the saintly Mrs Hextol, who is not used to having her daily routine interrupted by the gasps, groans and requests for application of Fiery Jack from her incapacitated other half.

And try explaining to two four year olds that at the moment Granda cannot get down on all fours and play horsies or whirl them round by one arm, and one leg in an aeroplane spin. They are though fascinated by the crutches with which I have been issued, and are proving significantly more of a hindrance than a help.