“I seemed to fall over quite a lot when I was in my fifties,” said the housemate as she patched me up after my latest tumble. “Maybe it’s an age thing.”

“It’s not an age thing,” I snapped. “The first one was a loose slab and and this one was a patch of extra slippery mud.”

“Maybe,” she smiled adding an extra strip of plaster to my thumb with a stunning lack of sympathy.

Hoping for a little more consideration I picked up the phone to speak to The Mother who I knew - or at least hoped - would be a touch more caring.

“What happened?” she asked, once we had established I didn’t need her to drop everything to rush me to hospital.

“Well, I was walking up the garden to the car when my foot hit a patch of mud on the path,” I explained.

“ I though I was going to be able to recover my balance but then my other foot hit the same patch of mud and sent me careering in the opposite direction.”

Until this point The Mother was making all the right sympathetic noises.

“I could see myself going headlong into the shrubbery so I turned myself slightly to aim for the softest landing,” I continued.

“What I didn’t expect is that the tree I aimed for was slightly more springy than I’d anticipated so while it did gently lower me to the ground, it just as quickly sprung back and catapulted me back onto the path where I landed on my backside which such force that I bounced back to my feet” I recounted trying to ignore the sniggering coming down the phone line.

“By the time I recovered my sense I was standing back on the path where I started from,” I explained.

My now the sniggers had turned into full blown gales of laughter.

“Well thank you both for your sympathy,” I snapped at The Mother and the housemate who had now recovered from the shock of seeing me bouncing across the garden, and had joined in with the hysterical laughing.

Just a few days during a trip to a see the family in the Midlands I dared to do my usual and warn The Mother of an upcoming kerb.

“Seriously?” she asked. “You’ve honestly got the cheek to warn me of a trip hazard after your exploits.”

“Old habits die hard and in my defence you did spend most of last year either on the floor or up to your elbow in a cast you didn’t need ” I replied with the same level of sympathy I’d been showed.

Moments later as I loaded our shopping into the boot of my car I overstretched myself, let the hand on which I was balancing, slip and ploughed headfirst on top of the shopping!

“Don’t you dare make any more comments about me falling over. I can’t wait to tell your sister about this one” said The Mother looking at the housemate with glee.