April 29

There has been a curious, almost magical, change in our kitchen: the stove stays clean for days, the floor is devoid of scuff marks for hours and the sink is swilled and polished after use.

A couple of weeks ago, I developed excruciating pain in both wrists and thumbs, so bad I had to book an appointment with the wonderful physio who restores me to vertical every time my back goes, dealt with a wrecked knee following a fall in Oxford St. when I was sneered at by passers-by for being obviously drunk, and has cured many other, smaller mishaps.

There is something of a contradiction in terms ‘seeing’ a physio on Zoom, not least because she operates so sensitively by touch, the one sense unavailable. By dint of comprehensive questioning, she diagnosed RSI from chopping vegetables for soup and wielding various cleaning implements. (She also made me feel better by showing alarm and surprise when I recounted my activities, enquiring whether it is really necessary to polish mirrors at the moment).

Anyway, she prescribed a variety of exercises including a virtual gym for my thumb involving pulling against rubber bands on other fingers of the same hand.

Unfortunately, I attacked the exercises with the same mad gusto I do most physical things – a footballer-type groin strain from over-enthusiastic Zumba-ing being the most recent damage. A few days ago, I was in such severe pain I had to order a wrist and thumb brace, reluctantly helping to add yet more millions to Jeff Bezos’s Amazon fortune.

The brace holds my thumb and wrist rigid, a position that defies chopping, hoovering, mirror-polishing and more or less everything else. “The writer” has taken this on the chin and is now doing everything in the house including cooking and cleaning.

Hence the magical transformation of the kitchen. When I was cleaning, our breakfast porridge, made by the writer even then, was allowed to drop onto the stainless steel cooker during stirring, remaining there in hard gobbets til I cleaned it off. Now, I watch him stirring gently, concentrating hard so not a spurt is allowed to escape the pan. Oil is barely used nowadays, not for health reasons but in case it trespasses on a worktop. Biscuits require a plate instead of being eaten on the move and carelessly crumbled onto the floor, the table and the terrace.

I confess – only to you,- that my wrist is starting to feel a bit better but I find I’m oddly reluctant to admit it.