These probably don’t look like instruments of torture to you but, as I begin the year with a mangled hand, I can assure you they are capable of inflicting hideous pain.

Wanting to make something festive-looking for New Year, I decided on a strawberry pavlova – a dessert that I feel is great cookery value, in that it is easy to make but looks dramatic and tastes divine. Beginning with the meringue base, I had got to the point where the egg-whites were at that translucent stage, before even starting to become white and creamy, when I dropped my small hand mixer on the counter. The obvious next step would have been to turn off the plug at the wall but, for some unaccountable reason, I decided I had to turn off the actual machine. I lunged at it as, still spinning, it travelled along the counter like a demented two-legged octopus. And that’s where I made my mistake: I tried to pick it up, still spinning, whereupon the beaters tangled themselves into my fingers. As I screamed, my hand was dragged around the worktop by the maniacal beaters before I could pull the plug out. After sitting down with first water, then brandy and my hand wrapped in frozen peas, I managed to finish making the meringue, which, to my slight disappointment, was not swirled with red from my bloody wound. It did, however, when cooked, feature multiple cracks and those sugary outcrops which occur when the sugar is not sufficiently beaten into the mixture. Not my finest oevre.

The second implement attacked on the following day. One of the features of having all food delivered is that I place the order so far in advance, I can’t remember what’s in it, am too lazy to check and end up with multiples of things going bad in the fridge. This time, it was apples – What can you do with six, huge, Bramley apples? Well, I’m sure the cooks among you will have a hundred intricate and delicious ideas but for a definite non-cook, stewed apple with sultanas sprinkled here and there seemed the obvious answer, as a healthy breakfast addition to “The Writer’s current granola obsession.

And, while peeling the apples, that’s when I managed to peel the skin off the parts of my hand that were not already a bloody pulp from the mixer.

And so, I go bravely into Lockdown 3 with five plasters on my left hand and an even greater aversion to kitchen implements and their uses than I already had.