Each incident is intensely annoying and often painful, but the cumulative effect, after a while, is simply depressing. The first few times I swear (and my language is appalling). Then I break things, in a pathetic attempt to punish them for making my life such a misery. Finally I’m reduced to crying, often on the floor, as much in frustration as in defeat.

Why do inanimate objects hate me so much? What did I ever do to them? It’s a mystery to me.

Actually I don’t mind being clumsy that much, apart from the wounds, obviously – I was always covered in scratches and bruises as a child, and there’s something oddly manly about being slightly damaged; my brother may be even clumsier, but we’re both over six feet tall, so bumping into things comes with the territory anyway.

Sometimes, though – usually after I’ve just nearly knocked myself out on a lintel or tried to catch a falling bread-knife by the blade – I wish I lived in a softer, more expansive world of rounded corners and no hard edges; a nice modern house, for example, with high doors and sensible stairs. When I’ve really hurt myself I dream of moving to a desert, perhaps, where the hardest surface is sand, and living in a tent, or maybe a house with rubber walls and windows…