The healing power of wine

What goes best with a broken rib? The answer, I think, is any drink you enjoy that will not make you laugh.

I was strolling along to Richmond station after spending the night with old friends. (Very Jorrocksian: ‘Where I dines, I sleeps.’) I was carrying a scruffy overnight bag containing one shirt, one pair of socks, ditto underpants and sundry toiletries. Phone rings: put down bag – and suddenly a toerag appears from nowhere, grabs the luggage and scoots off. I yell ‘Stop thief’, run a few paces and trip. Passers-by prop me up and ask if I want an ambulance: would have saved a lot of trouble if I’d said yes. Instead, I went home hurting, then managed to fall over and could not get up. Unable to raise anyone on the phone, I contacted 111, and was told to ring 999. ‘Surely not, can’t be that serious?’ ‘That’s what you need.’

So it was. The kids who rescued me were delightful, as were the staff at Chelsea and Westminster – as everyone has been whom I have dealt with at a hospital, not to mention my GP. We are told that the NHS is broken; not in my experience. There are obviously problems – chaps about to have an X-ray being asked if they might be pregnant. But that did not happen to me at C and W, where sanity still prevails and the lunatics have not yet taken control of the asylum. Long may that last.

Anyway, enough of sundry ailments. It is time to move from the ridiculous to the sublime. I have a friend who refuses to be named – not because he thinks that acknowledging me would lower his reputation; he is merely obsessively confidential. He has another obsession, from which I have benefited: the red wines of Burgundy.