I have sustained an injury.

How? you may ask. Well, my PC died. So I took it round to poor Mr. Baker to fix it.. so far no drama. Until he asked me where the key for the PC case was... and thus began the trials. PCs and I don't get on, which is why I did both them and myself a favour and stopped working in IT. I wasn't even aware that my PC needed a key, let alone remember where it was. So I called the Husband at work, to see if he recalled seeing one anywhere. No, he didn't. No, he couldn't remember if there was one in the box it came in. No, he couldn't remember if we'd kept the box. No, he wasn't sure, had we kept the box, if it was in the loft. I got the message - I was on my own.

After a fruitless search in desk drawers and tins, I came to the conclusion that if a key existed, it was in the box. Which was possibly in the loft. Now I don't go into the loft, ever. It is a cold place full of spiders and pipes and dust. The most I have done is stick my head above the top rung of the ladder just so I knew what it looked like. But, hey, I'm a modern chickie, I can do stuff like go into lofts if the occasion calls for it. First things first - step ladder.

By now I'm getting fed up. Off I go to the garage, to retrieve the step ladder. It's cold and dark and raining outside, and in the garage (also full of spiders) we have one ladder-shaped space where the ladder was but is no longer. Now I'm really pissed off. OK, the shed at the bottom of the garden. I stomp off to put back the key for the garage and get the key for the shed. Then I stomp off down the garden, trip over the step in the darkness and end up face down on the path, in the rain, in pain. And to top it all off, no ladder in shed. So my ever-decreasing circle now includes 1. a dead PC. 2. a missing ladder. 3. a bloody, swollen knee, bruised hip, scratched hands and wet clothing.

Back in the house I did manage to open the loft hatch by balancing on the very top post of the bannister above the staircase, but then the pain of my knee and Common Sense bellowing through a megaphone managed to get through and I gave up. In a flash of enlightenment I knew that this whole thing could only be the Husband's fault. I sent him a text (when he failed to answer his phone about a hundred times) telling him that I was severely injured and it was all his fault. It was only when he rang me about half an hour later sounding rather panicked, that I realised he might have been thinking "severely injured pregnant wife" meant rather more than my grazed knee.

I am banned from the loft now.