h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If I listed every injury I have sustained in daft and improbable circumstances, you wouldn't believe the half of them. I've probably mentioned one or two before, and one or two of you might have witnessed a couple of them.

This one might take the biscuit, though. I have no idea how I did that to my knee, in bed, stone cold sober, and slept right through it. It's all abraded, and it's as purple as a bruised bishop. Oddly enough, it's not at all tender or sore, though.

I wonder if I am getting up to Mr Hyde hijinks at night, unbeknownst to myself.

Do your clothes smell of cheroots, cheap perfume and booze in the morning?

Strange insect attack during the wee-hours? I woke up the other day, having sustained insect bites, in various places... all badly reacted to and slowllen up; can only assume I'd aquired them whilst sitting in beer garden of pub, earlier in evening but not noticed at the time ; Thigh 1/3 bigger than useuall, where swollen out from one bite... looked like someone had stuffed a tennis ball under the skin

No, it doesn't look like bites at all, more like the sort of thing you'd get from coming off a bike. No smell of cheroots, booze and cheap perfume either. I'm glad about that - I'd hate it if I missed all the fun but had to put up with the smells afterwards!

Best hypothesis: the bedroom has two brick and plaster walls, and two plasterboard stud walls. The bed is up against one of the brick ones. It looks suspiciously like I was kneeing the brick wall in the groin repeatedly during the night, or dragging my knee up and down it. But how I could do that without waking up beats me!

I might move the bed away from the wall and see how that goes. I might just get improbable injuries by falling out of the former wall side, though.

I used to make furniture, especially bedroom furniture. Would you like me to create a bespoke bed for you? One of those beds that has sides that you can pull up. What are they called...

Oh yeah, a cot

I think my best bet is to keep away from beds altogether. I think I'll just throw it out and sleep on the floor instead.

A mattress on the floor might be the best of both worlds. I can't think of anyway that could cause injury...

Well, there is that story of the bloke whose astrologer told him about a particularly bad planetary lineup for a particular day so he decided the best thing was just to stay in bed.

The ceiling fell in on him

Seriously though, I used to work with a bloke who was 7-foot-tall plus. He couldn't get a long enough bed so he slept on a couple of futon mattresses that were on the floor. Now, you probably don't have brown recluse spiders in Ireland

"I used to make furniture, especially bedroom furniture"

OH, I think by the sound of it.... Even having the matress on teh floor, and with some kind of 'wall' around it... you'd still manage to incur an injury somehow - You sound quite ingenious at doing so

Including waterbeds

That wasn't a suggestion, KB Please, don't get a waterbed.

A waterbed? Good heavens no!

Firstly, the weight of the water might bring it crashing through the floor.

Secondly, I could potentially burst it.

Thirdly, if I did burst it, the Amazon penis fish ( A35669460 ) would probably come swimming out of it in shoals!

It's a popular myth that floors, even those made of wooden joists and floorboards in old buildings, won't take the weight of a waterbed, unless your floor already has some serious structural flaws, in which case a) it's falling short of just about every applicable building code, and b) you probably shouldn't go up there or stand below it because because either you or your bedroom furniture could be exiting through the ceiling at any moment Heavy pieces of furniture such as a washing machine, a sofabed or a bathtub full of water put as much, or more, weight per square foot on the floor than a waterbed.

You're quite welcome to impart that information to all and sundry or use it at a pub quiz, free of charge

It also takes something pretty vicious to puncture a waterbed, and all good waterbed frames have a liner which will contain the water should the bag leak.

As for the penis fish, what you keep in your water bed is your own concern

A washing machine, you say? It can cause structural damage? Now I know what that wee miscellaneous washer was doing! It was making the walls of the house contract in such a way as to rub my knee raw at night. I *knew* that little was up to no good!

Mystery solved.

A washing machine, I do say. Structural damage, I don't You're reading things into it that I never said or intended

Hmmm... I wouldn't want to get a penis fish and a Babel fish mixed up

Well, it is a thread of never-intended-things, after all. Or a web of things-never-intended.