MRS H is sore, bored and a bit grumpy. Reg the terrier and I are, on the other hand, rushed off our feet. I am cooking, cleaning and shopping.

Reg is spending his days helpfully dropping toys on the recumbent form of Mrs H, raising his ears and wagging his tail expectantly.

Every time she opens up her laptop and switches it on to do some work or surf the net to pass the time between editions of Come Dine With Me or Loose Women, he jumps up and drops a toy on the keyboard.

He wants her to play.

She wants him to get off.

He doesn't see why she should want to do anything other than throw toys across the lounge all day.

She is finding his cheeky chappie charm wearing a bit thin.

He will be lucky to survive the week unscathed.

Mrs H, you see, has just been under the knife for the second time in a year as efforts to correct her troublesome knee continue.

She had one operation on the knee last summer which didn't seem to solve anything.

She has just had another operation on the same knee which we all hope will solve everything.

Only time will tell.

Mrs H is very brave in hospital situations, so brave that I am surprised she didn't come home with one of those special smiley face stickers they give to children who have heroically faced some kind of medical horror.

Brave, that is, apart from not liking masks.

She explained very politely to the anaesthetist exactly what she might do if someone approached her with a hissing mask full of knockout gas (you can see that my knowledge of anaesthetic is almost totally derived from cartoons and record sleeves).

The anaesthetist went a bit pale, swallowed hard and said no, they wouldn't be doing it like that. She made a little note on her pad and I think it said 'trouble'.

Finally Mrs H was wheeled off to the operating theatre with a grin and a wave and a dire threat about hissing masks, and I was left behind in a comfy chair with free access to the coffee machine, a packet of Cheddars and an afternoon of old episodes of Fifth Gear on the TV.

All went well, Guideliners, and halfway through a review of a BMW saloon that was new when the programme was made in 2004 but looked a bit old hat in the re-run, Mrs H was wheeled back in, sleeping peacefully.

No anaesthetists had been harmed in the process, and over the course of the next two or three episodes of Fifth Gear she gradually rejoined the land of the living.

Anaesthetics are wonderful things.

Touching wood furiously, I can say that my medical history over the last half-century consists of three operations, all of which fall into the bracket the medical profession terms 'minor'.

I had a lump taken out of a finger when I was about 11, surgery having emerged as the preferred option shortly after the family doctor had suggested as an alternative 'hitting it with the family Bible'.

Firstly, I didn't think we had a family Bible, and secondly, I quite definitely didn't want to be hit with it. So I had the local anaesthetic and, with my hand concealed by a bright green cotton cover in a ward at Paignton Hospital, the offending small piece of wandering tissue was duly removed.

My mum took me into Harris Osborne on the way back to the bus station and bought me Tokoloshe Man by John Kongos on a 45rpm single, which would date it to November 1971.

My next brush with anaesthesia came during another operation listed as 'minor' in the Big Book of Medicine. Being big and bold and brave, I had not batted an eyelid when told that the delicate procedure in the gentlemen's quarter would be carried out under a local.

Furthermore, this being the beginning of the 21st century, it would be a kind of progressive local. Sounding like one of the marginally duller items on Tomorrow's World, it was explained that the anaesthetic would deaden the area directly ahead of where the surgeon was working.

It was all about pace and timing, and providing the magic anaesthetic stayed one stroke ahead of the scalpel, I wouldn't feel a thing. I began to worry. I have never sweated so much in my life. Perspiration was cascading off my legs. Who knew legs perspired?

My situation wasn't helped, either, by the realisation that I knew two of the people in the little gaggle around my nether regions. If ever there was a good situation to be among complete strangers, surely that was it? And then, to make matters worse, the two I knew introduced me to the others.

We were soon happily chatting about life on the Herald Express and the fortunes of South Devon Athletic Club when, to be completely honest, I would have been just as happy with silence.

There are some situations where a gentleman feels slightly vulnerable and small talk is just not required.

But apart from one split second when the scalpel moved a fraction of a millimetre ahead of where the anaesthetic had reached, and I said something extremely rude which must have shocked my gaggle of new best friends working around my engine room, it all went very well.

We went to a wedding reception at the Imperial the following day, and although I dipped out on the evening do and went home to sit very still and watch TV in case someone danced into me or pushed a chair back unexpectedly at a strategic height, I was none the worse for the experience.

Finally, though, I had my first ever general for an operation on my leg.

The great thing is that I can remember very little about it, apart from coming round with a thumping headache, talking rubbish to a nurse who seemed quite accustomed to recovering patients talking rubbish to her.

I vaguely remember having to down a cup of tea and finish a cheese sandwich before I could go home, but I can't recall much else.

The headache vanished as quickly as it had arrived, the leg recovered quickly and — not that I want to go under the knife again — the experience was not a bad one.

Let's hear it for anaesthetic.

THIS week I won't hear a word against Alun Wyn Jones — again.

No sooner is the Welsh giant of the pack awarded the 2009 Guidelines Sportsman of the Year award than he goes and blots his copybook.

You may recall that the prestigious Guideliner statuette was given to Alun Wyn after his heroic yet doomed attempt to flee the All Blacks defence with the ball under his arm.

Now he is in the doghouse.

Tempting though it may be to stretch out a leg and trip a speeding Englishman at any time of the day, doing it right in front of the referee at Twickenham was probably not his wisest decision.

England's decisive 17 points to beat Wales on Saturday evening came while big Alun Wyn was in the sin bin thinking about what he had done.

But this column isn't like one of those giant corporations that turns its back on a sporting legend for one little misdemeanour.

Keep the title, Alun Wyn, and take it out on Scotland next weekend.