Today started very badly indeed. I woke up at about 4am wondering why Denise was sitting bolt upright in bed, asking what was wrong and sounding terrified. I was understandably confused and thought she’d been dreaming and was about to suggest the same thing when I shouted again and bent up double on the bed.

Imagine having a white hot pin slid into your left testicle and then yanked out quickly but precisely to a crescendo of pain, leaving only fearful certainty that the same thing will happen again at some point and that it will happen without a moments warning. For the next hour or so I lay in bed absolutely petrified but at some point I must have drifted back off to sleep. The rest of the night passed without any further incident.

Later on the next morning, I remembered what had happened and – to be honest - I was hoping really that it was something isolated that would never happen again and I could completely forget about the whole thing. No such luck – as we walked into an internet cafe, it hit me again and I was bent double. We organised a trip to the hospital where I couldn’t see a doctor and was given a painkilling injection, a load of pain tablets and sent on my way with an instruction to return in 4 hours if it still hurt.

We were back in 3. This time I fair stuffed my wallet into the receptionists mouth and begged for a proper doctor, blood tests, urine tests and clean needles. To cut a long story short, I’ve picked up some kind of filthy Ganges water infection which has taken the opportunity to branch off from my bladder, take a good nose around my bollocks and set up home.

So, I’ve got enough painkillers and antiobiotics to get me around the rest of India and, fingers crossed, that’ll be an end to it. Let’s just say between now and then, I’m not doing much sitting at a PC.

I DEMAND SYMPATHY