A week or two ago I was working in the garden, pulling out weeds and long grass for the fortnightly green recycling collection. I enjoy doing it and it gives me a lot of satisfaction to close the lid on a bin brimming with a few hours labour.

But on this occasion, having removed my gloves and come inside to wash my hands, I realised that somehow my wedding band was not on my finger anymore. It is something you detect straight away, the sensation of nakedness, the absence of the gentle pressing of the band. I rushed outside to look in my gloves - the most obvious place - but alas, no.

Then began a three days combing of every inch of the garden I had been in, the emptying of bins, the sifting of materials. Nothing. Vanished off the the face of the earth.

For the time-being I have given in - the ring may reveal itself in the fullness of time - but for now I have pressed into service a gold band with Celtic patterns that I bought from a shop in Scotland way back in 2004. It has been sitting in my sock draw for at least a decade and being a perfectly acceptable wedding band, it is now on the appropriate digit. Sad about the other, of course, but a happy marriage is better than a ring any day of the week.