One doesn't need to be an incumbent President to be forgetful or clumsy. In the past 24 hours I have managed to puncture my skin twice with sharp needles on a bush I was pruning, knocked a splitting axe into my sore knee and just now, run bang into a low branch, whacking my head. A scab that I had been waiting to show my skin doctor was blown clean off. Perhaps I should keep out of the garden before I sever a limb or swallow a chain saw.

I think it might be weakening eyesight or impatience or incompetence or all three. The truth is that gardening, like going into space, is fraught with big and small dangers. Unlike astronauts, I do not have to contend with zero gravity, increased radiation exposure or the risk of system failures that could lead to disaster. But one can fall from a ladder, bash oneself up on branches and thorny bushes, or mishandle a power tool (the latter might be fatal) though on the whole, injuries to self will right themselves.

And as you are lying on the ground recovering from the latest fiasco, there is always the blessing of air to breath.