The day goes further downhill the moment he hits me in the face with a hammer.

Even under such circumstances, one has time to reflect. So far in the day I have discovered rainwater dripping through the bedroom ceiling, and been subjected to the new self-service till machine at Tesco, which appears to be about as much use to mankind as a budgerigar with a degree in Media Studies.

He hits me in the face again.

At some point, I tell myself, I should say something. He seems pretty competent, and I get on with the chap reasonably well (although perhaps less so now, seeing that he is hitting me in the face with a hammer), but truth be told it is an unpleasant experience and I would like him to stop.

“Diss crown is priddy impossible to shift,” he explains (note I have used the words ‘diss’ and ‘priddy’ to represent the fact that my dentist is South African and speaks in a South African voice – this is a technique used by us writers to avoid unnecessary explanations that would spoil the flow of the text). “I hev tried wiggling it. Now I am hitting it with diss hemmer.”

He hits my tooth with his hammer once more, to emphasise the point.

Randy Newman wails from my MP3 player. Unfortunately I pressed the wrong button just before he started in my mouth and instead of uplifting and distracting cheerful pop music my head is filled with mournful minor-key reflections on losers and low-life tragedies in the medium of the blues, whilst I am being hit in the face with a hammer.

Meanwhile the anaesthetic seems to have made my face swell up, as if somebody has pushed a marble into my mouth and under my top lip. They may well have done. Or perhaps it is a snooker ball. It could be a penis, for all I know. I have my eyes firmly shut. I do not wish to open them as the hammer is unpleasant enough as it is. I do not think it is a penis, as he would not be hammering it so hard if so.

The only really good thing about a dentist putting his penis in your mouth and starting to hit it wildly with a hammer whilst you are under local anaesthetic and have your eyes firmly shut and are listening to mournful Randy Newman songs is at least you know that you will get offered some mouthwash afterwards.

“It’s coming,” he explains, not entirely reassuringly.

A few more goes with the pliers and my old artificial tooth thing is no more, and I have a huge gap in my mouth that is dripping pus and blood along with an unidentified fragment of metal that appears to have been left in there by the other dentist. We take a two minute break before he starts to clean out the abscess. Randy croons dolefully in my ears.

I expect an important telephone call.

I gaze at the telephone in anticipation. It sits there, not ringing. This is frustrating, as I don’t really want to do anything until I receive my important telephone call.

I check my watch. It is 7.20am. It strikes me that businesses in London might not yet be open. But I do not want to go out, as if I go out then the important telephone call will happen just after that point. I make myself some toast instead, ensuring that I remain within hearing distance of the phone.

The phone does not ring.

9.01am. The phone is still dead and silent. There was some talk of a meeting, before the telephone call. I would imagine that this might have started at, say, eight. Allowing for a few wafflings and goings off at tangents and wonderings what the HR implications are ect ect ect then surely it should be time for them to call. I wonder if 9.01am is too early for me to call them and demand to know why they haven’t called me.

I make a cup of tea. The telephone sits there, smirking. I drink my tea. I decide that I need to go to the toilet, but I know that if I go to the toilet then the call will immediately arrive and I will have to rush out mid-stream and talk to them covered in wee. I take the cordless phone into the toilet with me.

The phone does not ring.

10.30. I am now worried. The meeting has clearly over-run, or did not start until late. Or London is on a different time to the Village.

Noon. If the meeting has gone on until now, then they will probably go for lunch directly afterwards, being in London and all that. I should rush out and get some milk. Except if I do that then they will decide to eat at their desks with take-away pasta salads and cappuccinos, being in London and all that. That would be an ideal time for them to make important calls.

I stay in and stare at the phone. It remains stubbornly devoid of trill.

3pm. Lunch must be over. The Industrious Builder asks for my opinion on some paving slab work. I take the cordless phone with me, explaining that I am awaiting an important call. He is impressed.

The telephone ri – I answer the telephone.

Booooooo. It is not my important callee. It is only my mother. I explain that I am awaiting an important telephone call. She is not at all impressed. I ring off anyway.

3.30pm. I realise with alarm that the important call probably arrived whilst I was on the phone to my mother. I hurriedly dial 1571, to see if this is the case and if they have left a message. There are no messages. Boooooo again.

3.32pm. I realise with alarm that the important call probably arrived whilst I was on the phone to the 1571 service. I hurriedly dial 1571 again, to see if this was the case. There are still no messages. I am downhearted, especially given that I am now locked into a Sisyphean nightmare of recurrent 1571 consultations.

5pm. I give up, and send a stroppy email. I have no important call. I have no milk.

“Well played, Skip,” I offered, strolling down the green to shake his hand.

“Loserloserloserloserloserloser,” I continued smugly, in my head. Although I have been known to think that I am saying something in my head when actually I am speaking out loud. I am fairly sure I did not say this out loud, as he did not hit me in the face with his stick.

We retired to the Village Pub for a celebration.

“The thing is,” I explained to Nigel after my initial euphoria had gone down like an erection, “the winning and losing thing just doesn’t seem to balance out.”

Victory or defeat – it is like splitting up with a beautiful woman. Dumping should give you a better feeling than being dumped gives you a bad one, but it rarely works like that in my experience. Which, thinking about it, is non-existent in this particular analogy. At this point I realised I needed to ask somebody if this was indeed the case, but I was still trying to work it out in my mind whilst talking to Nigel. He looked at me as if I were barking mad.

Big A offered some additional encouragement. “You were only fifty percent consistently bad tonight,” he said, which was high praise indeed from the master. It is but May and a whole bowls season lies ahead – I shall aim to get it down to thirty or twenty percent.

An hour later I realised that I had already got through four pints, and so insisted that I needed to go home for reasons of self-preservation. I walked down the hill with Big A; unlike last time I did not fall face first into the grass verge outside Len the Fish’s. Improvement is possible, if one strives for it; it is a weak man who accepts his own rubbishness unquestioned.

My despondent lips take a mouthful of beer.

We sit in silence for a moment. Outside, the drizzle descends on one of the prettiest village bowling greens in England; a place to which you would be honour-bound to take American tourist friends, once you had shown them Durham Cathedral and Barney’s snack bar on the A148.

“Well,” observes Big A at length.

“What I can’t work out,” I ruminate, “is how I’m so consistently bad. I mean, I’m nowhere near where I’m meant to be, but I’m consistently nowhere near.” I take another slurp. “I’m sure there’s a positive in there somewhere.”

Bowls is a cruel mistress. One evening she is fun to be with and you can do no wrong; the next you are being savagely beaten and humiliated and being mocked for putting in a short wood. But you keep going back for more. It is an addiction, like turkey.

Through the smoke, the jovial atmosphere in the small club is palpable. Our opponents are the cream of local bowls; we sense that we are already heading for a relegation battle. I carry the glasses back to the bar; Big A takes the wheel and we drive home in the rain.

I write a notice.

It is on lined paper, using big black felt-tip pen.

“SMASHED UP CAR. 35p A LOOK.”

But I hesitate and do not take it outside to sellotape up in front of the crowd. They are entitled to their ghoulish excitement at my misery. Not much else has been going on here recently aside from the new retaining wall at the bowling green.

The van driver waits in silence for his boss to arrive to assess his handywork. Hopefully his boss is Sir Alan Sugar or Nicholas van Hoogstraten etc. I do not offer him another coffee. That will show him!!! Stan drives past, slowing as he catches sight of the scene. I shoo him away.

I meander round to Short Tony’s. It transpires that he was on the telephone so did not hear the accident. I invite him to have a look; instead of gawping he gives me some reassuring words. Good karma will surely come his way.

Hours later he appears at the front door. A bus has driven into the back of his car. Mrs Short Tony is shaken. I consider establishing a support group.

I gaze in distress at my flat car.

It will clearly require some work at the Kwik-Fit place. Bits of it are strewn in the street, and the front wheels don’t seem to be facing in the same direction. It is probably my fault for parking it directly above the bit where ‘SLOW’ is painted in the road.

A crowd gathers.

From the cab of the delivery van that is embedded in my neighbour’s verge, emerges a sheepish-looking man.

“Are you all right?” I ask him gently.

In situations like this, it is always important to ascertain immediately whether the other party is injured or is suffering from shock, as it is considered unsporting to take somebody with such a condition and administer a savage beating.

“Fffffftthhhggg,” he replies.

This does not get me anywhere. I pick up a few pieces of car from the road. “Are you OK?” I repeat. He is staring at the front of his van, which is now the middle of his van.

“Hbbbblllllbbb,” he continues.

I sigh and disappear indoors to make strong coffee. The younger Industrious Builder wanders out with his cameraphone thing in order to perform citizen journalism. Kettle boiled, I leap into action by telephoning the police and emailing a barrister friend who advises me that I am unlikely to have whiplash simply from turning my head sharply to watch my car sail through the air.

“Here you go,” I say to the man, who has a suspiciously Lincolnshire air about him.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he mutters softly.

I settle down to get things done.

Despite my recent general state of non-workingness, I still have odd bits and pieces floating around that I absolutely totally really really must get on with and finish. My vantage point at the PC in my new private secret office lair looks out across the garden; the Industrious Builders beaver away before me.

I like the Industrious Builders. Requested to sort out the drainage and build some walls and level some ground and generally Make Things Nice, they have turned up and sorted out the drainage, built some walls, levelled some ground and Made Things Nice.

I am sure there must be a catch somewhere, as in my recent experience builders do not behave like this. But in the meantime things are hunky dory and the LTLP returns home each night and smiles broadly and does not shout at me, unlike when we had the Methodical Builder who will burn in hell with forks in his eyes. Big forks, that I have previously dipped in lemon juice.

Something is amiss.

The elder Industrious Builder is leaping up and down and waving at me in some agitation, like a nuclear Michael Flatley signalling a four. I can’t make out the point of his shouts through the double glazing, so I leave Spider Solitaire and wander outside to ascertain the cause of his distress. I hope that I have not hung the washing in front of his cement mixer again.

“…the fuck at that!!!” he roars.

My eyes follow the direction of his gestures. On the road at the end of the drive, a full fifteen yards from where it had previously been sitting doing nobody any harm, lies the mangled and squashed remains of my car.