Don’t Lend Me Anything, Any Time, Ever

I’m cursed, I tell you.

Reconstruction using the actual bowl and laptop (My own photo)

On the whole, I look after my stuff pretty well. I water my houseplants regularly, and my TV remote controls all have their battery flaps intact. But these are my own belongings; when it comes to borrowing things from other people, I have an appalling track record - even though I endeavour to apply the same amount of care.

For example, if you were to lend me your bicycle, and you became concerned at my lenghty absence, so you started looking out of the window to watch for my return, the chances are you would see me pushing the machine home because it had a puncture or the chain had snapped.

Or if you were to lend me a book, I’d read it in the garden in the mistaken belief that it would come to no harm. An overhead magpie, having partaken of a hefty, high-fibre blowout at the neighbour’s bird table, would have a different idea though, and it would present me with something with which to mark my page.

Memorable disasters I’ve had with other people’s stuff include this clutch of catastrophes.

• As a youth, I once went to light an illicit cigarette in my bedroom when my parents were out, but the match snapped, and the fiery head landed right on my brother’s new copy of the David Bowie album Hunky Dory, ruining The Bewley Brothers.