Don't we all do foolish things sometimes?

A little foolishness today, and antidote to the excitement at the ebook festival.

The lovely Val Poore has been blogging about steering boats down canals, which has involved a close shave or two, and I've admitted a little carelessness of my own from time to time in the comments. Write about them, she said.

Oh heck ... do I have to write about the day I tried to back down a narrow passageway, didn't get it quite right and took off both wing mirrors ... the day I overdid the wine and tried to carry a blown-up lilo through a door, taking a run at it, veering from the straight and narrow till those watching were crying with laughter (my memory of this, mercifully, is blurred by the wine!).

Don't we all do stuff like this? There you are, in a crowded cafe, and really want ketchup on your chips and shake the bottle without checking the cap ... to find the woman behind has a her best cream jacket over the back of her chair (and no sense of humour). Or this is the moment you simply have to prune that shrub, so on with the gloves and out with the loppers and there you are, in the middle of the thing, and a branch falls on your head and you're stuck. Now what? you think. Will someone come to the front door and decide she simply has to ask the neighbours if she can come in through their houses just in case I'm stuck inside a shrub?

I suppose not many of us have tried to close a window in the middle of the night with a cyclone raging outside. Or slithered down a rock face onto a beach in Australia to admire the sunset without wondering how to get up again. Or played explorers in old temple near Angkor Wat and crawled through a doorway to hear a passing guide say there was a cobra under the stone beneath my knees.

I know those were a bit extreme. We don't get cyclones or cobras in the UK. But surely we all do daft things sometimes? (Please, admit some of yours, so I don't feel quite such a wally!)