I was back in hospital yesterday.

Don’t worry – I haven’t suffered another injury and returned to a ward. I thought that I should make that clear, just in case you were thinking that I fancied staying in a hospital bed over the festive period and sampling the vegetarian Christmas dinner.

The reason for my return, was to attend a photoshoot – and by ‘photoshoot’, I mean lie on a bed, to have a series of x rays. I broke a leg and both of my arms, don’t you know…

I’ve probably moaned about this before, so if this complaint sounds familiar, I apologise – however, my grievance is a fecking pain in the arse, or rather, a pain in the back…

I am, of course, referring to x ray plates. For those of you lucky enough to have not personally encountered these awful things, I can assure you that these are not the kind of plates you would eat your lunch off. In fact, a dinner plate would be more preferable to have rammed down your back.

It would be more appropriate if the x ray plates were named ‘x ray paving stones’, as a slab of concrete pavement is the closest comparison to what the plate feels like, as it is forced under the base of your spine, by an apologetic radiographer.

As a child, I visited a medieval museum, while on holiday in Italy. A section of the museum featured torture equipment from the era.

Much of the devices were horrific. It was sickening to think that humans were capable of inflicting such violence upon each other.

The pain generated by these cruel tools of torture must have been unbearable. My trip to the radiology department made me think that had the x ray plate been invented hundreds of years ago, that too would no doubt be a regular feature in the torture chambers.