The other day I almost broke my bottom.

Now the worrying thing is, when an accident happens, only sometimes do you hear a little voice in your head saying, Be canny. Are you sure that's entirely safe? At other times there is no voice, and no inkling that you are about to do something completely foolish!

And after the accident, when I was lying on the ground - shocked - my first thought was: does a broken bottom qualify as a life-threatening accident, worthy of admission to A&E?

My second thought was: I'd better first tidy away all my tools, so the scene looked tidier for the imminent arrival of paramedics.

Now the consequence of this action made me realise I could move around without difficulty, so my bottom was not, in fact, broken.

Consuming half a bar of chocolate helped with everything really!

Still, there was no getting away from the pain of my bruised bottom. I couldn't check it for fear it looked like Cheryl Cole's bum - those huge highly-coloured tattoed cabbage roses!

I thanked Him Upstairs for letting me off lightly with a warning, this time. And I also thanked Big G for my love of dairy and all that calcium, plus my regular winter intake of VitD - all of which must have contributed to the robustness of my old bones. This time, at least!

I expect should explain what happened.

Well, since my neighbour's fence blew down a year ago, and because mature trees lined it, the posts for the new fence panels had to be cemented in further back. That effectively gave me an extra strip of garden, 4m x 30cm, roughly. Not a huge area, I hear you say, but just having a small courtyard garden, the extra space was not to be sniffed at. However, the soil level was higher than my raised bed, and now full of redundant tree stumps, thick roots, and invasive ivy.

It took some months to decide how to make it work, and more importantly, how to make it look pretty! I plumped for putting down a plastic weed-suppressant sheet, weighed down with a thick layer of bark chips. It took 6 bags of bark. I would have expected the bags of bark to be light, but the bark inside was sodden, so the bags were actually very heavy.

I fashioned a retaining wall from repurposed wood, held in place with wooden stakes. I needed a variety of tools: a hammer, a straight edge, trowel, spade etc.

I stepped onto my sturdy metal bench to access the new area, just beyond. But I needed to move along the whole 4m strip, so I employed a plastic garden chair for another section. Of course, I tried getting onto my raised bed using it, and assessed that it was solid enough.

In my defence:

a) it was tiring shaking wet bark out of the 6 bags;

b) it had started to rain, vertically like stair-rods;

c) I was anxious to just get all the manual stuff finished, so I only had to paint the retaining wall once the rain stopped;

d) I was starving - it must be lunchtime?

So I grabbed the trowel and the hammer, as I stepped onto the plastic garden chair. It immediately tipped and - so suddenly - I was a heap on the ground with that suspected broken bottom! I was still tightly holding onto the trowel and hammer though.

It just shows how easily, and unexpectedly, accidents happen. Still, lessons have been learned!

Other news includes:

a) I'm still working on ideas for a new pic;

b) Hector-the-pup has had his first birthday. He got a Whirler treat (lasted 2 seconds) and a tough bone toy (lasted 12 mins);

c) both Hector-the-pup and Hebe-the-dog are going on our big family holiday next week.

No doubt, I will be reporting back on the inevitable adventures of the two dogs, next time.

Hopefully there will be no broken bottoms!