So having put the nation's health to rights, let me share something about life earlier in the week.

Sunday night found me in the bizarre and wholly unfamiliar position of learning that people had been talking about my personal life behind my back. i.e. Independently of me. Viz gossiping. About my love life. Fools!

I'd invited a colleague along for a drink with Robin, as we'd been on shift together, it was a beautiful day, we were heading in the same direction, and it seemed rude not to. Needless, this drink turned into a six hour session and, naturally, tongues were loosened. Too loose for comfort, but not loose enough for my liking, as it turned out.

Apparently a hot topic among a few of my colleagues in recent months had been whether The Woman had a thing for me, whether I had one back, and indeed, whether our things had met somewhere in the middle.

Of course, this left me feeling like a traffic cop with a fender bender: move along please folks, nothing to see here.

Just the thought that anyone might actually want to speculate about my love life, much less make it a topic for office tittle-tattle, well it's a new one. So of course I had to know: who else was in on this salacious rumour?

It was then that the bastard clammed up. Bloody journalists and their sense of duty to protect their sources. Obviously thinking he'd overstepped the mark, no amount of coaxing, bargaining, or plain shock and awe from me and Robin was going to make him spill the beans. I have my ideas, of course, not that I'd seek to say anything to them if I knew anyway. I was just intrigued that me and women would come up in the same conversation, at least in a romantic sense - or just plain shagging - and wanted to explore the motivation of whichever twisted mind was responsible.

Other people are the subject of gossip. Not me. I've barely done anything to deserve it.

And then at Tuesday's club meeting, Thomsk tells me I shouldn't rely so much on a particular set of people for my social kicks. I don't. Well, not much. No more than he does. But he's just got my interest at heart. Or maybe just my heart's interest. And he's right. Cos despite the fact I'm not comfortable around strangers (they have other more interesting and fanciable people to talk to) I'm doing myself no favours at the moment.

For despite the fact that everyone tells me relationships are more trouble than they're worth, they're shit and not to bother, be happy to be single, I know they're lying. Sure, a relationship's seldom exclusively rosebedesque, but given the opportunity, they wouldn't swap places with me even to save their own mothers. People love to love, with or without the dancing babies.

My job is my life's defining relationship, not so much through professional pride (although that plays its part) but because if it wasn't there my life would feel empty.

It doesn't help that I'm seemingly addicted to Diana Krall at the moment, but the question has to be asked: just what is it about this bike that makes fish so much more interested in other models?