YOU could be putting yourself and your family at risk by reading this column. I'm not saying that you will actually end up in hospital, but it's a possibility I feel obliged to make you aware of.

I'm not threatening you or anything, despite the overt reference to an imminent visit to A&E, I'm just stating a fact: this column could be bad for your health.

In recent weeks, I have noticed something strange. I seem to be suffering from a hitherto unknown disorder, and while it has little bearing on my own life, it is a danger to all those around me. Sad to say, I fear I have become "clumsy by proxy".

Despite being born on a Tuesday, I have about as much natural grace as a hippo on roller-skates. I have always had a tendency to trip and stumble, and still to this day have an impressive collection of bruises on my knees. But at least this clumsiness has been mine alone.

Now, however, it seems people only have to spend a few minutes in my company and they are literally falling over themselves to get away.

The other day my oldest friend (I can almost hear her yelling "you'll always be the oldest - I'm four months younger") brought her daughters round to play. I barely had time to tousle the little one's blonde curls before she'd skidded half way across the living room and almost knocked herself unconscious on a miniature cooker.

The red bump that immediately sprang up alongside her right eye was impressive, but not as spectacular as the lump that emerged by her left eye when she tippled over in the garden ten minutes later and nutted a brick wall.

Later, mere seconds after I had given my chum's older daughter a goodbye hug, she shut the car door on her thumb. I could still hear the screaming as they drove away.

But all that pales in comparison to what I did on my holidays. We hadn't even set off before I somehow hexed my father, making him tumble out of bed in the middle of the night, cracking his head open on the bedside table as he fell.

Luckily, he managed to stagger out of hospital in time to join us in Northumberland, sporting a rather snazzy six-inch gash on top of his poor old nut that a doctor had over-enthusiastically glued together (it looked like he'd been attacked by a four-year-old armed with a glue stick).

After that, things went relatively smoothly for about a minute and a half. No sooner had we left our holiday house than blood was spilled again.

The words "don't run on the pebbly path" had barely left my lips before my daughter - the tiddly, breakable one - went sprawling head first. The grazes on her hands and knees were pretty impressive, but the egg-shaped lump in the middle of her forehead was nothing less than spectacular.

So what else could happen? A shark attack or a tsunami perhaps? I think the poor woman who inadvertently found herself sitting next to us on the otherwise deserted beach would have actually preferred an encounter with Jaws.

All I did was nod and say hello. I didn't chuck sand in her face or push her into a rock pool. I just nodded and said hello.

Ten minutes later I was standing at the side of the road waiting for an ambulance. The woman had levered herself off the rock she had been perching on and her newly-fitted artificial hip had popped out.

All I can say is that I'm really, really sorry. I only hope you are not reading this near a lift shaft or a naked flame because, to be frank, I don't rate your chances of making it home in one piece.