Gathering my courage I gently tapped the wife’s massive shoulder. The spectacle edged round slowly, like an Atlantic tanker recalibrating its direction in mid ocean. Catching my look of utter bemusement, but hardly breaking for breath before resuming the ear piercing ululations, the wife simply exclaimed darkly “Haemorrhoids!”  And proffered me a saucepan.

In the face of this unpromising riposte I withdrew to the lounge.

But then the mystery started to unravel. Lying under a huge ball of string on the Mrs’ escritoire sat last Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Goat, opened wide at a piece entitled “Massive ball of flame the size of Wales streaking towards Earth at speed of sound” and portraying an enormous asteroid, helpfully placed for size alongside an outline of the leek-infested principality. I immediately noted the newspaper was covered by the wife’s distinctive hand in complex mathematical calculations, which concluded in large black letters, underlined, -  Armageddon: Saturday lunchtime about 1.15.

But mercifully the Mrs had erred, omitting to research the contents of subsequent editions of The Goat. These would have imparted the reassuring information to man and beast alike that the asteroid had in fact whizzed past planet Earth the previous Thursday with a comfortable berth of about 200,000 miles. And that whilst the desportment of half a coconut on the barnet would be of limited effect in repelling injury or worse in the event of a direct hit on the menageries in West Ealing, the probability in any case of such an occasion was remote to the power of about 1 zillion million.

….and that the respective physical properties of haemorrhoids and of asteroids, so easily confused in one sense as near homophones, are in fact in strict scientific terms not readily comparable.