I WAS sitting in a library in London many years ago, idling through some press cuttings when, idiotically, I twiddled a ballpoint pen in my ear. And that little plastic bit at the top fell down my earhole.

Holding back the panic, I ended up in Casualty in a hospital where two junior doctors had great fun asking me how it happened, then saying, "Pardon, Mr Perkins, I can't hear you? I've got a pen top in my ear!"... before they eventually, and mercifully, fished it out.

It wasn't a household accident but there must be an army of Bournemouth people out there who have sat in hospital A&E departments feeling equally foolish because of accidents in their homes. I know this because Bournemouth, a survey reveals, is the number one town in the country for household accidents.

But wait! The good news is that, in future, there won't be a queue of people at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital's A and E Department any more!

This, disappointingly, isn't because our DIY-ers have suddenly developed the art of avoiding hammering their thumbs or stretching too far on ladders. It's because the hospital is changing its A&E name to the Emergency Department.

A&E, it seems, is a casualty of changing hospital fashions in departmental names in the same way that Casualty itself was changed to A&E back in the '70s. And Emergency does what it says on the tin.

That all sounds reasonable until you hear the cost of changing the signs.

Seven thousand pounds! Not a lot in their overall budget but it can't be far off the cost of a hip replacement, can it?

Unless, of course, I misheard it. (Now what did I do with my pen top?)