Not too long ago now, I found myself sitting in a wheelchair parked in the corner of an A&E department in Staffordshire. It wasn’t the Saturday afternoon I’d been hoping for.

My bicycle and I had parted ways at a crucial moment in the day’s riding. It had selfishly decided that it didn’t want to accompany me all the way to the bottom of the hill, and its decision saw me hurtle skyward, soar head-first over a sizeable mound of earth, and come to rest abruptly against a tree stump lurking on the other side. 

It’s been five weeks since the tree-hugging incident, and I’m now the proud owner of a fetching blue felt sling, a newly reconstructed collarbone, and a right arm I can’t do a hell of a lot with. I’ll readily admit that, at first, the thought of recovering at home proved alluring. I imagined myself making music on my PC, playing games for hours on end and watching movies until I fell asleep. Breaking bones didn’t seem so bad after all.  

Then, it dawned on me. Sling-bound as it was, my right hand wasn’t actually going to be much use. Being right-handed, that meant I couldn’t effectively pilot a crayon, let alone a mouse, and suddenly every game or application that required precise mouse control was out the window. The delightful, motion-sensing cleverness of Nintendo’s Wii proved unworkable too: every shake and flourish of the controller, however gentle, sent ripples of pain throbbing through my shoulder.

Books and movies were going to be sufficient to allay some of the boredom, but my gaming options were running out, and fast. The mouse felt awkward and unfamiliar in my left-hand, and sitting at a desk proved uncomfortable. I needed to find games which I could play on a laptop, whilst sitting on the sofa, and ideally with one hand, too.

Bugger.

I haven’t spent the last five weeks sprawled in front of daytime TV, gawking at those that evolution forgot on the Jeremy Kyle show, however. Old favourites such as Trackmania Nations Forever and World of Goo have gamely stepped in to fill the gaming void, and the delightfully brain-teasing platformer, Braid, has sapped many hours of my house arrest.  The arrows on my cursor keys have already begun to look a little worn, but my sanity is, unlike my creaky and ever-painful collarbone, intact.