Let's start, if we may, with the Great Socks Mystery of two weeks ago which has now, thankfully, been put to bed.

You may recall that a strange pair of socks bearing the word 'Friday' turned up in my bedside drawer.

Mrs S tried to claim they were mine but I had, with equal force, refused to accept it.

For those of you who may have been genuinely excited at the thought that Mrs S has been indulging in a bit of (careless) extra-marital shenanigans I have some disappointing news.

In-laws

A conversation with the in-laws at the weekend determined that the socks, in fact, belong to my nephew who – as with most teenagers of the male variety – seems to have developed a habit of leaving things lying about.

The general consensus is that having removed his socks at some point at Normanton Towers and then forgotten where he'd put them – or, more likely, just abandoned them – they were picked up and washed by Mrs S who assumed they were mine. All very innocent then.

But no sooner was this mystery solved than I have found myself embroiled in another one.

For some reason, on both my arms and just below the elbows I appear to have scraped away the skin in a rather painful manner.

So painful, in fact, that you'd think I'd have noticed it when it occurred.

But I didn't – so, once again, I'm at a dead loss.

My own theory is that aliens abducted me one night – come to think of it I didn't have a very good night's kip on Sunday, which I had put down to the hot weather – and took a couple of skin samples for testing purposes before returning me to terra firma (or as John Prescott reputedly said "terra cotta").

Mrs S's theories, you might not be surprised to hear, differ slightly from my own.

Theory one is that it might be impetigo, which pleased me no end and which has got me nervously glancing at said marks to check that they are not getting any worse.

Theory two – and, to be honest, this might be the clincher – is that I might have scraped them on a wall or something last Friday night when I was very much the worse for wear after a colleague's leaving do.

Had you been standing near the Adelphi pub, down near the famous Tetley brewery, at around 11pm you'd have seen me shuffling (or rather weaving) my way up the hill towards Leeds City railway station.

Shamefully

Rather shamefully (and the honest explanation is I don't get out much these days and I may have overdone it) there is not much else I can recall between this point and climbing into my car – and before you get too concerned, Mrs S was behind the wheel.

The one thing I can remember is that over the course of this short walk I managed to consume both a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a Big Mac from two different McDonalds fast food eateries.

This, clearly, explains the not too difficult to solve mystery of why my face is so fat but, as for my arm scrapings, any bright ideas/suggestions will be gratefully considered.