I have just finished a sojourn with a curious twist. Readers of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain will remember Hans Castorp, who set off to visit a cousin confined to a sanatorium in the Alps. Nothing went according to plan. The cousin fell into a sharp decline and died. Castorp himself was diagnosed as suffering from a lung ailment and spent the next seven years in the sanitorium. This ended only with a social, political and cultural upheaval, followed by a -conflagration.

St Thomas’ Hospital is hardly the Alps. But I spent five weeks there, having expected a three-day sentence. A surgeon told me that it was one of the most complicated wrist fractures he had ever seen. That may have brought him some consolation. It was not ideal to spend Christmas and new year in an invalid bed. Friends were telling stories about proposed banquets, plans to deplete cellars, as well as cases of wine travelling from Berry Bros and the Wine Society. Then some of those who would have been my hosts started to apologise: ‘This must be awful for you – we must not make you envious.’ Oddly enough, it was surprisingly easy to resist the lure of envy. I spent five weeks drinking vicariously. I would have thought that this was impossible and would have inflicted profound psychological damage. Not so. I was astonishingly relaxed about the whole procedure.

It is always interesting to learn something about oneself. Anyone who enjoys drinking must occasionally wonder about their relationship with alcohol. I was delighted to learn that there was no physical dependence. I had no difficulty sleeping. I remember a conversation once with Patrick Trevor-Roper. He was a distinguished eye surgeon and an altogether delightful fellow, somewhat more socially accessible, as it were, than his brother, Hugh the historian. So I asked Patrick about safe drinking margins. ‘Unless you have an unlucky liver,’ said he, ‘and if you did, Bruce, I think you would know it by now, you must just drink like a Frenchman and take most of your alcohol in the form of wine. If you imitate some of our fellow Scots and use whisky, no good will come of it. But if you merely enjoy a pleasant quantity of wine, there is no reason why you should not live to be an old soak.’ That is one of my ambitions.

Hospitals are places to think. I regret to inform readers that my thoughts led me in the direction of Anglo-Saxon philistinism, inspired by Dr Johnson and Evelyn Waugh’s Mr Prendergast. Johnson was asked how he could refute Bishop Berkeley’s denial of material substance. He saw a stone and gave it a hearty kick with his boot. ‘I refute it thus, sir.’ Mr Prendergast lost his faith because he could not see why God had troubled himself to create the world. A couple of theologically minded friends visited me. I am sure that they both thought I could have done better. But there it is: a coalition of two extremely unlikely characters, Johnson and Prendergast, ending in my case – though not in theirs – with eupeptic pessimism.

My hospital reading encompassed various detective stories, including a couple by P.D. James. Adam Dalgliesh’s inquiries take him to the Cadaver Club where the great Plant organises a luncheon of steak and kidney pudding, that great English dish. But James has Plant serve a 1959 Johannisberg Auslese (this was set in the late 1960s). It is very hard to know when to serve Auslese with food but I think a steak and kidney pud ought to be unleashed with a powerful Rhône, such as a Hermitage or a Côte-Rôtie.

But that discussion can continue. I promise readers that when they next hear from me, my battle scars will have healed and I shall have some serious bottles for their delectation.