I'm on my holidays, on the isle of Arran. The tourist board calls it "Scotland in minature", claiming it represents the Caledonian landscape in microcosm. Certainly, I've spotted facsimilies of highland mountain ranges and Perthshire's rolling hills. I've yet to find the bit strewn with shattered Buckfast bottles representing Dumfries, however, so clearly I've got a bit more exploring to do.

Over the last week I've done a stretch of the West Highland Way and visited the island of Islay, combining the two interests I tend not to mention on first dates - malt whisky and hillwalking. Doing the latter means I get to feel better about the former. I'm deluding myself, though, because a cursory glance at my waistline shows clearly that it's the drinking bit making the biggest impact.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I greatly enjoy a bit of hiking, and how anxious I was prior to my operation to get back in the anorak as quickly as possible. I've managed to get out quite a bit since I found my feet again - Galloway is hugely under-rated rambling country - but since I started cycling and going to the gym by mistake I have to admit I've been neglecting my inner Keith and Candice-Marie.

Obviously, losing my sense of balance put paid to walking over rough ground for a while. Thanks to some expert physiotherapy, that's long since recovered. Climbing uphill, clambering over rocks, munching on Kendal Mint Cake - it all feels as natural to me as shovelling fivers under the mattress must do to Ken Dodd.

The only impairment I have is on the descent. As I go downhill I pick my way carefully, one step at a time, at the pace an elderly gentleman might make his way to the bookies. None of this has any physical imperative. It's entirely psychological. Something in my psyche must have held on to its trepidation about making my way down slopes long after it grew blase and indulgent about climbing them.

I realised I was doing this at the weekend, and grew annoyed with myself. Going downhill is supposed to be the easy bit, the part where you give your legs relief or pick up speed a bit. Instead I'm gingerly inching lower lest gravity yank me face-first onto some rocks. So I decided to start bounding down in what I thought was a carefree manner, then got self-conscious again because people where looking at the strange bloke flapping his arms about in an exaggeratedly devil-may-care-flounce. And became annoyed with myself a second time.

It's not like I've got anything to worry about. In the past year I have fallen over precisely once. About a month ago I skived off one sunny afternoon and, walking around the country lanes near my house, cut through a freshly-ploughed field. I tripped on a stray root and tumbled to earth, but lack of balance wasn't to blame: not looking where I was going was.

What I should really do here is write a Wonder Years-style peroration about how it isn't physical limitations that hold us back when we try to overcome challenges and obstacles, it's mental ones. This may or may not be an insight worth sharing. But I'm in an internet cafe waiting for the rain to pass, and my money is about to run out. Anyone who has emailed me in the last week or so: I'll reply over the weekend. 

I have fresh additions to my list of Things I Can No Longer Do As A Result Of My Tumour. Regular readers will be aware this contained only one item prior to now, tearing off sellotape with my teeth. It did for a while include listening to an MP3 player using headphones, but as you'll recall I found a way round that. None of this has greatly inconvenienced me, of course, so I'm constantly on the lookout for new handicaps that might help me elicit sympathy or, better still, taxpayers' money.

Last week I was on the isle of Islay and, during an unexpected lull in the rainfall, I put down my whisky glass long enough to wander by a bird sanctuary. I'm not an expert twitcher by any means, but I was promised all manner of wildfowl and, being easily amused, thought I'd take a look. I ducked into a hide which was equipped with several telescopes. I put my eye up to one and saw - well, a bit of a blur.

As I've mentioned before, my facial palsy means only my left eye closes properly. Thanks to the gold weight in the right rid, I can shut both of them at once. But because the functioning lid is pulling down the palsied one, I can't close the right one without closing the left one too. Does that make sense? I can shut the left one and leave the right one open, but not the other way round.

Now, to use a telescope I needed to execute this tricky one-eye-open-one-eye-closed technique so expertly perfected by Sir Patrick Moore (above). No big deal, you might think, given that I still have the capacity to batten down the left 'un on its own. Except, of course, that my right eye doesn't work since it got all ulcerated. So I couldn't see much through it.

This handicap was, of course, quite easily solved. I looked though the lens with my good eye and covered up the other one with my hand. I saw a heron, some barnacle geese, choughs, snipe and what I think was a corncrake, thanks for asking.

This episode got me thinking, though. What activities depend on the OEOOES manœver yet don't allow me a free hand with which to shield the right side? Golf, I thought, with some relief. I detest this game (I refuse to dignify its supposed status as a sport. Boxing, football, athletics - they're all sports. Wandering around a field with another pastel-clad middle manager talking about your new Ford Focus - that's a pursuit, at best) more than I can possibly tell you. I live next door to a nine-hole course and have spent many fruitless hours looking out of my window wondering what on earth the Pringle-wearing hordes get out of the whole sorry affair. It's not like it's particularly good exercise, any more than is walking to the shops and back. And the BBC certainly never broadcast me making the return trip between my front door and Woolworths on Grandstand. Don't think I haven't pleaded with them.

Firing any kind of rifle or firearm that necessitates looking through a telescopic sight is also out. Hopefully this will give me a medical get-out should military conscription ever be re-introduced (as a coward, I'd always banked on having to skip the country to Sweden). Although my career as a sniper is over before it ever began, I can, of course, still shoot from the hip, like Al Pacino in Scarface, should anyone be idiotic enough to entrust me with an automatic firearm.

Lastly, I'm also beginning to accept that archery is also probably out of the equation. Watching the start of Robin Hood on Saturday made me grateful that I don't live in the 12th-century east midlands. I'd be neither use nor ornament to Sherwood Forest's prototype socialist movement. Or maybe they could take me on to do their PR?

It's a delicate business, adjusting to a new sleeping partner. Sharing a bed not only adds an extra dimension of intimacy to a relationship, it throws up a minefield of potential flashpoints. Without effective communication, both sides will fail to appreciate the other's needs. And there's hell to pay if you don't keep your toenails trimmed.

I speak with authority because I'm now spending my nocturnal hours with Young Sparky , the trophic stimulator designed to get the right side of my face working again. After the initial excitement of our new coupling died down I did have some concerns about our compatibility. But I like to think these difficulties were resolved by establishing what works for both of us, and I'm confident a long and affectionate future lies ahead.

To be honest, it was an arrangement that suited me from the outset. In the early stage of our companionship I would hook up with Sparky during the daytime. While I'm sure this did an equally good job of jump-starting my facial nerves, it was fairly inconvenient for me. For three hours at a stretch I couldn't go out, or answer the door, without looking like some kind of mentalist. I don't see many people walking around the streets of Dumfries or, indeed, anywhere with electrodes dangling from their visages like battery-powered versions of Medusa's serpent locks of hair, and I'm not sure I'm the right person to start a trend.

Now, I know it's not good form to mention what you got up to with previous partners. But I'd had quite a good understanding with my stimulator's predecessor, Old Sparky . Before going to bed at night I would stick OS to my face and nod off while the electricity flowed. It worked because this Sparky was elderly and not especially vigorous. Of course, my head was turned by a younger, more powerful model extra appendages. But I did worry that this new partner would be too much for me, preventing me getting any sleep.

It's true that in the first couple of nights it took me ages to drift into subconsciousness. I'd lie awake feeling my right cheek, forehead and chin pulsating. It probably didn't help that I set the controls too high, and when I turned over the dials would get cranked up further, which hurt a bit. I'd wake up in the morning tangled with wires, or alternatively find that one or more electrodes had become detatched overnight.

We worked our way all this, though. I stuck to a moderate voltage I secured tape across the controls so they couldn't get get pushed up too far. Then I worked out the position least likely to result in me getting tangled in yards of spaghetti - lying on my side, with Young Sparky on top of the duvet behind my back. And soon my face became accustomed to, then somnolated by, this gentle electric lullaby.

One unexpected adjustment to my habits. Sparky doesn't like it if I'm too hairy. If my chin has excessive stubble on it, no electric charge gets through (that I can feel, anyway). So I've taken to shaving when I go to bed instead of first thing in the morning. Again, I found this a bit of a pain at first, something else to do along with brushing my teeth and going through the whole 10-minute rigmarole of tearing off strips of tape, squeezing gel onto the electrodes and sticking them into place. But now I quite like it. I feel a lot fresher when I go to bed having run a razor across my face. It's the same sort of idea as getting into newly-laundered sheets.

My night-time arrangements with Young Sparky will only last as long as half of my head remains static, of course. Once it gets working again I'll have the entire bed to myself once more. In the meantime, though, who am I to question the circumstance that has thrown us together?