A pair of English anthropologists arrived in the Western Isles to study the natives about 200 years ago. They went to two adjacent islands, Barra and Eriskay, and each one set to work on his own offshore bit of the Hebrides. A few months later, the one on Eriskay rowed a boat over to Barra to see how his colleague was doing. When he got there, he found the other anthropologist standing among a group of islanders.

So how were his colleague’s studies going, asked the visiting anthropologist. Everything was going very well and he had discovered an important fact about the local language. He would demonstrate.

He pointed at the sea and asked the islanders what that was. The Barrachs, almost in unison, shouted: “Sgealbag”. He then pointed at the sky and asked what was that. The islanders again roared: “Sgealbag”. The proud anthropologist declared to his friend that he had discovered that on Barra they use the same word for the sea and the sky. How amazing was that?

That was truly staggering, agreed the other one, because on Eriskay he had found that the people there used the same word for index finger.

Far be it from me to make light of anyone else’s misfortunes, whether they are anthropologists or not, I was a bit shocked and very inappropriately amused but tried hard to suppress a giggle when I met Neen Mackay the other day. The chef and presenter of Gaelic salmon fishing series Turas a’ Bhradain (The Salmon’s Journey) was walking about with her hand held out in in front of her and pointed skywards. She was like an arm wrestler with a most unfortunate case of cramp.

As always when we meet, I gave her the thumbs up. She semed to be giving me the finger. How dare that woman make those rude gestures at me, I thought. What had I done to her? Closer inspection showed she was holding up just one heavily-bandaged index finger.

Even in the wilds of Carloway, you need to see two extended digits before you must consider taking offence and giving anyone a slap. So my amazement quickly turned to pity as I realised Dame Dalmore must be gravely injured. Aw. How could it have happened? Oops, I thought to myself, there was a very good chance some thing terribly unfortunate had happened in her kitchen where she spends so much of her life nowadays. Was she slicing up a row of carrots, like in Tom and Jerry, and just kept chopping until her finger was cut up into handy discs ready for the soup?

Should I even ask? What Neen. or anyone. does with that particular digit is their own business. I have certainly put mine in places that I shouldn’t have and paid a heavy price. OK, I admit it. It happened the day Mrs X found me sneakily picking my nose. There was a foreign body up there. No, it wasn’t Claudia Schiffer, silly.

‘Snot easy but I had to have a go at it. Then my beloved stormed up and brutally walloped my hand away from my nostrils so hard that my picking finger smashed against a worktop causing me the most severe pain you can imagine – unless, of course, you are a woman who has had a baby. The female of the species do go about that particular pain but they’ve not been caught by my missus with fingers in their nostrils. Agony, that was.

So I had a bit of sympathy as Neen tearfully told me how she was stravaiging over the road at Garynahine with her hound Paddy when it began to devour something it found. Ah, roadkill. How sweet. Paddy is having a free meal.

Then she realised that it was an already-dead, mouldering and possibly diseased wabbit. Oops. There was nothing else for it. Ms Mackay set about extricating the elongated bunny remains from the throat of the Labrador. She had her gloves on. Not a problem. There, that’s it. Wait, there’s more down there.

Sensing he was losing a lunch, the Lab suddenly snapped shut his growling tackle. The sound of fangs crunching human bone rent the noontime air. Yaaaoouuuuccchhh. And so did Neen’s howls.

Spouting blood like a well-shaken lemonade bottle with a loose lid, she was whisked to Accident and Emergency where they quickly assessed the doggy damage. After examining the soggy, bloody mess where her poking finger once nestled, a breathless nurse sidled up to her and asked if Neen still had the glove she had been wearing. She did. A quick poke about in it by the medic and she found the underside of Neen’s finger which had been sliced right off.

After some very neat stitching by a Hungarian doc, who she wishes to warmly thank, Neen is expected to recover well. Before she hobbled out, she asked the doc if he thought she would be able to play the piano after what had happened. He saw no reason why not.

“Oh good,” she said. “Because I couldn’t play it before.”