Richard Eyre on bandages, bicycles and babies I broke my wrist with a fall from a bicycle on holiday in France which, although painful and tiresome, gave me the opportunity to take the measure of the French health service. Superb, was my conclusion. On my return I embellished my explanation of why my arm was in plaster by adding the spurious detail that the offending bicycle belonged to Jonathan Pryce (currently to be seen excelling as King Lear at the Almeida theatre). That was in the hope that it would forestall the thought: how stupid can a grown man be to fall off a bicycle? It rather ruined my narrative about French medicine to be told by an English consultant that the bones were not properly aligned and I needed to go back into hospital to have my arm re-engineered. And so it was that I missed the birth of my second grandchild. When I came round from general anaesthetic the first thing that I noticed was that at the end of my bandaged wrist there was a growth resembling a purple puffer fish: my hand. The next discovery was that my phone was bleating earnestly. I answered it to find that the much-anticipated birth of a healthy girl to my daughter, Lucy, had already taken place at her home on the floor of her sitting room with the help of her husband (and two midwives), while my wife entertained their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Evie, in another room with songs and stories punctuated by not so distant cries of pain. "Did the new baby come with instructions?" asked Evie, perhaps in the hope that it was a kit that had been mistakenly delivered to her parents from Ikea and could be returned on the grounds that they already had one. A second baby does, of course, come with instructions for the mother: feed me, feed me, feed me. It comes too with devotion, admiration and, after a while, a name. Naming a baby is an act of poetry, for many people the only creative moment of their lives. If you need help ask Google - it will offer you 22million results. Before the baby was born, Evie asked me if the book I was reading (Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth) was a book of baby names. She took it from me and turned the pages, fastidiously announcing a name for each page - wagbosh, curtains, floor, giraffe, policeman, inadoo, oof and about a hundred more. The new baby's name is Beatrix, by the way. It means "blessed." Or "she who brings happiness." Both true. Follow us on Twitter @TelegraphSeven