I don’t think I’ve ever been close to death but I am a nervous flyer, especially during turbulence, so there have been many times where I’ve felt that I was.

Last Christmas I was clipped by a train. Mum was dying so my head was elsewhere. I was walking home and had to cross one of those crossings that say, “Stop, look and listen.” I didn’t do any of those things, and I had my headphones in so I couldn’t even hear the train. It clipped my left elbow.

The motorcycle crash, but also when a neon sign fell on my head in Soho in the 90s.

The print size in my mind decreased with time’s incremental decline, and as I arrived at the last word – weeks – it suddenly struck me, with all the force of the fullest sense of the word ‘struck’, that this could actually be his answer and not just the logical next time period in my sentence. Every cell in my body, except those responsible for maintaining a reasonable, calm exterior, was now lindy-hopping at that possibility, the only one that hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.

In my 20s, touring small arts centres with my best mate, performing sketch comedy to a handful of people.

Not accepting every dare.

Cleaning toilets in a hotel in Croydon when I was 16. A guest once gave me a half-eaten bag of pistachios as a tip, so there were perks.

An eye surgeon. I had an operation on my cornea when I was little, and remember being deeply enamoured with the team who looked after me. Subsequently, I was very disappointed to learn that a degree of scientific aptitude was required for the job, which ruled me out.