Everything came crashing down over the course of one week in August.

It started at a house party in Rotherhithe that my uni friend Tasha had invited me to, at a flat with a really nice balcony view (pictured). I left late and alone, and didn't know this part of the city at all, so quickly found myself walking around the quiet streets in lost circles trying to find the tube. I reasoned, though, that the river was nearby, and so all I had to do was follow along parallel to it and eventually I'd reach a station. At some point my pissed mind had the genius thought that the most direct route would be along the line of the river itself. And so I set off climbing the back walls of the industrial yards and warehouses that lined the edge of the Thames and walking along the top of them. This worked well for a while, until it didn't.

I had passed maybe a dozen dark old buildings on my left, with the river lapping at the base of the wall ten feet below me on my right, before hitting a barbed wire fence that rose high and perpendicular above the next section of wall. I turned round and tried to go back but realised I was too drunk to safely make the crossing back down onto the much lower section of wall I'd just climbed up from. I was stuck. After pausing for a few minutes, in which I contemplated ringing the fire brigade, I noticed that over at the far end of the yard I was looking down on, there was an open gate.

Without being able to see much of what was below me, but estimating I was maybe 8 feet up, I carefully lowered myself down from the wall and dropped. I was falling through the air for maybe two full seconds, but a second lasts a long time when you're falling. I'd considerably underestimated the height of the wall. I landed hard on my right foot, cried out in pain as it gave way underneath me and the rest of me crumpled to the ground, skin smacking off the concrete. Then dazed, picking myself up and finding myself unable to put any real weight on the freshly injured foot, it took me several hours to limp from wherever I was to Guys & St. Thomas A&E.