From his point of view, it looked like I was sitting on the pavement rolling up fags and swearing to myself, and that's not such a good look, is it? He kind of came up to me, and then he crouched down so he was at my height, and then he started talking to me quietly. And he was like, Jess? Do you remember me?

I'd only seen him like two months before, so of course I remembered him. And I went, No, and laughed, which was supposed to be a joke, but which couldn't have come across as a joke, because then he goes, still in this whispery voice, I'm Colin Wearing, and I used to teach you at art college. And I go, Yeah, yeah, and he goes, No, I am, and then I see that he thought my Yeah, yeah was like Yeah, right, but it wasn't that sort of Yeah, yeah. All I was doing with the two Yeahs was trying to tell him that I'd only been joking before, but I only made it worse. I made it look like I thought he was pretending to be Colin Wearing, which would be an utterly insane thing to do. So the whole conversation is going right off course. It's like a supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel, because all the time I'm thinking, this should be easy to push along, and everything I say just takes me in the wrong direction.

And he goes, Why are you here, sitting on the path? And I tell him that I'd had a row with my fucking mother about some earrings, and he was like, And now you can't go home? And I said that I could if I wanted to. I could just get on the Northern Line back to Angel and then jump on a bus. But I didn't want to. And he went, Well, I don't think you should sit here. Is there anywhere you can go? And then I realized that he thought I had turned into like a nutter, so I stood up quickly, which made him jump, and I gave him a mouthful and walked away.

But then I did think, as opposed to swear mentally. And the first thing I thought was that it would be very easy for me to be a nutter. I'm not saying it would be a piece of piss, living that life - I don't mean that. I just mean that I had a lot in common with some of the people you see sitting on pavements swearing and rolling cigarettes. Some of them seemed to hate people, and I hated just about everyone. They must have pissed off their friends and family, and I'd pretty much done that. And who knows whether Jen's a nutter now? Maybe it runs in the genes, although with my dad being a junior Education minister, maybe it's one of those things that skips a generation.

And I didn't know where all this thinking was leading to, but I could see suddenly that I was in more trouble than I had thought. I know that sounds stupid, considering I'd thought about killing myself, but that was all just for a laugh, and if I'd jumped it would have been for a laugh, too. What if I had a future on this planet, though? What then? How many people could I piss off, and how many places could I run away from, before I found myself sitting by the river and swearing externally 4 real? Not many more, was the answer.

So the thing to do was to go back - to Starbucks, or home, to somewhere - anywhere that wasn't forward. If you're walking somewhere, and you come up against a brick wall, then you have to retrace your steps.

But then I sort of found a way of climbing over the wall. Or I found a little hole in the wall I could crawl through, or whatever. I met this geezer with a really nice dog, and I went and slept with him instead.