You know the sort of thing I mean? Well, I was recently sent one on my mobile phone. “Send these 8 angels “*”*”*”*”*”*”*”*” (can you see the likeness?) to 8 of your friends and you will get something you want. If you delete it you will have 8 accidents.”

Ingenious! Clearly it’s taken somebody several days to think of such a spectacular waste of money and time, not to mention all the trouble of setting up the curse and everything. After about 2 seconds I thought…’Hmmm I could spend 80p annoying 8 of my friends… or, I can keep 8 of my friends and 80p and delete the damn thing’. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. I hit delete and thought no more about it.

And so, that brings us to yesterday. The morning seemed to be going well, I was working away in my usual cheerful fashion. I went to get something out of one of the low cupboards and steadied myself by placing one hand on the floor. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then one of my colleagues accidentally stood on it. Fortunately it didn’t hurt too much, my skin went a pretty pink colour and stung for an hour or so but soon went back to normal. I didn’t give it any more thought and the rest of the morning was fine.

At lunchtime I decided I would go and eat in the seating area of the shopping precinct with my pack up, get out of the office for a while and everything, so I wandered over. I arrived at the seating well and started my descent of the stairs. Unfortunately my descent was a little faster than I had planned on. As I put my foot on the first stair it landed funny, and then so did I, in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. I must have blinked and missed that actual falling part of the experience because one minute I was fine and dandy, walking along, the next I was on my knee’s and arms, my ankle all twisted and my hand hurting like hell.

I could feel everyone’s eyes staring at me, some struggling to suppress their laughter, others, not trying at all, some even pointing and joking with their friends. Nobody attempted to help me up, but to be honest I was happy about that, if I’d drawn any more attention to myself it would have meant risking the newspapers getting involved. I attempted to stagger to my feet but as it turned out, I could only manage foot and so I hopped over to the bench. I sat down as the feelings of nausea started spreading through me in waves and THEN some old bloke asked ‘Are you ok?’

‘Yes’ I said, ‘It was street theatre’.