A (not very impressive) black eye

Last week, on my way to see my friend Ben Musgrave's play His Teeth at Only Connect (which is raw, startling, lyrical, gets inside the experience of being an illegal immigrant in London and is still on, so go), I had a seizure and fell on my face. I staggered into the theatre, my friends got me ice from the bar and I watched the play with it pressed to my face. In the morning, I called NHS Direct, established that my cheekbone wasn't broken and my brain wasn't leaking, and tried to work out what to do about my big meeting that afternoon. I was sorely (ha!) tempted to style it out, pretend to be a prizefighter, demand raw steaks but I decided instead to cover it up with clever use of makeup. Except I am terrible at using makeup, and I caught sight of myself in a shop window and winced. I arrived at the meeting looking like a woozy drag queen. I ended up just telling the story.

By day four the bruise had morphed into a (not very impressive) black eye and a greenish cheek. I was having brunch with a friend at the Roundhouse and a woman followed me into the loos and said "leave him. He's not worth it." I was so stunned by this terrible bit of dialogue that I wasn't able to muster a proper response. "It's not his fault," I began. She gave me a pitying look. "No, no. It really isn't his fault." When we finally emerged, I realised the whole café were giving him dirty looks.

It's fading now. To a writer, obviously, everything's material, but some things I'd rather have to make up than actually have to experience.