The face that appeared in the bathroom mirror seconds later had hurried from the set of a horror movie, not from the kitchen. A Twombly of blood and dirt was spread across my right cheek, streaking gore around the lips, back to the ear, up to the eye, down to the line of the chin. I soaked a flannel and started to wipe, fearing that my addled body had sent out the wrong signals, that I might be severely hurt or maimed, scarred for life. A big step towards being the human wreckage shivering in the corner of the pub or on the park bench, the perma-wounded, in a relentless downwards spiral of needless trauma.

But once I had splashed cold water on the mess – delicious, clean pain – I found it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t hospital-visit bad. A nasty scrape – really a dozen or so scratches, a couple more like gouges, in an area of raw skin the size and colour of a slice of supermarket chorizo. Around this was a zone of thump scarlet, which I expected to bruise nicely. It was ugly, and dumb, and would need a few lies ready-prepared to explain it to people, but that was all.

I showered. Normally I wouldn’t bother, facing a day alone, or I’d spend the day intending to, but never get around to it. But I ached, I was freezing, my clothes needed changing, and even I can’t sit comfortably and drink through that. None of my other pains gave me cause for concern, although the pain in my head was atrocious – one of those headaches that resided in the roots of the teeth, in the knot that binds the spine to the brain, in the dark recesses under the eyes.

The shower gave me a terrific sense of achievement. Something achieved – two things, if you counted the plastic bag! – and the day only a little more than half done. Wearing my dressing gown, I started work on the next priority: consolidating the assorted empty and half-finished cans I had hanging around, yielding about two cans-worth of lager. Having thus set things on a solid basis, I put one of the open cans in the door of the fridge, sat down on the sofa with the other, and turned on the TV.

I really should do some work. But I had done a lot already and had earned a sit down.