Most injuries heal quickly but some are frustratingly here to stay. Over the past two decades, my body has taken a fair bit of pounding, sometimes at my own instigation, sometimes not. So far, I think I’ve managed to keep it ticking over well considering its mileage.

I’ve played hockey regularly since I was twelve, and been a keen adventure sportsman since the age of sixteen. Courtesy of Her Maj, I have been paid to do sports and activities that many only dream about, and yet that same benefactor sometimes insisted on pushing my body beyond what it should normally be expected to do, leaving a few painful legacies.

I am seldom reckless with my own body these days. Surrounded by athletes and players, I have watched some drop by the wayside, a single, bad injury spelling the end of their active lifestyle. I would be lying if I said it didn’t worry me. I can minimise the risk in my chosen sports only to a fixed extent: it is the external factors which usually do the damage. Other players, falling rocks, rising water, an unseen obstacle: these you cannot take into account.

While injuries can heal well, repeated damage can be insidious. Long-distance running with weight in boots, frequent twisting and jumping on hard surfaces – joints can only take so much mistreatment before they start to complain. And by that time, the damage has probably already been done.

This pain is a warning, and one which you can choose to ignore. But at your peril.

I spoke with one of my mates last night and tried to get him to come out for a beer. He was as nice as he could be about it but he really wanted to spend the night in with his girlfriend. Fair enough – it’s annoying but we’ve all been there. There’ll be another day when being all lovey-dovey is the last thing on his mind and he will phone his mates again. Some peoples’ priorities are all fucked up!

Having been in the vicinity of drugs (both soft and hard) for much of my adult life, I have developed a thick skin when it comes to dealing with the occasionally strange social situations which can develop.

Growing up, several of my cousins and friends discovered weed and, finding it very much to their liking, became increasingly comfortable on their sofas. Much of their exercise came in the form of frequent trips to the fridge, and their expanding waistlines caused them to lose interest in the sport and fun which we all used to enjoy so much. I look at them occasionally and wonder if they are really happy doing what they are doing.

Although society is changing, taking drugs is still considered socially unacceptable for a whole host of reasons. It depends on your own personal standpoint when it comes to picking and choosing the arguments you’ll use to put your case. But experience tells me that they’re here to stay and so it’s better to learn to live with them than to bang on about it incessantly.

Hanging over the empty, black void on a spider’s thread, the sequence of events which brought me here are careering through my head like a train-crash. A schoolboy error, nothing more. So foolish. And my annoying inability to admit that sometimes I am wrong. Oh yea, and that foolish ego-driven bravado. We’re all young once. I just prayed silently that I’d live to get a little older.

With hindsight, of course I know what “spéléo” means. It simply hadn’t cropped up in the French course that I’d just finished. I saw the ropes and harnesses, karabiners and helmets and assumed this was a climbing club. If I’d looked a moment longer before plunging in headlong, I’d have seen the acetylene lamps and the tell-tale, all-pervading mud that I’d later appreciate as part and parcel of a caver’s life.

I’d come to Marseille not only for the prestige of studying at the Grande Ecole but for the lifestyle. I’d just done two tough years of Chemistry at York Uni and wanted a bit of spice back in my life. I could speak French (after a fashion) and wanted to travel a while before I finished my degree and joined the Army. With the Calanques in my back garden, I was going to have a great time climbing and trekking. Oh, and do a bit of studying too, to keep my tutors happy.

But I hadn’t joined a fucking climbing club, had I?