One has dissociations in times of extremity. My first thought was, someone has had an accident, a bad accident, and then I realised it was me. I tried to stand up and the leg gave way like a strand of spaghetti, completely limp. I then examined it, and in examining it I did so very professionally, and imagining that I was an orthopaedist demonstrating an injury to a class of students, I said, 'You see the... the quadriceps tendon has torn off completely, the patella can be flapped to and fro, the knee can be dislocated backwards,' I yelled with that, 'This causes the patient to yell', and then again I came back to the fact that I was not a professor demonstrating an injury, I was the injured person. I had an anorak, I tore the anorak in two, and I had used an umbrella as a walking stick, this was before the age of miniature umbrellas, and I... I broke off the top, and I splinted the stem of the umbrella to my leg using the torn anorak and then started my descent. At first very quietly, because I thought the bull, without falling down a cliff, may have just pursued the path and was behind me.

The... since we’ve mentioned Duncan Dallas who did the documentary of Awakenings, the thought of him and his crew came to me when I was there. I was alone. No-one knew where I was. I thought the chances were very much against survival, but I thought, gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if a helicopter appeared and there was Duncan and his crew, a great scene here, showing... show the bull, show me, and then I could be lifted up in a basket in the helicopter. A sense of... of how dramatic this was... was partly in my mind.

Well, anyhow, I... I didn’t think I would make it. I’d heard earlier that evening, they said, of a fool of an Englishman who... who had climbed the mountain and had been found three weeks later near the summit with both legs broken.