The descending lift stopped between floors with a jolt. My companions were a woman with a toddler in a stroller and a woman with a rollator – one of those wheeled walking frames.

We had been on our way to the Victoria Line platforms on the Underground. In an instant, it looked as though we might be there for hours. You read about such incidents. The poet John Heath-Stubbs once lay for ages on stairs down to the Underground when he’d broken his leg, simply because he was blind and everyone assumed it was just an old drunk lying there.

The rollator woman lunged for the emergency button and couldn’t wrench its cover off fast enough. I said: “Don’t worry.” That’s all I did say in the ensuing events, and I don’t think it helped.

The lift suddenly went up again and its doors opened. A man in overalls stood there. We’d last seen him as the doors closed, leaving him behind. He said: “I kicked the doors. That makes the lift stop.”