When I was one or two years old my parents went to Cold-War-era Poland, where bananas were considered astonishing. They left me in the care of my grandmother Mopsy, and while I was in her care, in a grocery shop, a tin fell from a shelf, onto the top of my head, causing an indentation that lasts to this day.

My gran wasn’t very forthcoming about this happening, and when my parents discovered, upon their return, they were shocked. ‘Oh, it’s alright’, said my gran. ‘I’m sure he’s fine. He’s been ever so quiet since it happened’. (I was more of a he/they in those days).

My parents think the tinfall incident might have done a bit of damage. I think the phrase ‘impaired my cognitive development’ might have come up at some point. As a four or five-year-old I wrote wildly, but speaking was more of a problem. I could force the words out, but the sentences would take me. Nobody had patience for my sentences, as they required great patience without reward. Part of this probably helped me become a proper middle-child, but another part of it probably ended up with me talking in the way that I do, which I’m told is extraordinary. I don’t sound much like my siblings. People from my native Durham and Newcastle think I’m from the South. People from the South think I’m from Switzerland. Somebody once told me I was the only person they knew who spoke in sentences, which is quite an attribute.

I’m not well co-ordinated. My dancing is done with gusto and lumbering. My handwriting has always been genuinely illegible, though this improved once I grew up and gave up joined-up letters. Mrs. Lambert, the excellent debate teacher and psychologist at my school, said I likely had dyspraxia, and I got to do my GCSEs on a laptop, which in those days was pretty unheard of. I do wonder if, if I’d been at the school a decade later, she might have identified me as autistic as well - but that’s another story.

I often wonder if that head-wound did make a difference, or if I’d be an awkward communicator and messy creator regardless of soup-related incidents. Was my brain damaged in some small, lasting way, or was I just born to be like this. If it did make a difference, how different would my life have been tinless? Was it the moment my life branched away from becoming a successful and meticulous and erotic conservative cabinet minister or in a less nightmare vision, would I actually have learned to apply myself and been a Doctor Who writer now, but for that accursed tin. Did it set me towards creative possibility, or hamper the communication skills I might have used to make something of my arts. I’m not wishing the past away, and cursing the day my head was blown. I’m very happy with who I turned out to be, but I had to learn to be happy with that. If you find cishet Ben Goudie in another timeline, would he look on tin-day as the day when he was saved, and would he find me a creature to shudder at, a cautionary tale. I hope not. That dude sounds like a jerk-ass, and I’m glad I’m not him.

If it was my destiny to be tindropped, it was an interesting destiny, if only by my own standards of interesting. I can’t quite say that I advocate it as a child-rearing method. Whether or not it determined my fate, I’m glad it wasn’t fatal. Unless, of course, that tin was playing a long game.