Even in our mollycoddled northern European hemisphere, we encounter near-death experiences on a regular basis. My boss has plenty of near-fatal stories, ranging from a close encounter with a glass table recently, when he fell off a ladder and landed on his back while doing some household DIY, to the misdiagnosis he received years ago, at which he was told he had only months to live.

There’s also the black sheep of the family, whose hard-living habits have led to plenty of health scares — although he’ll probably outlive Keith Richards. And the forgetful parenting stories we discover as adults.

While I drove through a tunnel in Switzerland last week, the windscreen suddenly fogged up. Hot Danish sprang into action: he switched the heating and hazard lights on, grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and simultaneously hung out of his side window to see the road. ‘You’re driving too close to the cars of the other side of the road,’ he said in alarm (his night vision isn’t good). ‘I don’t know what else to do.’ And then he put the windscreen wipers on and we could see clearly again. ‘Why didn’t you stop?,’ he asked afterwards. ‘I really thought we were going to die.’

Some of us are sanguine about life’s downs and some of us start panicking at the loss of a car parking ticket (ahem, HD). In the heat of the moment, however, it is infuriating to be told to get some perspective. When things have cooled or become clearer, or once we’ve survived childhood, we can laugh about those near-life experiences.