I WAS down in London last week and I saw something that left me not just rattled but shook to my very core.

It was the gung-ho nature of people crossing the road. Buses, taxis and bikes sped by pedestrians at distances of what looked to me to be only millimetres from their noses and toes as they stood in the middle of the road.

I can’t imagine myself ever being in that much of a hurry to get somewhere that I’d risk my life to shave a few seconds off my journey. It’s madness.

On one occasion though I saw a guy cross from behind a bus and directly into the path of another bus coming from the opposite direction.

The bus didn’t slow down and the guy looked so calm as he did a wee hop back then sprinted across when it had passed.

Watching this unfold in front of me, I swear to God, I saw the guy’s life flash before my eyes.

I thought about how his last thought would probably have been “I should’ve just waited”.

It got me thinking a lot about life and death as I cut about the city, feeling myself get sweaty palms and a racing heart whenever I saw someone cross the road.

I caught myself getting hesitant to cross even when the green man flashed in case I was blasted off this mortal coil by an opentop tourist bus, its passengers snapping pictures of my broken body.

It got me thinking about how I look after myself as well. Something which I don’t really do.

I’m not reckless in the sense that I’ll go out and do daft stuff but when it comes to my health and wellbeing etc, I have no real interest in addressing it.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I went to see a doctor or even went to the dentist. To me, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed by drinking more water, taking two painkillers and having a lie down.

I’m not afraid of the doctors or anything like that, I just have a tendency to think I’d be a pest if I went.

A doctor once said to me that he was fed up with people coming in and saying they were blinking too much and things like that. Because of that, I think my leg would need to come clean off or something before I even dared to seek help.

As I fast approach my 30th birthday, I think it’s maybe time I get a grip and address this.

Maybe minutes before I saw that guy almost get knocked down, I made a comment to my girlfriend about how that’s me at the half-way point of my life as

I’ll probably die at 60 after noticing my “resting” heart rate was about 90bpm. Watching someone else have a close shave felt like a real kick up the backside to get myself together and take a bit more care of my body and mind.

I think it’s something a lot of people do, neglect to look after themselves despite maybe having a great deal of sympathy for other people who get unwell.

Not just physically, but mentally as well. So many times I’ve encouraged my pals to speak up about how they’re doing and ask how I can help them while pointing them in the right direction to get proper help.

Something I don’t think I’ve ever done myself.

“Nah,” I’ll think to myself, “I’m no as bad as other people so I’ll be fine, I’ll just get over it.”

I’ve caught myself thinking like this when I’m sitting pulling my hair out at my desk while I worry about money, work problems and my own mental state.

I’ve started instead to take a step back and imagine that all my current worries and feelings were being relayed to me by someone else and think about what I’d say to them.

It’s a simple thing that I’ve found works for me and shows me my problems are fixable and not really as bad as I think they are. One thing I say to people who are stressed about something is that everything can be fixed and sorted and that it’s only a temporary problem.

However, this is something my brain fails to say to me when I think “my god, this can never be fixed and I’m always going to be stressed out of my mind by it forever”.

If you ever find yourself with a list of what feels like insurmountable, unsolvable problems then write them all down and imagine it’s a message you’ve received from a pal and think about how you would advise them.

I guarantee new solutions you hadn’t thought of before will come to mind.

With the past year and a half feeling like it’s been stolen from us by the pandemic, maybe looking after ourselves more is something we should all be doing.