During a hike on Rubha Hunish, the northernmost point on the Isle Of Skye, I decided to wander off ahead of my two friends, like a pioneer (or a child saying to the world ‘look at me, I’m walking alone!’). 

I was a couple of steps away from the cliff edge and I could smell the sea. The horizon was just about to enter my view when I stepped in mud . . . and sank an entire leg into the ground. Like a good improviser, I took another step and sank half of the other leg. As I was being rescued by Isobel, Amelia filmed the ordeal whilst informing me that this trap was indeed called a peat bog (I didn’t know there was a harder level of mud). 

The frustrating part wasn’t the smell or the dozens of flies suddenly so excited to hang out. It was that I couldn’t find any humour or symbolism in this. There was no moral, there was no poetry, there was no Newton getting hit by an apple and learning gravity. It was truly just me and my defeat, covered in wet grassy mud, staring at the sea. Then, for some reason, I started laughing. 

I realised I’d flown across two continents to study in Scotland, taken a day’s drive to this remote spot, just to sink into a horrible mush. It was as if that piece of bog was meant for me and had spent a year waiting. 

Jin Hao Li: Swimming In A Submarine, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, Wednesday 31 July–Sunday 25 August.