Enter at your own risk.
Are you still here? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I did. Up there, look, the line above says so.
Still here?
Right. This is the madhouse. I live here. Along with a bunch of people who are adjacent to normal. It’s over there, in the shadows, somewhere. I think. Or it might be under the floorboards. Mind the mice. They like cheese.
Now, while you are here let me explain what’s going on. (I don’t know, sorry.) This is not a performance. There are people out there in the world who think this is not how I would normally write.
Let me tell you. I got into trouble at school. Many years ago but I remember it well. We were asked to write an essay about what we did during the summer holidays. I wrote about working at the hat shop. Where I got to wear six top hats, one on top of the other. And a bowler hat on Tuesdays.
I wrote about my time working in the shoe shop. Where I wore a new left shoe every day. The right shoes didn’t agree with my choice of biscuits.
Right at the end of the essay I wrote:
None of this happened, but if it did, it would have been a great summer holiday.
My teacher? He was not impressed. He said I didn’t take the assignment seriously. Harsh. I worked hard on it. I wrote it in about ten minutes. Using a blue biro. Like we were supposed to.
I still write like that now. Now blue biros were harmed in the writing of this piece. What I mean is, I write until I stop. If I stop before I’m finished? It means I’ve thought about too hard. A hard thought is one that says:
—Oi! Shut it! Or I’ll smash yer face in.
Or a thought that when you bite it, it hurts your teeth.
Yes, I don’t think. Thinking makes me write like I’m sitting on a sharp object. I did some thinking once. While writing a novel. It hurt my head. And the novel? I finished it but it kept yawning. I asked it what was wrong.
—I’m tired, dummy. That’s what people do when they’re tired. They yawn.
—You’re a novel.
—With people in.
—Ah.
But I worried it was yawning because it was bored. So, I wrote a new one and made sure it wasn’t bored. So there it is. This is how I write.
Sorry about that.
Right, I’m done. I need to go and water the goldfish.