“Nothing’s real in this world,” I commented to myself bitterly as I threw the empty plastic coffee cup into the bin. “It’s all just instantly disposable, instantly forgettable candyfloss crap.” The whole world seemed to me at that moment just like the crumpled ultra-thin white plastic coffee cup that I had just thrown in the bin – barely sufficient in a crappy sort of a way at the time to do the job it was supposed to do and certainly no good at all after this, no good at all after it passes its sell-buy date. “Designed obsolescence, isn’t that what they call it?” I commented again to myself with a touch of wry humour as I walked out of the canteen. “Nothing’s built to last these days…” As I walked out of the door it occurred to me that actually nothing WAS real in this world. It was actually true! The realization came upon me, so to speak, out of nowhere. What I had said was truer than I had known at the time. It was 100% true. Nothing was real. The Beatles had got it right. The plastic coffee cup wasn’t real and neither was the crappy coffee I had drunk out of it. Neither was this dismal shit-hole of a place. This place wasn’t real at all – it was just a particularly depressing consensual hallucination. “Just like the consensus reality to be dull and depressing.” I thought wryly to myself in the privacy of my own head. “Why does everyone always have to agree on the crappiest possible reality to live in?” I carried on walking. The idea that nothing was real wouldn’t leave me. It persisted. It hung on. It followed me around. It haunted me. It filled me with a peculiar melancholy bittersweet sadness. I came to an abrupt halt then, overcome with this strange melancholic emotion. I was almost choking on it. I knew then – with greater clarity than I had ever known anything in my entire life – that this world wasn’t real. It was a mirage, a phantom, a hallucination. It was a giant hoax, a put-up job. This absolutely devastating insight was followed by another, equally shocking one – I realized then that I wasn’t real either. I was a hoax, a fraud. I had only imagined  – somehow – that I was real. I didn’t exist at all. That was some kind of deranged fantasy I had had – I was actually just a figment of my own imagination…