I had become a ghost again and there was nothing for it but to keep on wandering, wandering, wandering around the place. Wandering up and down the streets, as if I was going somewhere, which I wasn’t. I was wandering like a wandering thing. I was wandering for all I was worth, which didn’t feel like much. I was wandering like a thing with absolutely no purpose in life, other than the purpose to keep on wandering all the time. Which isn’t a purpose at all when it comes down to it but an all-consuming need.

I was wandering like a thing that didn’t have the power not to keep on wandering. As I say, I wasn’t going anywhere, I was just driven like a fallen leaf might be driven in an Autumn storm. Or to put it a trifle less poetically, something unmentionable was forever on the point biting my arse and I didn’t want to hang around to find out what it was…

You could of course say that this was rather cowardly of me. Not exactly what you’d call heroic. Not to have any interest in finding out what exactly it was that was chewing the arse off me. Well if you thought this then you’d be right. Of course it’s cowardly of me. You think I don’t know that? I know I’m a coward. I don’t mind admitting that I’m a coward, that I plain don’t want to know what it is that’s on my tail. Would you? It’s easy for you to be brave when it’s not you. It’s easy for you to take the moral high-ground sitting there in the comfort of your armchair. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to be a ghost. Its shit, let me tell you. That’s what it’s like. It’s complete and total shit.

You know that feeling that you might get if you were a loser-type guy who no one ever takes any notice of, the type of a person that no one wants to talk to because they haven’t got enough kudos to make it worth anyone’s while? Because they haven’t got any kudos at all? Well being a ghost is like that only a million times worse. You really are a pathetic loser when you’re a ghost let me tell you. You don’t have any kudos. Even a flea-bitten cur in the street has more kudos than you do. Even a rat in a garbage can has more kudos…

I trust I’m making myself clear on this point. It’s a bad old feeling being a ghost. A bad bad old feeling. You really wouldn’t have the imagination to appreciate what I’m saying unless you’ve been there yourself. You really wouldn’t get it. It’s a feeling that’s so bad all you can do is keep on wandering around so that it doesn’t quite get to catch up with you. So you can keep a few precious centimetres ahead of it. As long as you’re moving you get some relief, some respite, so of course that’s just what you do. You keep on moving. Not because you’re going anywhere, not because you’re hoping to eventually arrive somewhere, but simply because you’ve got to keep ahead of that bad bad old feeling.

It’s no life, I can tell you…

Anyway, that’s me. That’s it. Not much else I can say, really. That’s all there is. There’s nothing more to tell. Maybe you were expecting something else, some kind of a story or personal disclosure. Or perhaps you were expecting a positive development of some kind. There’s nothing like that. I can’t imagine why you’d be expecting anything of that sort.

There’s only wandering, that’s all. There’s nothing else. Being a ghost is just endless empty pointless wandering. Nothing more than that….