I never thought anything of it, I never actually thought anything of it at all. I didn’t think it mattered – I certainly didn’t think it did any harm. I used to play this game in my head, over and over again, for many many years. I played this game whenever I had nothing else to do, whenever I was bored or unhappy. It was just a thing that I did – a thing that I did and never gave any thought to. It was just what I did. It was just the game that I played. Until one day I discovered that the game was real and everything else wasn’t.

 

Things used to be fun, stuff used to be fun, life used to be fun. Back in the old days. Everything was better then, back in the old days. Now everything is a meaningless chore – a chore that has to be carried out for no reason, a chore that has to be carried out just for the sake of it, a chore that is carried out simply because ‘it is our duty to do it’. The rule has to be obeyed because it’s the rule – isn’t that reason enough for you? And even if it isn’t reason enough for you, what choice do you have? The rule doesn’t give us any choice. The chore doesn’t give us any choice either – it hangs over us, growing heavier by the minute…

 

Things used to be fun, things used to be good, before I became a programme in a dead mechanical world. How much fun can you have as a programme in a dead mechanical world? That’s a good question. That’s a telling question. You can learn a lot from asking the right question, as opposed to the wrong question. You can learn everything you need to know. If you actually want to know, that is. If you actually want to want to want to want to want to

 

If you actually want to. I never thought anything of it – I never gave it any thought at all. It was just the thing I did. All those years I spent playing the game, playing the game, playing the game. Playing the secret game – the game that even I didn’t know about. All those long years. Doing the thing, doing the thing, doing the thing.

 

I never thought anything of it and then one day I discovered that the game was real – more real than anything else, more real than what I had previously considered to be my ‘life’. Whatever I had imagined that to be. Obviously I had never looked into it very deeply at the time. Does anyone? There had been fun in it though – I remember that. Do you remember ‘fun’, I ask myself dourly. That thing called ‘fun’. That thing we all know as ‘fun’. Although it’s hard for me to relate to that concept now. What does fun mean to me now? Does a programme in a dead mechanical world know the meaning of the word ‘fun’?

 

Sometimes you just have to say ‘what the hell’ and kick the old dustbin up and down the yard until your feet get sore and your breath comes in gasps. Sometimes you just have to break out and shout and roar and yell waving your arms and stamping your feet and flailing around wildly in the street until the police come to take you away. Sometimes you just have to cut loose and run screaming for miles through the fields, startling the crows and scattering the sheep. Sometimes you just have to start laughing for no reason whilst stabbing yourself in the leg with a 2H pencil. Sometimes you have to create your own private universe within the sealed and lonely confines of your own head. A very small private universe that consists only of a small porch and a battered old rocking chair. And you’re rocking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for hours and hours and hours without knowing that you’re doing it.

 

That’s all you ever do there in your private universe. You’re just rocking back and forth and back and forth in that rickety old rocking chair without knowing what you’re doing until one day the chair finally breaks…