Do you know that thing where you’re doing all this bad stuff and you’re trying to make out that you’re not doing it at all but it’s starting to look pretty obvious all the same, even to the least observant of your detractors? The mask is starting to slip and you can’t do anything about it, in other words. You know the feeling that I’m talking about here, right? That’s a very important feeling to be talking about I think; it’s a kind of a crucial aspect of human experience, in my view. The mask slips and as soon as it does we know that something going very badly wrong; even the slightest slippage is enough to give the game away, isn’t that right? We all know that that, I think. We are all aware of that and that’s what’s so frightening. The mask is starting to slip and what’s going to be revealed then? Is it the true identity, or is it yet another mask? I’m playing for time, of course. I’m always playing for time – spinning it out, playing a delaying game, trying to prevaricate and obfuscate as best I can. Something might come to save me, I keep thinking. Something might come along. What exactly that might be I don’t know – I never really think things out as much is that you see! It doesn’t pay to think things out too much in my view. It might pay for some people (I’m quite prepared to admit that) but it doesn’t pay for me. I’m nonsense-thinking again; I’m trying to comfort myself with my thoughts but I’m frightening myself instead. We live in a world where lies are the official legitimate currency, I tell myself, but deep down I know that I am the liar, not the world. Deep down I know that I’m a liar. I lied when I said that I lied, but really I had broken a tooth. Really, I had made an error in my thinking but the error had been true. ‘How was I to know,’ I moan to myself, ‘how was I to know that the error was true?’ How was I supposed to have known? I was thinking nonsense to myself, thinking nonsense thoughts that were worth their weight in mould, when all of a sudden I realised that I had left the cat out of the bag. I had let the cat out of the bag in a big way. I tried to put it back of course but it scratched me and ran away, hissing. Deep down I know that I’m the liar of course but I try to pretend otherwise. I make up some daft cock and bull story about how it wasn’t me but how it was somebody else, how I wasn’t there really I was God knows where, some other of the type of place not there. I come up with some dreadful creaking rigmarole of an explanation that condemns me worse than any prosecuting barrister ever could. I was trying to comfort myself with my thinking but I opened up a can of worms instead. A can of Heinz spaghetti in a fine fragrant tomato sauce. All the worms start crawling out of course, they all start crawling out  immediately. They’re not staying there! No way! Would you really expect them to? I try to put them back in of course, stuffing great writhing handfuls of them back into the can as fast as ever I can but they’re escaping even faster from between my fingers. I come out with some long-winded excuse but my excuse condemns me irrevocably, it condemns me utterly. The best Crown Prosecutor in the land couldn’t have done a better job. It’s an open and shut case. The mask is slipping big time now and people are seeing me for who I really am. Even I don’t know I really am; especially I don’t know who I really am! And judging by the shocked faces of everyone around me, it’s not anything good!