How to punish people when they are bad and make sure that they are sorry! Yes, yes, yes – very important, very important. How to punish people so that they’re really, really sorry. That’s the thing, of course. That’s always the thing. Always the thing, always the thing, definitely always the thing. My mind tends to wander, that’s the thing; my mind tends to wonder and then I forget what I’m on about. I forget what I’m on about and then I start confabulating. ‘Solemn inanities, uttered from the depths of our profoundly unconscious ignorance,’ that’s the phrase that comes to my mind. That’s the phrase that came to my mind just a few moments ago. ‘And why wouldn’t it?’ you might well ask, ‘and why wouldn’t it?’ That’s the thought that comes to my mind and why wouldn’t it? ‘Why wouldn’t it?’ I asked. The same thought comes to my mind every day. How to punish people so they’re sorry I said to myself with a steely look in my eyes; my chin was jutting out with pure obstinate determination. How to punish, how to punish. I was all alone in a dark place – I was there to meet my friend Honest Joe but he had sold me up the river. He’d set me up big time. I never should have trusted him after the last time of course. I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to be a narcissist and now I knew! Now I knew but I didn’t know what I knew. I also didn’t know that I knew so it was all wasted. It was all useless to me. ‘It’s a sad state of affairs when your best friend in the whole world sells you up the river,’ I said to myself, wallowing in a fine marinade of bittersweet melancholy – ‘your very best friend in the world and he stitches you up like a kipper!’ There actually never had been such a person as ‘Honest Joe’ of course, that was just another of my confabulations. One of many, in fact; one of many. The fabric of the world was coming undone strand by strand and I had nothing to replace it with. Things were becoming very bare and so I had to dress them up a little. I had to flesh things out. Join up the dots – that sort of thing. Not that there were many dots these days however, I reflected grimly. It’s kind of amazing just how little you can get by with when it comes down to it. You think you’d notice but you don’t. You’d think someone would say something but they never do. ‘Solemn inanities, uttered from the depths of our profoundly unconscious ignorance,’ I told myself. That’s all we have left to us. That’s what passes for wisdom these days. We have to construct a whole world out of that and that’s modern culture for you. You have to put a big shit-eating smile on your face and step boldly out of the front door. You have to put your best foot forward, as they say. You’ve got plenty of feet, so that’s no problem. You’re the human centipede, an unparalleled biological oddity! ‘Amaze your friends with your fancy footwork,’ the ad said. That was no word of a lie, I said to myself. Only I hadn’t actually got any friends. ‘Billy No-Mates,’ the other children used to call me. ‘Only the shoe’s on the other foot now’, I muttered grimy to myself; ‘the shoe’s on the other foot now’…
