I wrote my iconic masterpiece Nightmares in a Damaged Ego in the summer of 21, as is well known. As is well known to me, anyway. The title of which I plagiarised from the film of a similar name. The months of that summer merged in one long glorious burst of dark creativity and after it was over I was spent, utterly spent. I had nothing else to give. I had to go to a sanatorium to recover. I had to submit to the daily routine of colonic irrigation, grated carrot and beetroot juice.

Arrogant, opinionated, conceited, narcissistic, entitled – these are just some of the things people say about me. They don’t realise you see, they don’t realise how difficult it is to be me. That’s a classical one isn’t it – ‘They don’t know how difficult it is to be me’. No, no, no – they don’t know. How could they after all? They wouldn’t have a clue. No one else can know what it feels like to be me – that stands to reason really doesn’t it? ‘So what’s it like then?’ you dutifully ask, although the truth is that you haven’t the slightest bit of interest. But that’s the whole point right there isn’t it? That’s the whole point because none of us care what it’s like to be someone else. We might pretend that we do but we don’t.

There’s no one here but us chickens, isn’t that what they say? No one here, no one here, no one here but us chickens. So you might just as well go and look somewhere else, isn’t that the message? The truth of the situation is that we are all in hiding, we’re all incognito, every last single one of us. We are hoping against hope that whoever it is will pass us by and go and look somewhere else. Please let him move on, we’re saying, please let him move on. There’s no one here, no one here but us egos. No one here but us poor old egos…

You know that thing where you suddenly discover that your thoughts have turned evil and that you’re powerless to do anything about it? I don’t know if you know that thing. There’s actual badness in you and it’s festering away, festering away. That’s an ill omen for sure as I know you will appreciate. There’s trouble brewing and there’s nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing. All you can do is pretend that it isn’t happening. Act all innocent, like. It’s got nothing to do with me, you shout out, I don’t know anything about it.

No one here but us chickens, I call out, just a shade too loudly. No one here, no one here. Fear is a terrible thing you know. We’re all afraid of the man here. We live in fear of the man. Let’s hope he passes by. Let’s hope that he keeps on walking. Hold your breath. Let’s pray he doesn’t stop and look in. His dark swarthy face at the window, his burning eyes piercing the darkness in which we are huddled. Huddled up in the darkness, pretending that we’re not here. Pretending as hard as we can. There’s no one here, we say. No one here but us egos.

Fear is a terrible thing of course, we all know that. A very terrible thing. One minute we are shouting and joking and having the craic, roaring like the jackass fools we are. Bellowing our stupid heads off and making ejits of ourselves. The next minute we’ve fallen under the shadow of The Fear and there isn’t the sound out of us. Not even a whisper, not even a whimper. Whatever happened to those stupid loudmouth bastards, you might ask. They were here only a minute ago but now there’s no sign of them. You never saw anything disappear so quick. ‘There’s no one here!’ we are saying with our silence. There’s no one here. There’s no one here but us poor old egos…