I was trying to reanimate the dead ‘me’ and make it do all the things that it used to do. ‘Do all the great things you used to do’, I shouted at it hysterically, ‘do the things you used to do’. I was having my very own breakdown. ‘Do the things, do the things’, I howled despairingly, but it was to no avail. It never is, is it?

I wrote a book about it, which I illustrated myself. The book was called Reanimating the Dead ‘Me’. It only ever existed in my imagination, of course. And even there, it only existed in a feeble way as a flickering phantom-type appearance. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even there at all – maybe it’s not real enough even to exist in my imagination. Maybe it doesn’t exist anywhere. Perhaps I only imagined that it was in my imagination.

‘Probably I never wrote it in the first place’, I said to myself, ‘that could be it too’. This was where a lot of my thoughts ended – ‘perhaps it never happened’. Perhaps indeed? Who’s to say? All roads lead to Rome, after all. Isn’t that what they say? Perhaps it had never happened and perhaps I had never said ‘Perhaps it had never happened’, either. Perhaps none of the above. Perhaps nothing.

I went back to trying to reanimate the dead ‘me’. I lashed out verbally at it and I also went on to give it a few well-aimed kicks into the bargain – I gave it a number of well-aimed kicks. ‘Start doing the things’ I scolded it savagely, ‘get with the goddamn programme, will you…’ Anger was getting the better of me at this stage; anger – and something more than anger too. Something else. Something far more sinister.

I feel unashamedly nostalgic for the for those days, when my ego wasn’t dead. They were good days, as I’m sure you must know. Days that were redolent with good cheer and sharp, sharp wit. Good, good days. Before social media and all that bollocks. Back in the days when stuff actually meant something. You will remember those days yourself I’m sure, if you’re old enough. Of course you would.

That’s if those old days actually ever existed, of course – which I sometimes doubt. I don’t know why but my thoughts keep on bringing me back to this point. All roads lead to Rome, of course. All roads lead to Rome as we all know very well, and so it’s no good expecting anything different. That’s no good at all. You’d just be winding yourself up.

Men call him simply the Adjudicator. Men call him the Adjudicator because he adjudicates. Whenever there is conflict the Adjudicator appears as if by magic, out of nowhere, and he proceeds to adjudicate the hell out of everyone involved. We’re talking large smoking craters here – large smoking craters about the size of Lake Erie. Reality has taken on an odd frenetic character, I notice. It’s as if it’s trying to signal something strange to me. Something bizarre. Reality has turned positively feverish. It’s crazy like a crazy fever dream. But behind all this frenetic activity, nothing is happening.