Private realities, private worlds – that’s the game, isn’t it? That’s the ticket. That’s the bloody old ticket mate. That’s what we’re all after and no mistake. We’re all on the same page there. What could be finer than this, after all? It’s a very splendid thing to have one’s very own private reality, so very splendid. So very marvellous to live in one’s own very private world. No one will bother you there! That’s the one thing they won’t ever do…

I wrote what is possibly my most thoughtful and inspired book during that period of time between 2019 and 2021 – a rather long and convoluted piece of work that I called The Determinate Universe. The critics slammed it mercilessly of course and I don’t think any copies were actually ever sold but this did not bother me unduly. I had known all along that this would happen. It was always going to have been this way and so it could hardly come as a surprise. Critics will be critics, after all. It was always going to be the case that I would write The Determinate Universe, just as it was always going to be the case that I would be scorned by my peers for my efforts, and so there is peace in this, I guess. A type of peace at least.

There’s peace to be had from the contemplation of reality, so we have been taught, but the only thing about this is of course that even the thought of contemplating reality fills me with unspeakable terror. I know very well that contemplating reality is the one thing in life that I shall never do. I can’t even look at reality in passing from the corner of my eye, never mind contemplate it. I am after all a creature of the shadows, a furtive crawling thing, a fleer from the truth.

There is peace to be had out there and plenty of it. Plenty and plenty of peace, no end of peace, but the problem is that I’m not willing to pay the price. Peace comes at a price, you understand – peace always comes at a price. It comes at a high price and so for those that aren’t willing to reach deeply into their pockets peace will always remain nothing more than another word. It will remain a word that actually means nothing to us – a profoundly meaningless word as far as we’re concerned. A mere noise. We don’t know what it means and we never will…

‘Well, that’s not exactly very heroic!’ you exclaim, clearly disappointed. You were expecting more than this, obviously. You were waiting to be inspired. You don’t want to be hearing stories about fleers from the truth or dwellers in the shadow realms. There’s no glory in that, after all. There’s no inspiration in that so why would you want to be hearing about it? You want to hear something life-affirming, something that lifts your spirits, something that fills your veins with fire. You want to learn something valuable, you want to hear something that might prove to be of use to you, but unfortunately there’s no chance of that…