I was trying to recapture past glories. This was difficult since I couldn’t really remember any. ‘Curse my lousy memory’, I yelled bad-temperedly, but deep down of course I suspected that this was not so much the deficiency in my memory as it was a problem with my general level of attainment in life. I was deficient in attainments, sadly lacking in them, and this singularly uncompromising fact spelled out a message to me that I wasn’t in the least bit willing to hear. ‘Never shall I hear a message that I am not willing to hear!’ I shouted out heroically, but the problem was that I had heard it already. I had heard it already – inadvertently, shall we say – and it had sunk in. It had sunk in good and proper.

The facts of life can spell out messages to us all, if we listen. If we are willing to listen, which were not. Not that there is any such thing as ‘the facts of life’, of course. It’s hopelessly naive to be thinking in such terms, as most of us probably realise at this point in human history. That represents a hopelessly outmoded way of thinking, as anyone who has kept abreast of scientific progress will be aware. It’s like people who think that Jesus spoke English or who think – I don’t know – that governments actually know what they’re doing. That kind of thing. Comforting illusions, I suppose you could call them. What we’re looking at here is the comforting illusion that there are these things called facts in life and that we can rely on them. ‘These are the plain and simple facts of life, my boy,’ I scream hysterically, stabbing with my long bony finger at a pile of A-4 sheets heaped up untidily on my desk, ‘I’ve written all about them here!’

The facts of life will let you down, however.  They will let you down every time – that’s all they’re good for really. The facts of life can’t spell out any messages to us for the simple reason that there aren’t any such things. ‘That’s a fact’, I roar incoherently, working myself up into an apoplexy. It’s not though – it’s just something I made up. I’m blowing shit out of my arse. I lost my cool all of a sudden; I invented myself in a fit of pique. I constructed myself when really (as I can now see only too clearly) I shouldn’t have done. Not that there’s any ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ about it, when it comes down to it – who gives a damn, after all? In my youth some thought that I had a promising future ahead of me. Events have proven otherwise however. Events have proven otherwise…

Events always prove otherwise in the end of course. Events always prove us wrong. Show me a man or woman – however eminent in their field – who hasn’t been proven wrong in the end. We make a stand, mustering whatever a bravery and sang-froid we can, but it always comes to nothing in the end. It’s a vain gesture and that’s all we human beings are ever capable of. I thought about making a stand but as it turned out I never did. I thought long and hard about it and – in the end – I decided against the idea. We all go our own ways in the end, don’t we? Although – then again – maybe we don’t. Maybe there’s no free will. Maybe we get co-opted by impersonal mechanical forces which cause us to twitch and jump about the place like puppets for a while and then which – in due course – summarily destroy us. ‘Dance puppet dance!’ say the impersonal mechanical forces, and then – moments later – ‘Die puppets die!’ That’s the life of a puppet, as you are doubtless aware. We try to make a stand but then, a few years later, we sell out and become the cruel-hearted and avaricious  stooges of a vilely corrupt social system.

I can’t work out whether life has made a fool of me or whether it is I who have made a fool of myself! Some would say that life has given me plenty of chances, I suppose. I imagine that that’s what they would say. ‘Life has given you ample opportunities to prove your worth’, these people will tell me with a wag of their fingers, ‘and you fluffed every single one. You screwed up. You made a right pig’s ear of it…’ Everyone always likes to compare their attainments with those of other people of course – that’s only natural. Some people have a list of attainments as long as your arm. Some people manage to attain a worthwhile goal every single day of their lives! A successful ego is a happy ego, after all. Isn’t that what they say? I succeed therefore I am, whatever that would be in Latin. I can always Google it, of course. Supero ergo sum’ – ‘I prevail therefore I am’. The trouble is that we never do prevail however, and that’s a bitter pill to swallow…