I tried to hold it all inside but it sort of leaked out and the flowers died and the fish all floated to the top of the pond, big milky eyes pointing cloudwards.

The normal people are busy smiling and chatting and getting on with their lives unmolested by conscience or what we vaguely refer to as an Inner Life.

Hello Mrs Torrance, Hello Joan, Hello Frank, have a piece of my Toblerone.

It all looks very simple and straightforward from the outside but who knows, perhaps that’s an optical illusion of some kind. All I know is that I can’t keep on like that.

I’m a famous poet and I have a set of obscure but binding obligations to meet.

I have to cultivate ‘a certain state of consciousness’ which is very fragile and difficult to maintain. It means I can’t do that boring thing you asked me to do.

The emanations are so weak and from so distant a star that I have to concentrate very hard to receive them and translate them into human language. So indistinct are they that I might be making the whole thing up.

It’s really not easy to say.