Phantasmagoria

PHANTASMAGORIA
Montgomery Hughes
ii
First pulished by Lulu 2008
www.lulu.com
Copyright c David Atkinson

Artwork by the author
phantasmagoriabook.googlepages.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publica-

tion may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
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ten permission of the author.
ISBN 1 59971 776 X

iii
I would like to give my sincerest thanks to

Professor Max Tegmark for allowing excerpts
from his paper, “The Interpretation of Quan-
tum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?”,
to appear in this book.
iv
Contents
1 To Holly Lemon Cottage 1
2 To Phantasmagoria 6
3 To my mentor 26
4 To Hastings 34
5 To Newport 36
6 To Salisbury 52
7 To Brighton 58
8 To Hastings 71
9 To The Pirellis’ 73
10 To Cambridge 82
11 To Liverpool 90
12 To The Arctic Ocean 101
v
vi CONTENTS
13 To Sheffield 112
14 To Bellevue 123
15 To a small window 126
16 To Hastings 139
17 To Dr Symonds 148
Chapter 1
To Holly Lemon
Cottage
My fractured story begins: The reflection from my head-

lights barely permitted legibility of the shaky directions I
had in my left hand. These directions, which it seemed had
been written by some aged arthritic hand working on sheer
guesswork, had arrived on my doorstep that very morning.
Though it was a guess, I was so convinced of who had sent
them that I abandoned all intentions of work and half eaten
toast that had been part of my future, and followed their
instructions immediately.
Although I still had yet to regret this course of action,
I was in far from the best of scenarios, lost, as I was, on a
road somewhere just over the Welsh border in a patchwork
car with a broken radio. The chug-chug of the windscreen
wipers and their nemesis, the unceasing torrent obscuring
my view of the road, were my only music.
Every now and again the rain would find a gap in the
1
2 CHAPTER 1. TO HOLLY LEMON COTTAGE
window sealant (which I could not), splash in my face and

thereby swerve my car dangerously close to the edge of the
narrow country lane.
I glanced out of the side window, through which I
could, inconveniently, see far more, but the only informa-
tion I could glean was what had been evident for many
miles already, that I was in the countryside. I could see
those beautiful and somehow homely, huge hedges and not
much else. It looked the same as it had done for hours.
Eventually I found my way to a dichotomy. I looked
at the directions. There was indeed, a fork described, but
no indication of which way I should take: ‘Carry straight
on at the fork’ was all it said. As ever throughout this
journey I was entirely unguided, and relied entirely on my
instinct, which, if truth be admitted, was no more than
guesswork. I chanced on the left, any consequence to be
faced must be better than simply waiting, staring at the
decision in front of me.
I drove down this path for another hour or two, by
which time it had darkened considerably. The paths wound
this way and that, erasing any hint of one’s natural sense
of direction, such that I had no idea in which direction I
was facing.
Driving in the country is the only place where it is ac-
tually safer at night; you can see any approaching cars
coming from miles away. Only the wildlife is more at
risk. I hurtled along, several times realising only too late
there was a rabbit. Or perhaps a hare – I certainly did
not have the time to distinguish, as if I have any idea
at all. However, these animals have survived many years
around the roads which grace their habitat, and though
they stood motionless for at least a whole second as I ad-
vanced, their bright eyes transfixed on their approaching
3
doom, they took action before it was too late and leapt
to safety amongst the salvation of the nearby hedgerow.
My wipers were still furiously giving it their all, spurting
rain right and left as they partially improved my level of
safety. I turned them off. I wouldn’t need them anyway
– without them I could still see oncoming headlights and
the sidehedges, and at least this way I could not see the
numerous rabbits and/or hares, which narrowly escaped
death at my hands.
After aeons of this monotony, which almost made me
miss the city I had left, I chanced upon a small cottage on
my right.
It looked like a classic child’s drawing of a cottage:
a door on the right with a window to balance, and two
upstairs windows. It had ivy covering most of the wall;
trying its best to encroach on the window’s territory. Its
front door met the road; it had absolutely no front garden,
which seemed strange to me considering there was so much
land available, and I had not seen another homestead for
over an hour. But still, I rang the bell. Of course, in this
brief walk from my car (which I had left in the road with
the lights on) to the front door, there was enough water
sent to me from the clouds to saturate my suit jacket and,
more noticeably, my socks. It could be that I had stood in
a puddle, but it was impossible to say. I winced at the light
from inside the homestead – I had been staring at nothing
but darkened rain for sometime now, but this somehow
warmed the old lady, who opened the door, to me.
‘Come in! Come in! You’ll catch your death!’ she
chimed maternally. I smiled widely; the phrase ‘you’ll
catch your death’ is one of those stereotypical things which
old dears are purported to say, yet I never would have
believed until I heard it. It is only ever voiced by soap
4 CHAPTER 1. TO HOLLY LEMON COTTAGE
characters; scripts: people who do not really exist. I felt

strangely honoured by this expression of generosity, and
a paradoxical sense of jealousy and pride, that I would
probably never hear this in the city.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘What can we help you with, dear?’
‘I just want directions if that’s ok? I’m looking for
Holly Lemon Cottage.’
She looked at me startled, her mouth slightly open.
But only for a moment.
‘Are you sure dear? That place is easy to find, but it’s
been dead for years. No-one lives there.’
Somehow this did not surprise me. It fitted rather well
with the man I was meeting. The solitary life of a hermit
was, I believe, what he was destined for, and here I had
my first clue to how he had lived his life since our meeting.
‘Why has it not been sold? Surely there is a huge
market for country cottages like that?’ I asked.
‘Why yes, there is. But I don’t know, love. I don’t
know who owns it. But it’s hardly what you’d call a ‘coun-
try cottage’. It’s not seen hide nor hair of a builder in
years.’ She looked at a point in the distance, out of the win-
dow – I suppose at the cottage itself, as most would during
a conversation like this. It seems natural to look at what is
being talked about. Or perhaps she was avoiding eye con-
tact with me, to speed up my uninvited visit. This I was
more than happy to do – I believed I now had confirmation
that the one who sent me this letter, and these directions
was indeed as I had hoped. A man whom I had met when
I was just nine years old, who had transformed my theo-
logical belief system beyond recognition. The practitioners
of my previous religion, Christianity, would undoubtedly
describe him as profane, yet I would call him superlatively
5
profound. The old lady described to me where I must go to

find this cottage, and it was far from complicated. It was
strange that I had stopped here to ask for directions after
driving for hours, so close to my final destination. But
from the window through which the lady stared, I could
just make out its faint outline. Every single building in
this area, though there were few, had lights shining from
the inside. Yet this had not, and it was clear why the resi-
dents of the area assumed it was uninhabited. Yet I knew,
or hoped, differently. And I could not wait to get there.
Chapter 2
To Phantasmagoria
I was on my way to meeting Mr Brown, a character from

my past whom I had only known for a matter of hours –
and not many at that. But in this time he had managed
to have more of an effect on my life than any other single
person I have met, without a doubt. It is curious to think
that such a glancing interaction with another can affect
one’s life so profoundly – more so perhaps, than even my
own parents.
It was with my parents, in fact, on my ninth birthday,
that the seeds were sown for my chance meeting with this
influential gentleman. Or, to be more precise, my mother.
As happened so often at that age, we were having an ar-
gument.
‘But why won’t you let me go?’ I remember ask-
ing, pleading. I distinctly remember this, like the kind
of memory that stains your personality; one is given a sin-
gle chance to resolve conflicts in your life, and if that op-
portunity is missed it will never knock again, leaving only
6
7
frustration at one’s poor efforts at the time. In this case

my mother would not let me go to the theme park, which
was only a few hundred metres down the road.
‘You’re not going,’ she said sternly, trying to demand
respect yet only invoking fear. People often say that fear
is a part of respect, even that they are one and the same. I
staunchly disagree. Any person whose desire it is to invoke
fear is entirely undeserving of respect.
Once, a couple of years after this incident, a teacher
told me I should have more respect for him. But I could not
understand; respect is something you earn, and I simply
did not have that for him. He was stupid. And arrogant,
telling somebody else they ‘should’ have more respect for
another. This demand for respect only highlighted these
facts. Anyway, my mother thought along the same lines as
him, and, similarly, only gained fear.
She had a look in her eyes like a tiger closing in on
its prey; one of dominance, contempt, and the satisfaction
of a victor. I never understood this about her; she always
wanted us to love her, but she rarely showed anything but
the fact that she was in the position of power. She wanted
us to stand up for ourselves, yet she never let us stand up
to her.
I argued a hell of a lot with my mum, and this time I
was far beyond the possibility of going to the theme park.
I knew this. She was stood with her fists on her hips and
was tapping her right foot absent mindedly – both things
she did when she was not going to let me win. It was
beyond hope. I got very good at recognising these signs,
but by this point, I did not care anymore.
‘But why can’t I go?’
And this was all I wanted to know. She had avoided
my question by answering another one – this is the childish
8 CHAPTER 2. TO PHANTASMAGORIA
way in which many parents argue, and the only hope of

getting an answer was to ask again.
‘Because I said so,’ which was the answer she fre-
quently gave when she wanted to shut me up, but all I
wanted was for her to tell me the reasons why I could
not go – she must have had some or she would not have
stopped me, and they must be important to her. So why
could she not simply explain them to me? That was all
I wanted. But when she answered this, it used to rile me
extraordinarily. It used to frustrate me to the core, like
the prey I was to her tiger. You see, I believe that the last
emotion any animal feels before it dies is frustration; as if
frantically screaming, ‘why am I dying? I deserve to live!’
combined with the desire to be anywhere but here, at any
price. And in that moment, I believe that any animal on
earth would do anything within their power to ensure their
own deliverance from danger. It is this same frustration I
felt, though I am sure not quite as potently. And I believe
that frustration of this kind is the worst emotion. At times
like that I wanted to hit anything I saw. I wanted to shriek
in her face – I was too small to hit her, but Christ I wanted
to.
I probably screamed at her or something, and then ran
to my room. If there is too much pressure in a place it will
come out one way or the other. But it was foolish of her
to let me. I could see the theme park from my window.
The main landmark (every theme park has a land-
mark) was a huge pink elephant right at its centre. This
could be seen from any point in the park, and for miles
around it too. I could see it from my bedroom window:
its monstrous, ominous form at night when it was lit up
by powerful floodlights, and its peaceful, harmless shape
during the daytime. For many nights before I first saw
9
it close-up I looked in on it – to check it was still there,

I suppose. It never, ever moved; its eyes remained fixed
straight ahead of it, its legs kept steadfast to the ground
and its trunk remained in position even when children were
clambering all over it. It was because of this elephant that
I had wanted so much to go to the park.
So I did. I could see no reason why I could not go,
so I simply went. I tiptoed downstairs when I could hear
that my mother had sat down to read the paper, carefully
opened the front door and snuck out. I ran all the way to
the park it was so close, and felt a rush when I saw the
huge letters spelling out its name, written over the arched
entrance. ‘Phantasmagoria’, it said, and the word filled
me with adrenaline.
I paid for my ticket with some money I had in my
room, amidst strange looks from the cashier at a kid with
no parents, by himself, coming to a theme park. I walked
into the place, and for a full minute just stared around me
at the excitement this place had to offer, before I noticed
the cashier coming toward me, so I walked briskly into a
large crowd of people. There were so many around this
was extremely easy, made even easier by an apparently
unsuccessful balloon seller. It is strange that, when so
many different colours are placed next to one another in
this way, the whole thing appears as one, single, indefinable
colour. ‘Multi-coloured’ seems to have a single colour all
of its own. And it makes for excellent camouflage.
This was the most exciting place I had yet been to.
Everything was intensely colourful, each ride had its indi-
vidual colour scheme, from the deep red and greens of the
roller coaster, the Venomous Viper, which, when looked at
from afar was made to appear as a snake, to the weath-
ered, brown Runaway Train and the dark grey and stony
Haunted House. The crowds of people themselves wore an

array of different shades of every colour – there was not
a black item of clothing in sight. It was a hot day, which
was probably why, but it was as if everyone was in agree-
ment to dress this way. Even the weather seemed to be in
on this arrangement – the sky was the deepest blue I had
ever seen, and I don’t think I have seen a shade to match
it since.
As I walked around I saw signs for the log flume,
the roller coaster, the Stupendous Submarine. But these
things did not interest me nearly as much as that immense,
intensely pink, elephant. In some ways I think I really be-
lieved this elephant to be real – perhaps more so than any
other animal I had seen. It was so big, after all.
Finding the statue was of course not a difficult task,
but approaching it was much harder. It had a large open
area around it, where there were crowds of people and a
constant barrage of camera flashes from all directions. I
had the misfortune to approach the beast from the front
– her eyes seemed fixed on mine, and she never blinked
once. She towered over me even as I was quite far from
her, and though her eyes were looking straight ahead, over
me, it somehow was looking right at me. Through me,
almost. Her huge prehensile trunk could reach me easily
if it so wished, even though it was weighed down by many
children, and so I approached with the utmost caution. It
had been still since the day I had first seen it, but who
was to say that that meant it would never move, not even
once?
I was quite surprised how calm everybody around it
seemed to be, I suppose they were not aware how dan-
gerous elephants could be. I had looked them up in our
encyclopaedia – but I suppose not everybody had an ency-
11
clopaedia at home. On thinking about this I calmed down

a little. If the elephant minded people climbing all over
her I guessed she’d have done something about it by now.
So I walked briskly towards her, trying my best to hide my
fear in case that might rile her. She didn’t move a muscle,
but I still walked slightly to her side so that I was out of
her direct vision, I felt safer here.
‘Do you know,’ I heard a voice say, ‘that of all the
things in this theme park, this elephant was the first to be
built. It was made in China or somewhere like that, and
shipped over here on top of a huge boat. Can you imagine
what it must have been like sitting watching the sea one
day, when you suddenly realise that what you thought was
some huge ship coming towards you, actually appeared
to be a huge floating pink elephant? I think that would
probably be the scariest moment of some poor child’s life.’
I did not know whether this was directed at me when I
looked up, to see an unsettlingly tall, dishevelled old man
staring at the elephant in front of him. I assumed what
he said was directed at the woman standing to his left,
but just after the untidy man spoke, I swear he looked
down into my eyes for a moment, before turning to hear
the reply. If it was directed at me I must admit I didn’t
understand what he meant. Elephants are only found in
Africa and India, as far as my encyclopaedia told me.
‘I did not know that, I must confess. Though I some-
how suspect you just made it up. How could you possibly
know such a thing?’ The woman was much smaller and
younger than the man. She was also much more, for want
of a better word, presentable. She was wearing a clean suit
and shiny, glinting, light brown hair. When she spoke her
posture changed, as might a general addressing his troops,
asserting authority. There was undoubtedly an air of mil-
itary about her, or ruthless businesswoman. But the most

striking thing about her was that she was wearing black.
Not only was everything she was wearing black (even her
shirt), but also she was the only person wearing black, as
far as I could see, in the entire theme park - such that, by
contrast, it seemed as if nothing existed between her head
and her hands.
‘OK, I admit I made the whole thing up, but I know it
must have been made somewhere other than here. I have
an excellent view of this from my bedroom window,’ said
the magnificently scruffy man. He was dressed in what
could, loosely, be described as a suit. It was made of dark
brown corduroy, and looked as if it had never seen a wash-
ing machine, but would dearly love to see a needle and
thread. His grey hair looked as if it had never seen a comb
and his expression seemed as if he had never known any
unkindness. He turned his head slightly toward me and
gave me a brief wink, as if he did not want the woman to
see. He seemed far friendlier than the one dressed in black,
though he was certainly not the kind of person my parents
would like to see me talking to. And he had caught me
looking at him, so I immediately looked to the ground in
front of me. By doing this, my eyes were drawn towards
his feet; the only feature of any interest within my field
of vision. They were probably once tennis shoes, or some-
thing like that, but they were now unrecognisably dirty
and riddled with holes. A couple of his toes were poking
out, suggesting his socks were in a similar predicament.
‘Really?’ asked Mrs Black. Her high-heeled shoes were
clean as new, their shine denying their blackness. For ob-
vious reasons I began to know these people as Mrs Black
and Mr Brown.
‘Yes, this time I am being entirely honest. One day
13
there was nothing but a few rides in the making, the next
there was a large pink elephant watching over the proceed-
ings. They must have made it elsewhere or made it in an
evening.’
‘That makes sense,’ she agreed, ‘and they could hardly
have flown it over here. But perhaps they brought it here
overland?’
‘Yes, yes it’s a possibility,’ said Mr Brown impatiently,
‘but we don’t really have time to talk about trivial things
such as this. We have bigger fish to fry. Would you like a
drink?’ I was looking away from them, at the elephant,
pretending not to listen to their conversation, but now
there was a long pause and they seemed completely silent.
I chanced a glance up, to see the man’s grey bearded face
looking directly at me, as the elephant had done when I
approached it.
‘Are you thirsty?’ Mr Brown asked of me. I was
stunned into silence at first, but then quickly said yes.
These singular strangers intrigued me, and something made
me think they would be able to tell me more about the pink
elephant.
We walked around to the side of the elephant, where
I saw a set of large steps that I had not noticed before,
leading up to her side. There were people walking up and
down these steps, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary,
and then disappearing into a huge hole that had been cut
out of her side. Above this dark area of absent skin there
hung a large neon sign of a coffee cup with three lines of
rising neon steam, nailed right into the giant animal’s side
to keep it in place. I suppose I could not see this side of
the elephant from my bedroom window, and I was shocked
to see the beast which had so scared me on approach re-
duced to an inanimate edifice. It was with absolute calm,
then, that I walked up the flight with these strangers and

wondered what it was I was ever scared of.
We climbed the stairs to what now appeared to be
a café, the type of place you find in the centre of any
moderately large city. Exactly the same once you’re inside;
the same colours, the same layout and the same choice of
drinks. This chain had opted for white walls decorated
with colourful, abstract paintings, a light wooden floor,
and a green counter to your right as you walk in, where
drinks are bought. The woman marched decisively toward
the counter and ordered a coffee, turning to us afterward
to obtain our order. The scruffily attired man asked for
something I hadn’t heard of before, and I tried quickly to
match it up with one of the huge number of things on the
menu board, which was so tall that the items at the top
were barely legible. Needless to say I had not the time
before the woman interrupted my search.
‘And you, sir?’ It was the first time I had ever had to
pick anything I wanted from such a choice, and certainly
the first time I had been addressed as ‘sir’. Perhaps she
thought I was older than I actually was, I wondered at
the time. I asked for a strawberry milkshake. I wandered
over to the windows; there were only two of them in the
room - two circular ones. Strangely they were both at
the same end of the room. There was a huge skylight in
the ceiling, though, so there was plenty of light coming
in. I walked over and watched the people walking slowly
past. Some were running, of course - mostly the kids, I
suppose on their way to some exciting ride or other, trying
to persuade their parents, who had clearly had enough,
to hurry up. But some were looking directly at me with
a look of wonder in their eyes – almost fear, in fact. I
had no idea why. Why were they looking at me? Perhaps
15
they knew I was not with my parents, although surely that

would not make them marvel as they did. I looked back
into the café, and found it hard to believe where we were
it looked like such a normal place from the inside, not like
the unusual statue it was from without. The tables and
chairs were all of light, soft wood of some kind; pine, I
suppose. The whole place had a very airy, light quality to
it - probably helped by the fact that there was no one inside
apart from us three. Even the attendant had disappeared
from the counter. The two strangers had found a table
directly under the skylight which, at that time of day, made
it the brightest in the room. Our drinks - a black coffee,
my milkshake and a reddish brown coloured milky drink,
whose rising steam showed its heat – had been placed in
a perfect equilateral triangle. I walked over to join them
and they had already started talking.
‘So you are saying you believe in a god?’ Mr Brown
was saying as I sat down. I was more than a little sur-
prised. I had only ever heard mention of God at Church
on Sundays, and my parents never spoke of such things.
But then I realised it was Sunday, so it seemed only fair
that we might be talking about such things.
‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Black. Her person and her expres-
sion remained still and unchanged, like that was that. She
obviously did not feel the need to defend her view.
In contrast, the man obviously liked to open up dis-
cussions: ‘What makes you think that? Please, I would
really like to hear your opinion. I’m trying to work these
things out, you see.’
The woman looked blankly at him. ‘Please don’t go all
Socrates on me,’ she urged, ‘I can see that’s what’s about
to happen. Anyway, you know what I think already.’
‘Please, for the boy,’ he replied.
‘Sir, you don’t need to worry about me,’ I said as po-

litely as I could, ‘We learn about God and things like that
in Sunday School.’
‘But you only ever hear one side of the story. They
get you while you’re young, and don’t show you any other
points of view, so that you can’t any longer make your
mind up objectively.’ He said. I didn’t really understand
what he meant.
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Now, please,’ he turned to the woman, ‘What makes
you say there is a God? And please don’t say you just
believe it. That really isn’t an answer.’
‘Okay,’ she said defensively, looking understandably
dismayed by this automatic doubt of the quality of her an-
swer, but proceeding with it all the same; ‘After centuries
of philosophy and scientific investigation, we are still not
sure whether or not animals have consciousness. In this
respect they may equal us, or they might be nothing more
than automatons. I would guess they have some form of
it, albeit some basic version, but we cannot be sure either
way. We can, however, be sure of one thing: in order for a
dog, for example, to be alive, it is not a requirement that I
be conscious of its consciousness. In order for the world to
function around me, it is not a requirement that I be con-
scious of any other animal’s, consciousness – or, for that
matter, that of any other human on the planet. In order
for you to be alive it is not a requirement that I be con-
scious of your consciousness. But it is a requirement that
I be conscious of my own. My consciousness is paramount
to my existence, whilst yours is immaterial.’
‘Okay, this I accept,’ Mr Brown said, looking slightly
worried about this admission.
‘So why is this the case? In other words there must be
17
some reason I am experiencing, remembering and affecting

the world around me. My life is a tiny broken tile in the
beautiful mosaic that is the world – past, present and fu-
ture. The world was fine before my birth and will be fine
after it; there must be some reason why I am experiencing
it at all if it can cope without me. There must be some
reason for my existence – some importance, significance or
function.
‘Now, decisions only have a relevance if they are made
by a conscious mind; if they are made by some automaton
then that decision making is out of its control and it cannot
be blamed for it. But if they are made by a conscious mind
then that is entirely different. I believe that the world, that
life, is some kind of test, and I believe that this implies we
all have free will (or at least, to the best of my knowledge,
that I do), and that-’
‘That there is a god,’ finished the man. He looked
astounded and impressed, but something, like confidence
in his voice, suggested that he was ready to take up the
challenge. He immediately retorted: ‘But where did this
god come from? Surely at some point in time there must
have been no god! Perhaps you have heard it said before,
“at some point something must have come from nothing”.’
‘I agree with the latter, to an extent; before there was a
God there was no such thing as time, and there was no such
thing as existence. There is no such thing as “before” God,’
she said, making speech marks in the air with her fingers
as she said ‘before’, as some people do, ‘So the “time”
before the existence of God is universal and nothing. It is
always and never. It is irrelevant concerning the world we
find ourselves in now. At some point something must have
come from nothing, but before this point there was no such
thing as anything, and it is nonsensical even to consider
anything before this point in time. It does not exist.’

‘But I must ask again, where did this god come from?
He cannot have simply always been around!’
She thought for a moment.
‘He is an omnipotent God. He is able to do anything
in any situation, capable of performing any feat, whatever
state He finds Himself in, even a state of non-existence.
Finding Himself in this abyss of nothing - no time, matter,
energy or even existence – He willed Himself into being.
And thus we find an omnipotent, omniscient and ubiqui-
tous God who created the world as a test, for . . . some
reason.’ She trailed off slightly at the end, seeming not
quite as convinced at the end of her point as she had at its
opening.
‘Hmmm,’ the man muttered. He did not seem satisfied
with this: ‘Why would this god desire to conduct tests on
things he had created?’
However, for some reason, he decided not to pursue
this line of argument. ‘Some people would say that noth-
ing, even a god, can be omnipotent. To quote an old ar-
gument, “can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot
lift it?” ’
‘But God is omnipotent, He has the power to get past
such paradoxes. We have not the intelligence to under-
stand how, but He has both the power and the intelligence
to both lift the stone and force Himself to be unable to.
If God were to play himself at chess He would lose every
time, but this does not detract from His power He would
surely win every time. And He would play in such a beau-
tiful way as to create something greater than the contest.
And I say again, He can will himself into being from any
situation; even if it is impossible for an omnipotent God
to exist, He could still create Himself from non-existence
19
simply because He has the power.’

The strangers had been speaking quickly, as if they
had held this conversation many times before, and were
simply reciting a script they were used to. But here the
man paused for a moment before he cited his defence. I
suppose he was collecting his thoughts, but one cannot
know. He took a few sips of his mysterious drink, dried
his lips with a napkin (which surprised me, given his dirty
appearance), yet all the while somehow made it fairly clear
that he was having the next say. And that he did.
‘If this god created Time at the same moment as he
created himself, then at this point there must also have
been nothing in existence, in the same way as at midnight
it is simultaneously two days at the same time. If I draw
a black box on white paper then at its edges it is simulta-
neously black and white, both with and without form.’
‘But if we are only considering the second day, or the
black square, then nothing else need ever exist. Everything
else is irrelevant; the square has no edges and the day has
no beginning.’
The man smiled here, where before he had the stern
look of someone trying to follow what his opponent was
saying and simultaneously follow his own thought pattern.
‘I must confess I was playing Devil’s Advocate; I am in
agreement. There can be nothing quite as certain as this
in the world – there must be an omnipotent god in the
world of some form or another – this is the only way that
anything could come into being. Something can only come
from nothing in this way. But why did he do this? He
doesn’t need the world to be in existence in order to exist.
He must gain some benefit in order for him to create the
world, but then he would be able to get this benefit with-
out involving us, through his omnipotence,’ he said, as if
thinking aloud.
‘This is why he must be a benevolent God,’ Mrs Black
finished his train of thought. ‘There can be no other. He
created the world so that He could give the gift of life to
millions of people. He created a beautiful world and gave
us life so that we could experience His splendour!’ She
held her arms aloft as if to motion us to look around and
marvel at God’s work. It was a shame for her point that
we were sitting in a café inside a huge pink elephant.
‘So he created the whole world; the wars, disease,
hunger, pain and anger so that we could “experience his
splendour”? Everyday thousands of innocents die and the
guilty live - is this his splendour? Where did all this come
from if god created the world for the beautiful gift of life?’
The woman in Black had, of course considered this
question before and had a ready answer for it: ‘From the
Devil. God created a perfect world and the Devil has
stained it.’
Mr Brown looked truthfully stunned. ‘Why didn’t you
say from our god-given free will?’ She had, of course, al-
ready established that, in her view, we all have free will.
‘I use ‘the Devil’ more as a metaphor for the evil which
is a part of the human character, exercised by free will.
Even if we all have free will, there could be no evil in the
world without there being some in each of us to start off
with.’
‘Okay,’ said the man slowly, though he did not seem
satisfied. He also seemed, although I was not entirely sure
if this was the case, slightly relieved. ‘But where did the
devil come from? Surely he wasn’t created by god himself?’
‘That is of course possible, though surely He would not
have . . .’
‘. . .he could not have created him if he was an entirely
21
pure, benevolent being. In order to create the devil he must

have had some idea of evil in him, and therefore some evil.’
‘But He is omnipotent He can do anything!’ Indeed,
the man had to concede this point; wherever one considers
God’s omnipotence it must be remembered what omnipo-
tence means. It is a greater power than our rationality.
‘Perhaps he could do anything, but either way it is cer-
tain he would not. If there were one omnipotent, entirely
benevolent god, he would not have created the world as
we see it. Instead he would create the perfect bliss that
is your idea of Heaven. Why would he pollute his perfect
world with sin?’
‘With His world He created free will, He provides temp-
tation and a chance of faith in Him. Those who choose his
faith will be rewarded, and those who do not will be pun-
ished. That is the test.’
‘But that is ridiculous - what is the point? We are
only a function of our surroundings, our genes, and our
upbringing - factors that are out of our control! There
is no such thing as free will, only an illusion of it. We
did not ask to be born; yet we are forced to make a set
of predetermined decisions that will affect us for eternity,
either doom us to eternal punishment or give us eternal
bliss. This is not the work of an entirely benevolent god
who loves the people he has created.’
I didn’t know which of these people I really agreed
with more, both seemed to talk knowledgably, though I
didn’t really understand what they were talking about. I
have since decided that nobody on this earth really does.
But at this point I agreed with Mr Brown - my parents
certainly had a lot to do with my upbringing. The only
other people who affected me were my friends, and, who
you meet and become friends with is out of your control.
‘But you agree there must be an omnipotent, benev-

olent God?’ barked the woman. She was getting a little
irate, almost.
‘There must be, there can be no other possibility,’ the
man said calmly, I suppose he was trying to calm her down.
‘Then how do you explain the evil in the world?’ It
had not worked.
‘Please, calm down. This is only a discussion!’ he
said, knowing that, as I have since found out, discussions
of this kind are never just discussions. He walked over to
the counter for a fresh round of drinks – the attendant
had arrived back, with perfect timing. They had finished
theirs, but mine was still near full – I had been engrossed
in the verbal battle before me, like a spectator at a tennis
match, looking one way then the other to see how each will
cope with the return.
The man in brown corduroy placed the drinks on the
table and began his riposte before even sitting down; ‘There
must, certainly, be a being that is both omnipotent and en-
tirely benevolent at the same time. He may have the abil-
ity, but certainly not the inclination, to create the devil –
if he is entirely benevolent. So the devil created himself,
in the same way as god did, conjured from the depths of
his own evil. God created a perfect world for Adam and
Eve and all of mankind and the serpent created himself
to divert innocent souls from God’s paradise. Of course
this means the devil is omnipotent also. Or, to look at it
another way, just as it is inevitable that an omnipotent,
benevolent god would choose to create himself, so would
an omnipotent, entirely evil being,’ He paused, musing.
‘The world is a chessboard on which the ultimate fight
between good and evil takes place,” he continued, ‘It is a
stalemate which will never be resolved.’
23
‘How do you know it would end in stalemate? God

created the world, he would surely win.’ But now it was
the woman who was forgetting what omnipotence means.
The Devil is omnipotent too, and omnipotence versus om-
nipotence must result in a draw – it cannot be beaten. Of
this, clearly, Mr Brown was aware.
‘But the omnipotent devil “must” also win. And you
are forgetting several other competitors. It is just as likely
that some god who is neither pure evil nor pure good would
also will himself into being, as would an infinite spectrum
of gods from god to the devil. Each must be omnipotent
or they could not exist, and each must exist as a result of
their own omnipotence. This spectrum of gods, from god
to devil, is inevitable. There can only be this: an infinity
of gods, spread equally across a spectrum from devil to
god, from entirely evil to entirely good. Each may wish
to create a world; it is in our nature to create and we
can only assume these gods have the same will. Perhaps
they gain something we do not appreciate from this, we
cannot know. Perhaps this world they ‘create’ is actually
just their mind, acted out on a grand scale. Which man
can possibly know? But suppose this is a possibility, how
can we claim our world is the one created by a benevolent
god, when there is evidently evil in the world? We cannot
understand the mind of a god, but I would conjecture a
fully good god would create a world of paradise, a heaven,
whilst a devil would create a world of chaos and turmoil,
a hell. Our world is surely somewhere in the middle.
‘Suppose each god created his own world: there is an
infinite number of gods, so an infinite number of worlds.
There is a spectrum of worlds, from hell to heaven, and an
infinite number, so every possibility is played out. Each of
an infinite number is in existence, some entirely painful and
some entirely pleasant. Each was created by a particular

god from the divine spectrum. But in this scenario every
god is omnipotent, so once the world has been created
the creator has no control over it, its fate caught in an
irresolvable, never changing stalemate as every god tries
in vain to affect its outcome.’
‘Why do you say He tries in vain to affect its outcome?’
the lady contested, ‘even if you deny my God, your gods
are still omnipotent and so have power over the world they
create.’
‘But I do not deny your god - I accept him along with
the infinite array of gods which must come with him. If
there is an infinity of gods entirely balancing the scales of
evil and good, each with equal power, then we can only feel
the effect of the group as a whole. Every single god tries
to sway the outcome of our lives, to affect our world for
either better or worse. And to quote the mathematician,
if we sum the series from minus infinity to infinity, we find
the result must be zero. The total benevolence of the set
is zero; the amount of evil equates to the amount of good.
We could only possibly feel an effect if a majority of gods is
in agreement. But the scales are balanced perfectly; there
is no lean and no teetering. They cannot agree, and we
therefore feel no effect. It is a stalemate. The effect of this
group of gods, the benevolence and presence of them, is
zero.’
Simply put, Mrs Black looked stunned. I’m not sure
whether by his extreme rationality or the extreme view-
point at which it had arrived. But the man wanted to add
a nail to the coffin.
‘This situation is exactly the same as there being ab-
solutely no God at all. It matters little if there is no God
or an infinite range of them – the effect is still the same.
25
To all intents and purposes there is no God. If you insist

there is one god, you must say there is an entirely ambiva-
lent God who is bound to doing nothing forever, by His
own omnipotence.’
‘But that is ridiculous!’ the woman burst out, ‘How
could omnipotence force you to be powerless?’ She looked
entirely disgusted, staring motionlessly at the man in that
infuriating way people do when they don’t understand
what you are saying, and hide this by simply thinking you
must be stupid to make the point you are. She was clearly
thinking she had won the debate because, on the face of it,
the man had made a ridiculous point. But ridicule is not
refutation.
And the man was happy with his point. At the time,
when I first heard his theory I must admit I did not agree,
that it made absolutely no sense at all. But the more
you think about it, it kind of captures you and seems im-
possible to avoid. Omnipotence implies unavoidably the
existence of an omnipotent god, whether omnipotence is
possible or not. And this logically results in something
that may as well be an infinite number of gods, or no god,
or one ambivalent god. In many ways this argument does
more to destroy any sense that the word ‘god’ can have,
than it does to define the word.
‘It is only a way of explaining this divine spectrum,’
he went on, ‘It is irrelevant what we say: the effect of all of
these options is the same, and the truth is indeterminable.
It matters little if there is no god, one ambivalent god or
an infinite spectrum of gods. We can never know the truth
and he, or they, can never affect us. All we can do is choose
which of these beliefs is more attractive to us.’
Chapter 3
To my mentor
That was several years ago, and the last time I saw him
until this day. I had now found his cottage, and gained
a restless impatience that could only be quenched by my
finally meeting him again.
The door was wooden of some sort, and deep red in
colour; I knocked expecting to stumble on a group of merry-
making hobbits feasting aplenty on delightful food. Strik-
ing also, the door had a slightly oval quality, though I dare
say most people would not notice were it not pointed out
to them. I just happened to, as sometimes occurs – like the
young boy who, amongst a crowd of busy people is filled
with excitement - precipitated by adrenaline - at being the
first to spy a lost coin on the floor. Its original mislaying
being, of course, a small price to pay for this emotional
cocktail.
As with this privileged youngster, I believe I was the
first in many years to notice the curious, subtle shaping
there before me, yet how strange that it was apparent all
26
27
along; all one had to do was look, and think.

The doorknocker itself was no less unusual, being also
made out of wood; and producing a beautiful, hollow,
earthen sound as I knocked. It was by no means to my
disappointment when, a minute or so later, I had to knock
the door again, upon the absence of a reply. The noise
actually suggested the perfect shape had been honed out
of a hand picked piece of wood; specially chosen for the re-
sultant acoustics. A far fetched act, yet one which seemed
strangely plausible judging by the intricacy and subtlety
of the door.
A continued lack of a reply from within the house led
me to try the handle, and I was greeted by the insides of
the cottage, which greatly contrasted my expectation, of
warm, welcoming, halfling-filled joviality. What greeted
my eyes was a dark, dank room, which was, perhaps once,
a living room - judging by the sofas and the fireplace in
the centre of the far wall. Yet they had been covered by
once white sheets; greying testament to their once bright
quality. They felt slightly damp to the touch, suggesting
an ill-ventilated room, and they had clearly not been sat on
in years. It was, needless to say, surprising that somebody
was living here at all (though I do not know how long
he had been here), and doubtful whether anybody had
lived here in several years previous. I glanced around the
room and all was eerily still; it seemed the entire room
was greyscale, and I began to doubt whether I had found
the right place. You could not only smell the mustiness, it
seemed tangible, like you could actually feel the difference
in the air through your skin, though that was just, one
would assume, a trick of the mind.
So often the mind fools itself; nature exploits a loop-
hole in its programming a typical example being the area
28 CHAPTER 3. TO MY MENTOR
of vision aptly, yet ironically known as the blind spot, and

this was such a case: in my cursory glancing around the
room I perceived in the corner, an untidy pile of grey blan-
kets. Yet this information, or misinformation, was in truth
a manifestation of the darkness in the corner, and the grey-
ness of the rest of the underused and needlessly furnished
room. For here, now visible (once seen), was a pile of brown
blankets covering - discernable after a few small moments
- an old man; unkempt, quiet, and asleep.
Finally I was face to face with the man whose effect
on my life, more so than anyone else alive, contrasted so
greatly the amount of time spent in it. It was because of
him that I had left the church at a young age, much to the
disappointment of my family. It was because of him that
I had taken a great interest in maths and logic, though I
knew for a long time that my father believed he could take
credit for that. It was because of him that I decided to
go into business, and make soulless profit from those less
fortunate, or less ambitious. For without god there are no
ethics, or at least no need for them.
So it was because of him, and him only, that my life
had followed the specific course it had, i.e. that I had
studied marketing, that I had gone into the business of
money worship, that I cared not for the commoner. He
had such extraordinary power over me, as I realized all
at once; he alone could have changed my whole life to a
ridiculous extent, simply by not uttering those first words
of greeting to me. I might be a priest now, or a teacher,
or the commoner for whom I care not. He would quite
literally, and every bit as profoundly as it sounds, have
changed the person who is currently experiencing my life.
This thought took me over as I stared at his quiet, humble,
wrinkled face; never before had I been in such incredible
29
awe of a person, yet he was sleeping in front of me, curled

up peacefully amongst blankets in the corner of a deserted
cottage.
* * *
I sampled this feeling for several moments, as one who
watches superhumanly athletic acrobats performing feats
unimaginable; simply with a smile on one’s face, and eyes
which do not want to be shut. Brief, however, was this mo-
ment; I just could not wait to talk to him - one who, having
had such a profound effect on my life, might be able to im-
part more wisdom, and have some other dramatic part to
play. He was, of course, it occurred afterwards (despite be-
ing asleep on the floor at my feet) already greatly affecting
me again.
I crouched beside my sleeping mentor and gently touch-
ed his upper arm in a first attempt to wake him. Fur-
ther pressure was needed; I shook it slightly and provoked
his immediate stirring. He suddenly opened his eyes and
looked straight at me - not shocked, but confused for a
moment, before recognition washed over him like a break-
ing wave; a change of colour being visible in his face, the
ceasing of confusion like the smoothing of chaotic eddies
in such a wave. He smiled at me.
‘Ah! So you came,’ he said, contentedly. He had
hardly changed at all, though the surroundings had con-
siderably. He looked exactly as the day I had first met
him; his shabby look and the clothes I remembered him in
were still present, beneath a warm coat and a once bright
scarf, which were new to me.
‘How could I not?’ I posed, smiling. His smile widened,
friendliness abounding. I tossed the brown envelope, which
contained the directions I had been sent, onto the dust-
covered-cloth covered table, and my curiosity got the bet-

ter of me. I lifted the corner of the cloth to reveal a
deep mahogany table, clearly an antique, and one that had
borne time well, despite its main experience being hidden,
in the dark. What a waste of its life! It may as well have
been plywood and bricks for most of it. Whatsmore, this
cottage may as well have been devoid of furniture of any
kind; it seemed no-one had set foot here in years to even
see their shape. I whisked the cloth away, revealing the
table in all its grandeur and saturating the air with age-
old dust. And there, at its centre, lay a brown envelope
exactly like the one I had sent flying toward the bookcase
on the other side of the room. I glanced over to check
it was really a different envelope, meanwhile catching my
mysterious friend’s look of feigned ignorance.
I started to open the envelope, assuming it was meant
for me. He said nothing, so I continued, and read its con-
tents. Which did not take long; ‘Do you enjoy your job?’
was all it said. Many people have many bad things to say
about working as I do. 9 to 5, day in day out, and every
day is the same; you get into the office, do the same things
as you did on the same day last week, and you have very
little job satisfaction. Most of your time is spent trying to
make other people very rich. That is, most of the time of
your life. Most of the hours in the day, most of the days in
a week, most of the weeks in a year and most of the years
of your life. How did life get like this, or was it always?
Has life ever been less of a struggle - if not for me, then
for those before me?
My job title does very little to describe what I actually
do, and what I do does very little for anybody except fat
cats at the top of the pile. But I do not subscribe to such
ideologies. I top a smaller pile, and I get paid handsomely
31
for the tedium. So:

‘No, not exactly. But I don’t do it for my own enjoy-
ment.’
‘Really? What do you do it for?’ he asked.
‘Well, the–’
‘Turn over the card,’ he instructed.
It said: ‘I do it for the money.’
‘Yes! I do it for the money is that really so bad?’ I
contested defensively.
‘By all means no. To do a job for the money is per-
fectly acceptable to me; money can buy objects, material
possessions. If that is what you enjoy, it will buy you hap-
piness. But you do not do it for the money.’
He stood up as he said this. He was taller than I
remembered.
‘To say you do it for the money is an empty answer.
This is not because of materialism, but the simple fact that
you do not spend a large portion of it, and you are never
planning to. Therefore it is worthless to you. You do it
for some numbers typed on a piece of paper. Why else do
you think you do your job?’
‘For the–‘
‘Please, look at the inside of the envelope,’ he told
me. I tentatively pulled open the mouth of the envelope
and inspected its insides. There was indeed, his familiar,
scrawled handwriting. I ripped it open carefully - destroy-
ing its initial purpose but revealing the words he had writ-
ten for me.
It said: ‘I do it for respect.’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said.
‘Really? And who do you think respects you? ‘Re-
spect’ at work is merely fear and subordination from those
beneath you. Or jealousy waiting to take your place. ‘Re-
spect’ from society is non-existent. You think that your

high status job makes people admire you. It does not. It
makes some pity you, or despise you. Some laugh at you.
It makes some notice you earn a lot. But this is empty
respect; not worth having.’
He paused, taking in a deep, slow breath and letting
it out again with his eyes closed.
‘Was there a time,’ he resumed, ‘when you were hap-
pier?’
This was a rhetorical question, surely.
‘Yes. Isn’t that the same for everybody?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, and looked away. ‘But then nobody
has an excuse for not pursuing their own happiness. This
is the most sacred thing of all: happiness experienced by a
person - and the only happiness a person truly experiences
is their own.’
This phrase I thought about occasionally in the days
that followed, and it always brought to my mind the image
of holding a handful of sand and letting it pour out of your
hand, like an hourglass. This is one of life’s many simple
pleasures. And it is temporary.
Some people try to hold the sand in their hand, not
letting any go. They may hold some for a long time, but
hate it when they feel any drip away. The best thing is to
grab a huge handful and let it pour through, savour the
feeling and hope it will not be the last time.
33
Chapter 4
To Hastings
‘You must leave your life.’ He looked straight at me. From

his corner all was dark except his glistening eyes. ‘You
must leave every aspect of it. Leave your car here and
throw away the keys. Take off your expensive coat. Cut
up your credit cards. Trust me and you will find inner
peace, I promise.’
Somehow, though I do not quite know how, I was con-
vinced. My mentor, whom I had not seen for decades,
had an inhuman ability to convince – to persuade a person
what they should do. He could manipulate any phrase, any
argument, to his point of view and did so intensely with
me. Somehow he convinced me to leave my present life,
of comfort, wealth and success, to pursue one of hunger,
disappointment and boredom. It would be wrong to coin
the cliché “I was never more sure of anything in my life”:
I was petrified. This was a huge change to my life and I
was not sure it was entirely wise. But I trusted him with
my life.
34
35
‘Go and see a friend of mine, this is all you have to

do. He is a lecturer at Hastings University.’ He wrote his
friend’s name down and handed it to me. It was strange
to think of such a dark horse having friends who were not
pupils like myself, or perhaps even mentors to him.
‘But listen to me,’ he said, ‘You must get there us-
ing only what you have on your person right now. That
does not include your car or your money. Nothing but the
clothes on your back. Think of it as a pilgrimage; reach
your destination and I guarantee you will find inner peace.’
‘How do I know what you say is true? You have to
understand I would be making a huge sacrifice to do as you
say. It is a risk which might result in me losing everything
I have.’
‘It is a risk, indeed. But you must ask yourself: ‘of
what value have the things I will lose? This pilgrimage
has its own value -and what do you risk by turning down
this opportunity?
‘Remember though: rarely, if ever, is what you see the
real truth. Reality is a concept we perhaps never experi-
ence. Be careful; be wary of what people tell and show
you. This is something everyone should heed.
‘Also, you have exactly four days from now, or your
journey will have been worthless. Be late and the meeting
will never happen.’
And so, far from entirely convinced, I accepted his gift,
and began my pilgrimage.
Chapter 5
To Newport
I left the house feeling energised - finally my life was head-

ing somewhere, I had a goal. People can work tedious long
hours playing the mechanical cattle of the human race -
if they have something to aim for. In PoW camps in the
2nd World War the people who survived had something
to come back for, a reason to make it. The people who
did not, perished. I had a friend who worked as a Nursing
Assistant for a year in order to go travelling. Day in, day
out, he cleaned people in hospital who were unable to do
it themselves. “People in hospital” frequently means “old
people”, and “cleaned” is a euphemism for “wiped their
ass”. That is not a pleasant job. Cleaning faeces from
a wrinkly, saggy anus is a singularly disgusting thing to
do. Yet he could do it because he knew that, after a year,
he would be climbing a glacier in South America, and it
would be his physical, rather than his monetary struggle,
which would remain in his memory. That is not to say, of
course, that cleaning up after old people is comparable to
36
37
surviving in a PoW camp, but life is nothing more than

one big multi-dimensional spectrum.
I ran up the stony steps two at a time, eager to leave,
to change, to improve. A change always feels like an im-
provement. I got my key into the car lock on my fourth
attempt: typical, that when you are in a hurry it is impos-
sible to do things quickly and smoothly. I just could not
get in the car quickly enough. I fired her up as soon as I
had sat down.
Except, I didn’t. I turned the key and got nothing.
Only that mocking, pathetic whine that cars make when
they point blank refuse to start. No give at all, no teas-
ing, healthy engine noises, just sounds of a machine long
overdue its death-by-date, as if I was physically turning
the engine over as I turned the key, and there was no extra
power coming from anywhere. I should have changed it
long ago.
In my definitively limited car knowledge this could be
either: no battery, no petrol or no oil. I checked the radio
and headlights. Nothing. The battery was dead. But I had
not left the headlights on, that was sure. And I had not
had the radio on when I got here. So I checked the petrol
and my oil – both empty. How could this be? The car was
running fine before I got here. I checked my pockets – my
money had gone, too.
I had nothing except the clothes on my back.
I sighed deeply, then threw my keys over a hedge.
I needed to get to Hastings, and I had about four days
to do it. I had no car, I had no money. I had no means
of getting to my destination. And then I had a sudden
thought. Everyone, I believe, whether consciously or un-
consciously, compiles a list of things they would like to do
before they die. “Save a life”. “Jump out of a plane”.
38 CHAPTER 5. TO NEWPORT
“Give a rose to a loved one” and other such clichés. But

I have also always wanted to hitchhike somewhere. I have
never done it – I could always afford to travel where I
wanted to go. But now I was faced with no other option,
and I accepted this fate with both hands.
From here I decided I could get to Newport quickly,
and I should be able to make it to Hastings in time without
too much trouble – it would only take a few hours to drive.
I had seen a sign to the A4042, leading to Newport, a few
hundred metres before I had turned off to this house, and
though it seemed far in my mind, it seemed like no time at
all before I was standing at its side, my thumb stood rigid
in the wind. I felt somehow older already, more intrepid,
more adventurous. Here I was on the brink of a journey
that would cost me nothing – I had nothing to spend. I was
going somewhere I had never been before, on nothing more
than whimsical spontaneity. And I did not know what I
was going to do when I got there. Yet here I was, stood by
the road holding my thumb out to prospective drivers. I
must have looked ridiculous, too. I saw a hitchhiker on my
way here, little thinking I would soon join his ranks. He
looked exactly how I would picture a stereotypical hitcher
- scruffy jeans, a dirty t-shirt and unkempt facial hair. I
believe I could not be further from that vision. I still had
my three-piece suit on. I had a pair of black leather shoes,
which were already starting to hurt, following my couple
of kilometres steady walk or so. These are hardly shoes
built to last. They are shoes built to fall apart after a
brief walk, ready for gullible fools with too much money
to buy another pair quickly, while they are still in fashion.
I had in my hand a heavy brown coat which I had rescued
from the car before I left, and I had on my wrist a Rolex
watch, which I had got from my company as a Christmas
39
bonus. It had stopped. I took it off and threw it onto

the motorway, wondering if it would survive the weight of
a car. I tore off my tie, about to throw it on the ground
before it occurred to me it may be used elsewhere; a piece
of rope such as this may well come in handy. Silk is a very
strong material. But I took off my suit jacket, which was
uncomfortable and sticky in the bright sunshine, which,
though waning, was still beating down strong. I left on my
waistcoat, guessing I might have to sleep rough tonight,
and kept my heavy jacket for the same reason.
As a car drove past, which, despite my friendly smiles
and gestures, did not stop, I saw the children in the back
seats looking at my unusual behaviour in wonderment.
This no doubt prompted questions of their parents such
as, “why is that man standing by the side of the road?” or
“why is he throwing his clothes onto the floor?”
Why, indeed.
That was the first car to pass me in my hitchhiking
career. I had a zero percent success rate so far. I sighed.
Extrapolate this data and I would never get picked up. But
then, extrapolate the data and I would also never die, so
I didn’t lose all my faith. I scrambled to the road surface
to find my Rolex. I was very impressed: it appeared fully
intact. But on closer inspection it had a hairline fracture
across its face.
As the second car went past it sent the watch face
flying into the air. This car was present in the life of the
watch face for only a split second, yet this was enough to
send it spinning, dancing in the air in front of me. As it
spun it reflected the sunlight from behind me right into
my face - causing an intermittent flash of brilliance. For
some reason this reminded me of one physics lesson back
in school, learning about pulsars – rotating stars which
send out signals all around them, some of which get to us.
When we first discovered them we thought they might be
intelligently beamed out signals; messages from another
world. But no, soon enough we worked out what they
were. Another hollow hope in a sea of teasing nothingness.
Another empty promise, to show us we are alone.
As the watch landed, the hairline fracture became sud-
denly too much for it to bear, as it shattered into perhaps
hundreds of pieces, perhaps thousands. No one knows. I
was surprised to feel somewhat satisfied as its pieces and
shards and cogs and hands were distributed around the
road.
This in fact amused me greatly over the hour or so that
I waited for a lift. I would watch a car go past, hold my
thumb out and hope. As that car would go past it would
strike the specifically placed, largest available piece of the
Rolex, and send its pieces shattering in all directions. I
would then find the largest piece left and place that on the
road in a prominent position, before waiting another five
minutes for the next car. Sometimes, of course, the car
would miss the Rolex entirely; sometimes the piece would
not break. But this only helped the excitement along.
It almost came as a disappointment when a car finally
drove over to the side of the road where I stood, its wheels
stopping just before the watch on the floor.
‘Where do you want to go?’ the driver asked.
For a few seconds I was a little confused; I had forgot-
ten exactly why I had been by the side of the road, and
was entirely caught in the game of destruction I was play-
ing. ‘Erm, Newport!’ I said, perhaps a little maniacally as
I suddenly remembered. I think I had been by the side of
the road for too long.
‘Hop right in!’ he said amiably.
41
* * *
He was, it transpired, a biologist. Or, at least, he used

to be. He was now, as luck would have it, a shoe salesman,
and he gave me a pair of ex-line trainers he had in the
back. He said he would have thrown them away anyway.
When I put them on, a wave of comfort spread over me
and washed out all my pain and stress as if all the nerves
in my body were located in my feet. I gave him my leather
shoes in return; he was pleased with the trade.
I soon discovered that the people who pick up hitch-
hikers have invariably hitchhiked themselves in the past,
and see this as a way of returning the favour to all those
who picked them up. They also tell you this as though it
is something everyone does:
‘Yeah, sure I hitchhiked,’ he said, his unusually large
goatee flapping about in front of his chin like a tiny hum-
mingbird.
I believe, though this is no more than conjecture, that
he grew this goatee as some kind of mid-life crisis. An at-
tempt to cling onto the youth he had so patently lost. It
shocked me for a brief second; a glimpse of depression, at
the fact that everyone grows old, no-one can be delivered
from the temptation of death. Imminent, inescapable un-
happiness as one realises they are over the peak of their
life; that everything is downhill from here.
‘Yeeeah,’ he said, drawing out the word until it took
over most of the sentence, ‘back in my youth. I hitchhiked
all the way from Liverpool to Paris. That was a good trip,
one of the best’.
Another thing you quickly notice about the people who
pick up hitchhikers is that they voice their opinions to
you constantly. You feel like you have to echo them, just
to be polite. You are in their car and you do not want

to rock the boat, lest they choose to drop you off at an
earlier destination. So you must agree with them, however
outrageous their views are.
Years later I was hitchhiking in Australia and found
myself in a car with an outback Aussie who was going on
an on about ‘fackin abbo’s’, and how they were all wasters
and drunkards. But despite being staunch against him, I
must confess I did not argue, merely remained quiet. It
was a long lift so I did not want to jeopardise it, but it
was made even longer by his dubitable ramblings, and a
part of me wishes I could go back and really argue him
out. Maybe I could convince him, maybe I could not, but
either way it would have been better than simply letting
him be; letting ignorance flourish.
‘Do you know how biologists categorise living organ-
isms?’ the biologist asked me at one point, leaving me
wondering how we had got on to this conversation. It was
dusk now, and my concentration was starting to wane.
‘That is, the discerning characteristics of a living organ-
ism compared to, say, a rock or a chemical reaction.’
I cleared my throat. Here we go. ‘No,’ I said. I had
some recollection of there being seven characteristics, but
I always thought it was just a primary school thing, to get
you started with learning biology. I never thought anyone
actually took it seriously. Surely life is an ambiguous term.
You know it when you see it, but if you start using rigid
classification like this, you will see it when it is not there,
or you will miss it when it is.
‘They are Nutrition and Excretion, Growth, Move-
ment, Reproduction, Respiration and Sensitivity. Seven
characteristics. Anything which satisfies all of these is
deemed to be alive; anything which doesn’t is not. It was
43
the first thing I learned in the way of biology, but it is also

the most profound’
‘Profound?’
‘Yes, certainly. Though I am not sure that many biol-
ogists see it that way.’
Profound or arrogant, I thought to myself. It seems
to me that profundity goes hand in hand with arrogance
when we think we are intelligent enough to have a say on
these things; life, love and god.
‘But if you think about it,’ he continued, ‘these are
not just applicable to ourselves.
We, as living organisms on this planet, need to feed,
excrete and respire, but the only reason we need to do
these things is because our cells need to do these things.
They feed, they excrete and they respire. We need energy
to live, and so do they.
‘Cells could not function without being on some level
aware of what is around them. Even if they are not what
we would assume is ‘conscious’, they must have some kind
of response to their surroundings, and so they are sensitive.
‘Also, they reproduce when they create more to take
the place of existing cells. Cells have to be constantly
replaced as they get old and weary, to keep the body young
and fit. As we get old it is in direct correlation with our
cells becoming less efficient at reproducing new cells; as
more and more of us is made up of aged, tired cells, so we
take on these characteristics.
‘Likewise, cells clearly grow and they clearly move; if
they did not do these things then neither could we.’
I let him carry on talking - he seemed to be in a good
flow and I did not want to disturb him. It also meant I
could switch off for a bit. I wasn’t entirely listening to what
he was saying, just nodding and agreeing at appropriate
moments.
‘This means,’ he continued, ‘that cells are alive, just
as we are. I know people say cells are alive, and they talk
about them being dead, like when you get frostbite, but
I am talking about them being really alive. Think about
it! That each one of your cells is its own being. It is a
separate entity, as I am, as you are. Maybe it even has its
own personality! That would be insane!’
Yes, it would, I thought. What is this guy talking
about, I thought. But I just went along with him, hu-
moured him. It made me wonder how his biology ca-
reer came to an end, and wondered if it was in a blaze
of ridicule.
‘But do you know what? That’s not all. You can say
the same about the population of the world; as each one
of us is alive, so is the organism made up by the animals
of the world.
‘Just as we feed because our cells need to feed, so the
world feeds through each of us. The same goes for excre-
tion and respiration. We need energy to live because the
world does. The world is sensitive to its surroundings, just
look how it has adapted on a global scale to the natural
resources. It grows. It moves. And, if a collection of or-
ganisms like this is alive, then its reproduction is in the
form of new colonies in other geographical locations; other
countries, on the moon, and on other planets!’
I did not want to disagree with him, but I was getting
very bored of his speculation. He was getting progressively
more excited by everything he said – he enthused like a
child talking about playtime. But the more he talked the
more I became convinced he was entirely crazy.
So after another half an hour or so of him jabbering
away, his goatee springing up and down like a woodpecker,
45
I decided I had to voice my disagreement, otherwise I would

fall asleep or, worse still, have to put up with his voice until
the end of the journey.
‘Are you actually saying,’ I said slowly, ‘that our hu-
man population makes up what is a greater organism, and
that is the world?’
‘What?’ he looked at me suddenly. I don’t think he
actually expected me to talk throughout the journey; only
listen. ‘No, not quite,’ he said when he had recovered him-
self. ‘Please be clear on one thing: I am not talking about
the human race specifically. I am talking about the collec-
tion of every living thing on this planet. We are all evolved
from the same warm sludge. Originally every living ani-
mal on this planet was the same microbe. Then the same
group of microbes, eventually we were a group of primi-
tive animals whose nature was unclear: a large group of
bacteria whose cells act for the majority, or a thinking or-
ganism with control over its cells. We are just as much a
part of a whole today as we were when the first bacterial
cell appeared, only far more complicated. I mean every-
thing living - every organism. Every fish, bird, human and
amoeba.’
‘But are you actually saying that this organism is con-
scious?’
‘Why yes! Why not? It may not be intuitive, but it
makes sense. Our cells make us up, and we are conscious.
All we see with the animals in the world is a mirror of
this, and so is it really so outrageous to say we make up a
greater consciousness?’
‘It is ridiculous!’ I said. ‘How are we not conscious
of this huge “organism”? Are you saying that we in some
way read each others’ thoughts, interacting with each other
without knowing it?’
‘No mate! We have perfectly sufficient means of inter-

acting with each other already, our mind is our own space,
but our interactions are what make up the Organism.’ He
looked across at me, his eyes informing his brain of my
look of disdain.
‘Let me put to you another situation,’ he said; the cells
in his mouth co-operating in an attempt to convince me:
‘that of an ant colony.
‘You would surely say,’ they continued. Indeed, they
persuaded me in the end. The more you think about
this the more it takes over your thoughts. You find it
inescapable. This is like a small bubble in your view of the
world; the bubble keeps expanding and how you saw the
world starts to retract until you cannot see anything in the
same light again.
He continued: ‘the ant is an organism in itself, it thinks
for itself and acts as a single unit. I don’t think many
people could deny this; all I am saying is that it is alive. I
agree with this entirely, but it is not the whole story.
‘The ant colony can also be viewed as an organism in
its own right. The queen uses pheromones to dictate what
she would like the other ants to do. The ants act blinded by
their ‘love’ for the queen. They would die for her. Nothing
matters as long as she survives and gets what she wants.
The queen is like the brain of the organism, and the ants
her body.’
‘But what you say is just wrong. Each ant acts as it
chooses, and it chooses to act in favour of the population
as a whole-’
‘That is because the population is a whole. The ants
have no choice in what they do, just as your arm has no
choice what it does. Your arm will go where your brain
wants it to go, and the ant will go where the queen wants
47
it to go. What’s more, the ant is nothing by itself. It is

powerless and will die, unless supported by a colony and a
queen to control it.’
I looked out of the window. By now the sun had fully
gone down, All was dark around us, except oncoming head-
lights and the eyes of the local wildlife - hares, I expect.
Or rabbits. I looked toward the horizon, and could just
make out a parliament of rooks, flying in formation.
One of the most beautiful and graceful things a man
can see in his life is a flock of birds moving in synthesis,
as if choreographed; they move so athletically, smooth like
a great, dark machine. The curious thing was that they
didn’t seem to be going anywhere except around in circles,
just to show off - yet each one knew somehow, instinctively,
one might presume, where the flock would fly next. They
flew together – as a unit connecting on some higher level
than normal.
That, I thought, is profound.
* * *
‘Ok mate, I think here is where you wanted to get off.’
I looked around me. Lights, brightness. I think I must
have fallen asleep.
‘What’s the time?’ I asked.
‘Just gone 12. You been out for hours!’
As promised, he had brought me to Newport. He was
carrying on further south, so this was inevitably where
our paths would leave each other. I thought about how
two people’s paths sometimes cross for such a brief time
– I would probably never see this guy again, and yet for
some people he is a constant factor. In his life, he is the
most important thing. And yet, here it is, gone in the
blinking of an eye. Some people will never meet me; some
will never even know I exist.

Through bad planning I was now in the centre of a
city, at midnight with no money. Absolutely none. Just
then I remembered about my bankcards – I had brought
my wallet just in case. But, as I somehow expected, the
cash-point swallowed them up when I tried to squeeze them
for money.
I had no other option, and it seemed today was a day
of novelties. I found a park bench under a tree and slept
with my heavy black coat wrapped around me.
* * *
I woke with a crick in my neck like I had never expe-
rienced before, and I had slept intermittently throughout
the night due to the petrifying cold. But forgiving this I
did not feel too bad, fairly alert despite inadequate sleeping
conditions.
The first thing I did was to find a clock. This is easily
done in a city - they are visible all over the place; in shops,
restaurants, ground floor offices, public libraries, shopping
centres, and, of course, watch shops. I sometimes wonder
why people ever wear watches - I haven’t worn one for years
and it has never been a problem; whenever you need the
time you can always find it out. People just get to depend
on things like that out of habit, like a comfort blanket for
adults. Like clothes, like cigarettes, like their job.
It was nine-fifteen, or thereabouts. That gave me, I
estimated, about eight or nine hours of daylight. I stood
up, contemplating what to do with the day; what would
be the best course of action, when in front of me a man
threw a half eaten burger into the bin. I had not eaten
since lunch-time the day before and pangs of hunger were
starting to set in – far from the simple craving, longing for
49
food like hunger normally manifests itself. It had not been

to his taste, but perhaps it would be to mine. I had no
money, and just like my sleeping location last night, it was
simply a matter of options. I could rescue the burger, or
I could go hungry. With no prospect of food coming my
way, my mind was made up.
I brought it out of the bin, and it was still warm. There
is nothing different, I told myself, between this burger and
any other burger, apart from its location in the last five
minutes. And the fact it has been half eaten. But apart
from that, I assured myself, it is simply available food.
I ate it, and it really was not that bad. If you ignored
its history.
A few minutes afterwards I felt amazing. I had energy
running through my veins, I had slept and today could
hold anything. I walked down the street watching all the
business men and women, laughing on occasion at their
novelty ties and spotted bowties. Or their impeccable pin-
striped suits. Or their blue shirts with white collars, and
red braces. I laughed at the way they walked, as if they
were the most important person in the world, off to the
most important meeting in the world, ever. All of them
walked this way. It seemed that to doubt for a second that
you were better than everyone else was to show weakness,
and lack of character.
The way they looked at me amused me also. They,
of course, looked down on me. My shoes were dirty. My
hair was a mess and I had stubble. My waistcoat was open
and my shirt hung over my trousers. And they looked at
me like I was nothing, like I was beneath them. Like they
were more human than I was. And for what, because they
earned more money than me? That, I was sure, was their
only reason.
I carried on along the street, past shops and restau-

rants, mini-marts and newsagents. Through the amuse-
ment arcade and the business quarter, past bookies and
the off-licenses. It is an unusual experience to witness ludi-
crously happy people, when you are feeling empty yourself.
The kid who has just beaten his friends at his favourite
arcade game, the destitute who has scored a big win on
a sure-fire horse. A vacant life wandering around hoping
to profit from others’ profit, to gain from another’s brief
glimpse of delight.
Eventually I came to a cemetery and stared at rows
of sleeping carcasses shielded by cold stone. I could not
help but feel jealous; of the freedom, the revelation, the
knowledge.
I was stirred from my thought by the highway behind
the church – dozens of cars filled with hope, opportunity
and destination.
It was some hours before I decided to move on. I
just sat on a wooden bench underneath a purple-leaved
tree and gazed absently at the ground, the stone and the
pulsing metallic flashes from the highway.
51
Chapter 6
To Salisbury
‘Don’t be too alarmed if we get pulled over by the police,’

said the fortysomething woman who had just agreed to
take me as far as Salisbury. ‘Technically I have just stolen
this car.’
Her abnormally tanned legs and excessive use of make-
up, perhaps an attempt to hold onto her youth, seemed
accentuated by the streaks down her face, which I guessed
were caused by recent tears.
‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘I’m just pleased to get a lift.’ I
had just found out that my initial hour-long wait was only
too lucky, and frequently one must wait for far longer with
nothing to amuse except the changing weather and the vain
hope of a lift. Cars come and cars go, each brings a glimmer
of promise as it approaches, and takes a pinch of optimism
as it leaves. After hours of this you begin to doubt if you
will ever be picked up, until that moment when you are,
and all your hopes and optimism and happiness come back
to you like a snap of elastic as you run toward the door.
52
53
For this reason a hitchhiker is happy to get in the car

with anyone, whatever may be their opening line. But it
was not quite as bad as it sounded. She was in the process
of running away from her husband, and the car, which was
apparently bought in his name, would soon be reported
stolen by him.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked.
‘Oh there’s nothing to talk about really, please don’t
bother yourself.’ She said. But I asked again; many people
will say they are fine when you ask them once, but ask
again and they will share their problems. People want
to be sure you are happy to talk about these things with
them - the phrase “are you ok?” is overused and frequently
misunderstood.
This lady had been happily married for several years.
They had two children, Kate and Dennis. They had a large
house, a swimming pool, and were members of a tennis
club. They had a nice life. Nothing remarkable, but happy.
Until her husband decided to write a book.
‘I think about everything I write in massive detail,’ he
had said to her once. She talked to him a lot about it; he
liked to get his feelings open, to make them whole. ‘I think
about the pros and cons of everything I write all the time.
I write a lot of things I don’t believe and a lot of things
I do, but everything I write comes essentially from me, so
everything I write I believe, to an extent,’ he told her. ‘It
all stems from me, it is all a part of me or of feelings I
have.’
This was a year ago, when he was just starting to write
his book. Ever since then she had desperately wanted to
read what he had written, but ‘No!’ he said. ‘Not until it
is finished.’ And then finally, after what she said was the
longest wait of her life, she sat down to read his book.
54 CHAPTER 6. TO SALISBURY
‘I’ll tell you what it’s about,’ she said, ‘it’s about a
man who falls out of love with his wife and starts having
an affair with another woman.’
This, she said, was not the worst part. She could han-
dle him having an affair. ‘I’m not as young as I used to
be,’ she said, the irrelevance of that phrase never being
more blatant than before now. ‘The worst part,’ she said,
‘is that I have been married to that bastard for thirteen
years, and all this time I have been thinking we were in
love. I was in love – I knew that. I don’t know what he
was in, but it wasn’t love. I’ll show you what he said -
hold the wheel.’
She gave me seconds to react and grab the steering
wheel, which I held for a few seconds more. In this time she
had produced from the glove compartment the manuscript
for her husband’s book and opened it up at the page she
had been reading last. ‘Go on, read what he says about
love,’ she said.
* * *
‘There is nothing romantic,’ I read, ‘nothing profound,
and nothing special about love. Love is a unique bond
between two people. It is something which brings some
together and tears others apart. It attracts and it repels,
it brings joy and it brings tears, but there is nothing divine
or miraculous about it.
Love brings two people together, and as it does so these
people frequently decide to bring the miracle of life into
the world. Put another way, to procreate. This offspring
they have takes on many of the traits of its parents; it
gains those factors that Mother Nature has deemed are
advantageous to its survival. It is a random mix of all the
aspects that its parents have; it is produced in their image.
55
In doing this it is largely similar to its parents, but it may

gain qualities that neither of them has. This is evolution.
Many years ago, a child was born of an ape, which was
slightly cleverer than those around it. Not very much, a
negligible, insignificant amount. This ape then produced
offspring with another, which were slightly cleverer again,
and so the human race was achieved by tiny increments at
a time.
Yet the one off birth of a child who is slightly better at
surviving than the average is not an adequate enough test.
In order for Mother Nature to really see if her children will
survive she must mate those with similar characteristics
together. This is what scientists do when they want to
create new strains of organisms: trees bearing larger fruit,
grapes without seeds, domesticated pets. In doing so this
accentuates the random mutation, so that antelopes with
unfeasibly long necks can be born, and we can call them
giraffes. A neck that is a millimetre longer than most can-
not be adequately tested; it may be killed too early on,
before it has had a chance to reproduce. Or it may mate
with one of opposite extreme, wiping out any trace of the
experiment. Also, an entire generation of antelopes cannot
suddenly be born with a slightly longer neck, that would
be unfeasible; implying some higher up intelligence orches-
trating the goings on. Though I have talked about Mother
Nature, I do not seriously think there is an intelligent being
directing evolution.
So Mother Nature needs a way of orchestrating the
goings on, of mating two similar organisms so that their
traits can be accentuated and fully tested. Hence she in-
troduces love. Love is that factor within us which makes
us attracted, and attractive to those with similar qualities,
to further the prominence of those qualities.
56 CHAPTER 6. TO SALISBURY
This is not universally true, but generally those with

dark hair are attracted to those with dark hair. Blond hair
likewise. Tall people are attracted to tall people.
But to list examples of physical qualities is to miss
the point, I believe. Evolution, for humans especially, is
far more centred on the mental than the physical prowess.
And, more accurately, even more so on the social than the
mental skills. Therefore we are attracted to those with
similar social skills, to those with similar quirks; similar
fashion and music taste, similar social status.
Of course we are all attracted to those of impressive
physique. We are all attracted to those of high social
standing. But love is not as simple as that, and I believe
it is only when we find a kindred spirit that we are truly
happy. One who is like us, one who shares our beliefs, our
outlook on life, our personality, whatever you may call it.
And so, we are likely to have children who share our
characteristics. These can then be adequately tested, some
may go on to become a defining aspect of the human race,
some may merely peter out as no more than a blemish.
This is an unusual view of love, I will grant. One could
say it is depressing. But I would disagree. We all see the
world as it appears, and we all make judgements on what
its presents to us. You may like the colour red, I do not.
You may not care for music, I have a passion for it. But we
all see these things, and we all make our conclusions. We
all see a different world, but each of our perceptions stem
from the same reality. Whatever my view is of love, and
whatever yours may be, we are all seeing the same thing,
and that thing may be profound. It may be dull. It may
be exciting, or painful. But however we see it, we all see
it.’
57
Chapter 7
To Brighton
The lady dropped me off in Salisbury, and from here I

walked to Brighton. It was not far, just a few hundred
metres. I was sad to see her leave – even though I had
only been in the car with her for a matter of hours, I
really felt like I knew her afterwards. And cared for her,
almost. Some people you just have a spark with as soon
as you meet. Others you never will. Such is life.
By now it was way past lunchtime, and my meagre
belly was crying out for sustenance. I found a small smor-
gasbord restaurant on the corner in Chinatown; it being
gone three it was nearly empty, just a couple laughing in
the corner, looking longingly into one another’s eyes and
feeding each other parts of their bargain meal. I fancied
they were newlyweds, or perhaps adulterers. It was im-
possible to tell. Either way they were in their honeymoon
phase.
Besides them there was a lonely man sitting at the bar,
and a single waitress tending to the three. She was small,
58
59
surely no more than five feet tall, she had her black hair
tied back in a ponytail and had a professional, expression-
less face. She asked me what I would like. I glanced at the
menu board behind her, and ordered the all-you-can-eat; I
was ravenous.
‘Five-fifty,’ she said, maintaining the façade devoid of
emotion.
‘I only have five dollars, is that ok?’
‘I am sorry mister, the smorgasbord is five dollar fifty.’
This, it seemed, was not how my hunger would end.
At this the lonely man beside me became interested. One
could tell he was lonely; he had been looking down at
the bar ever since my entrance, enthralled by a flyer for
a launderette. People entirely happy with their lives, on
the whole, glance around at an entrance to such an oth-
erwise sparsely populated restaurant. It is simple human
nature. Yet lonely people take little interest in their sur-
roundings; they are used to the mutual ignorance. They
also take occasional breaks from solitude in an attempt to
break the cycle. It is at these times they try to strike up
conversation with strangers, and here the evidence of the
loneliness abounds, for they do it in a way quite outside
the norms of human interaction.
‘You know, some time ago, the money for which you
bought that five dollars would have been enough to buy
five dollars fifty, and thus you would have earned that all
you can eat, for exactly the same monetary outlay, in your
terms.’
‘Really,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Your life would have been markedly
different, albeit relatively insignificantly. And all because
of slight adjustments by the bigwigs, beyond anybody’s
control - even theirs!’
60 CHAPTER 7. TO BRIGHTON
‘Yes, that’s interesting,’ I said, humouring him.

‘But then you would not have met me!’ he said, some-
what sure of my gratitude at this. ‘My name is Leo Fi-
bonacci,’ he informed me, and held out his hand.
‘Really?’ I asked, genuinely surprised: ‘As in the num-
bers?’
‘Yes! But no, not really. It is just how I like to intro-
duce myself. I am a mathematician, y’see. Or I was.’
He was also a little drunk, which one could deduce
from the slight slurring and, more directly, the near empty
bottle of wine in front of him.
‘Oh. I am Marco Polo,’ I jokingly misinformed him,
‘I am just travelling’. We shook hands, and he gave the
waitress fifty cents. I thanked him, and we got talking
whilst I rewarded my stomach for its patience.
It seemed he had been a mathematics lecturer at a
good university for many years, which was really not sur-
prising. He looked uncannily like one of my maths teachers
at school, Mr Liddell who, in turn looked remarkably like
the picture one conjures of a maths teacher, if asked to
imagine one. The top of his bald head was peaked like
an egg - literally oval - and surrounded a bright red, con-
torted face. He was wearing a tweed blazer jacket whose
arms were noticeably too short; the cuffs of his clean white
shirt stretched several inches further than them. Of course,
this image in my head may just have been because of my
time spent with Mr Liddell, but he remains my enduring
image of the definitive maths teacher.
Mr Fibonacci’s career, however, had come to an unfor-
tunate end. His wife, it seemed, had died horrifically in a
car crash a few years before our meeting, and a few, though
fewer, years later his colleagues started to suspect madness.
He was getting old, and especially old in maths circles, and
61
yet he had had no defining theorems. There was nothing

to remember him by. This, of course happens to most; the
opportunities for fame in the world of mathematicians is
extremely slight, but the thing he desired more than any-
thing was to change the world of maths, to fundamentally
alter our view of something. To have a significant effect.
This, he said, was the only way a man could live forever,
or, at least, the only way a person’s effect on the world
would never become negligible. Would the world ever for-
get Einstein? Surely, as long as the human race continues
to live, he will be a part of the international consciousness.
And at the heart of it, as with any physical theory,
that of relativity is simply mathematics. So he put his
mind to the world of physics, and became obsessed with
probability.
‘I was fanatical,’ he told me, ‘my colleagues thought I
had gone insane!’ He was not ashamed in the slightest. He
laughed at their foolishness at having missed the chance
to be associated with the person who would dramatically
alter our outlook on the world. But he laughed mania-
cally, and it was only too easy to see why his colleagues
had acted the way they did. It transpired they had plotted
against him, they convinced him to put forward his ideas
to several colleagues one day, at some kind of impromptu
meeting. They had told him it would be a laid-back af-
fair, a simple meeting of minds in an available room to
discuss where his research was leading, yet they informed
the visitors (of which there were many more than he had
expected) that he would be putting forward the essence of
his groundbreaking theory. When it came to the day, his
theory was torn apart by the pack; they exposed every one
of its abundance of holes, and left it shattered and life-
less in front of them. In less than three hours he had lost
all the respect he had amongst his peers, and he became

ostracised from the community.
‘But surely you could not have lost the respect of every
one of your colleagues just from one theory?’
‘Everyone. But it was quite an outlandish theory.’
He sighed, looking into his glass as he swirled ruby liquid
round and round.
He seemed to assume I knew this already and, though
he clearly knew I didn’t, this meant that perhaps he would
not mind telling me.
‘In what way? What was it about?’ I ventured. I was
intrigued in the extreme.
‘Do you really want to know? Normally, when people
ask a scientist or a mathematician to explain something,
some aspect of the world or of mathematics, they do want
to know, but they get quickly bored by the answer, leaving
the scientist with the feeling he has bored his audience,
and a disinclination to repeat the process next time an
inquisitive mind wants an answer.’
I assured him I was interested. At first he eyed me
suspiciously, openly doubting my sincerity. But after a
few seconds his desire to pass on knowledge to any who
would like to receive it got the better of him, and he burst
into an explanation.
‘Well,’ he started, ‘essentially the world is composed
of a finite number of variables, of factors. It is an incon-
ceivably high number, yet finite. There are some that are
apparent immediately; the age or height of the popula-
tion, shoe size or whatever. There are some which would
certainly occur to you, with some thought; perhaps the
number of people who are in love, and the extent to which
they are.’
He explained that he believed the human mind is sim-
63
ply a mixed bag of assorted chemicals; a typical scientific

viewpoint, one might say. He believed that there must be
a ‘love’ chemical, or, perhaps, a configuration of several,
in the brain. When a human brain believes it is in love,
it is merely trying to approximate this elusive state. And,
thus, some people could be more in love than others; some
must be genetically predisposed to such a configuration,
some people must have a more appropriate diet to make
these chemicals, but as such, some people are more in love
than others.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘There are the more dry, scientific
aspects of the world; the spread of oxygen in the air, the
energy every mass has. You could go on ad infin– well, not
ad infinitum, he said, but. . .’
‘A very long way,’ I suggested.
‘Yes,’ he smiled, ‘There is a huge number of variables
which dictate the state of the world, and every one of these
variables approximates a certain statistical distribution.’
He also told me how much he hated the word ‘statisti-
cal’; it sounded like the archetypal boredom of science, yet
it contained within it such beauty that none of us could
ever appreciate, and its glory and harmony would never be
realised by the world at large.
‘So the height of people, for example, follows the same
pattern that many statistical phenomena do, at their heart,
and that is a Gaussian distribution; a symmetrical, bell-
shaped curve.’
He made the shape with his hands, through the air in
front of him.
‘It is to this that I approximated everything in my
theories. But anyway, whatever arrangement the universe
would like the height of humans to follow, Mother Nature
tries her best to follow it, yet all she can achieve is an
approximation. She scatters around this curve, trying with

each plot to imitate it, yet can never do it properly. In this
way, you see, there is a ‘perfect’ picture of the world, which
our world tries to be. It tries so hard, and there are an
infinite number of possibilities for it to be, but only one –
one world’ he exclaimed, his eyes as wide as his excitement,
‘which is the perfect one, the one which demonstrates in
every variable an exact statistical distribution.’
I began to understand what he was saying: in every
aspect, every nuance and tweak, every trend and familiar-
ity is dictated by a random spread of data. We may try
as a race to investigate the world; largely in an attempt to
manipulate it. But we will never, ever fully discover the
ghost that lies at its heart, randomness.
‘But where does this randomness come from?’ I asked,
genuinely interested to hear his response. But my interest
only lasted so long.
‘Prime numbers, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Some randomly
distributed set of numbers must be at the heart of the
world. Many of my colleagues informed me, prime numbers
are a direct result of our number system: one, two, three
and so on. How could a number series which is a direct
result of the basis of mathematics, integers, be random? It
makes no sense. But they do not understand, you see.’ His
eyes seemed to grow brighter and wider with every passing
word, his hands cutting and causing turbulence in the air
in front of him. Yet with each passing point he raised I
lost comprehension and interest. And he continued.
‘They are looking at it the wrong way round: they
think integers are the root of the world, and primes a result
of that, yet I believe the truth is different. Every integer
can be made using one or more primes. Primes came first,
and our integers, which apparently describe the world, and
65
maths as we see them, are only a result of them.’

He fell silent and looked at me, as though I should
talk.
‘But what dictates the primes?’ I asked, feeling I had
to say something.
‘The primes are random, and with each subtly different
set comes a subtly different world as we see it. Perhaps you
have heard of parallel worlds?’
I rubbed my eyes and stifled a yawn. The mathe-
matician’s words were becoming drawn out, lengthened by
tedium. I wanted to finish my meal as quickly as possible,
beginning to doubt if this was worth the fifty cents. But
I had to be polite. I could feel another yawn approaching.
They are insistent.
‘Just imagine it – an infinite myriad of worlds subtly
or wildly different to each other. In one perhaps we have
two suns. In another a man dies of radiation poisoning
from the gold bullion in his hands. Any possibility could
be reality, and everything simply an implication of the set
of numbers that described its world and everything in it.’
I sat talking with this strange, eccentric man and lis-
tened to his inaccessible theories for several hours, and
the more he told me the more I became convinced of his
apparent insanity. But whether it was his years of iso-
lation, consumed by his obsessive theorising which forced
him to conclude an increasingly unusual view of the world,
or whether it was this view of the world, couple with his
peers’ ostracism, which led him unavoidably to a life of
isolation, I could not tell. One thing, however, was clear;
this man had something relevant, albeit dubitable, to con-
tribute to the view of the world which we all hold, and I
wondered how many there were who held a vision of the
world around us which was inaccessible to most, but pro-
found to a few, and how many of these would never see

their views brought to the public consciousness.
Whatever one could say about him, and however much
I had to fight to stay awake, he held maths in great esteem,
which some would argue is virtuous. As many people say,
mathematics is the language of nature. It is the language
of love, the language of energy and of space and time.
It unites all things, and is the source of their differences.
It is the god of the rational, and the logical. It is their
Brahman.
* * *
Removed as this man was from society, he could not
have been more removed from the persona of my next
companion as from anybody else of which this society is
composed. They were, admittedly, of comparable intel-
lect and esteem, yet these concepts are multi-dimensional,
stretching to a range of vastly different qualities and fol-
lowing along opposite branches of meaning. My previous
interlocutor had been obsessed for years by one branch of
thought, and followed this one to its bitter end, yet my
current one refused to tie himself down to any one pursuit.
‘You would not believe the things I have done!’ he
yelled at the top of his voice, screeching down the narrow
country lane with a ridiculous grin on his face. And indeed
I found it hard. He was nineteen, yet he looked as if he was
well into his twenties. His neatly combed, straight hair im-
plied his youth, as did his constant smile and his penchant
for life. Yet he had more experience of people than any
could hope, and he was, to coin a cliché, wise far beyond
his years. Perhaps most impressively, he had a degree in
Geography, which he said he studied for at home, having
learnt anywhere but. He had been to almost any place in
67
the world I could think of, including Alaska and The Sa-
hara, and had spent considerable time in a few of these;
speaking three languages fluently. He was an accomplished
long distance runner, boxer and had numerous trophies at
home, for judo, swimming and archery.
‘You should seeee them, man! They are my babies!’
He had a tendency to describe things as his ‘babies’. He
was clearly proud of his collection, and it sounded as one
unrivalled by many, yet he was leaving it all behind. This
I could not understand. I tried in vain to convince him of
more sensible action, yet he was not to be persuaded.
‘Why do you want to leave it all? You have everything!
You are a phenomenal success; you have respect, you have
an amazing girlfriend –’ he had shown me a picture of her.
She was, in a word, heavenly, ‘You have a degree, and you
are 19!’
‘I know, man, exactly! I want some mediocrity in my
life for a change. Success like this does not make you happy,
all I want is some failure. I can’t be accepted by anybody.
People look at me, and what do you reckon they think?’
He looked over at me. ‘What do you think when you are
speaking to me?’
‘I feel astounded at what you have accomplished,’ I
said, ‘I am impressed, but how can that be bad?’
‘People look at me whilst I am talking and I can tell
what they are thinking; ‘I am in the presence of greatness’.
I know that sounds arrogant to you, man, but its true. I
have tried so many things, and there is nothing I can’t do.
I have never failed in anything I have tried! Nothing!’
I wondered what the odds could be. Out of everyone
who had ever lived, surely there would be one . . .
‘All I want is to be bad at something, so I can feel
human, how can I feel human if I have no faults?’ He
pulled the car up at a lay-by, the summer dust engulfing

the car as each particle crowded to fill the space that was
not there.
‘Look, man, people look at me like a god, they listen
to me avidly, with keen eyes,’ he pointed at his eyes with
the V of his first and middle fingers,
‘They hang on my every word, like children listening to
a teacher who never gets it wrong. They are mesmerised.
It’s . . . fucking disconcerting. I hate it, I hate life like this.
I want to make a new start, be somewhere where people
don’t know what I’m like. How can I be human if people
revere me like this? All I want is to be accepted as a
normal person. I want to belong. Look, man, there is a
reason for conformity; people conform for a good reason.
No-one can be accepted as an equal unless they are the
same. Everyone strives for equality but no-one will ever
get it until people see you as the same as they are.’
He started the car and pulled away. He didn’t bother
checking for oncoming cars, or for those from behind, but
there would never be any. No-one could challenge his supe-
riority; he would never crash. But that was all he wanted,
to make mistakes like everyone else, so much so that he
was used to never checking in his mirrors whilst he drove
- this I began to notice now. But he always indicated, and
he never strayed out of his lane. At times he held his hands
over the wheel, without actually touching it. I don’t know
if they were there in case he crashed or to keep me from
worrying, but I was not. His car still never strayed from
its course.
I had always resented conformity as a needless and
indefensible quality of human nature. The urge to conform
comes from the desire to have no responsibility for your
life, your actions or worries – essentially an urge to be back
69
inside the womb. Gradually throughout our lives the world

takes less and less care of us, gives us less and less attention
as we have to fend for ourselves. This causes anger at the
world, despair for existence, fear of the future; it is perhaps
the source of all vice.
Yet the more I thought about it the more it appealed.
To ignorantly conform without a care for one’s own value
or presence, that is true happiness. To be absolutely indif-
ferent to ones own existence is made easier by ensuring that
that is the view of other people towards you, and therein
lies true happiness. That is Buddhistic selflessness. If one
does not care, one cannot be happy, and surely this ensures
a content life. Empty existence, though it is.
Chapter 8
To Hastings
He dropped me off after an hour or so of driving along

that same road, which seemed to repeat itself ad infinitum.
The same curves and turns, ups and downs and patchwork
bitumen. The same carbon-copy animals leading banal
lives; prolonged by saving others from the banality.
Irritatingly, he left me in a scene that more than echoed
the place where he had picked me up. I looked around me.
He could have just driven around in circles for all I knew.
The lanes were so winding I had lost all sense of direction,
and he certainly knew his way around this place.
But I started walking along the road he had directed
me. I trusted him despite my brief exposure to him, but
part of me was not sure what to expect.
As I walked along I noticed a large post that had, it
seemed, seen too much wind. Its severed base had the holes
characteristic of woodworm, and it had been brought down
long enough to harbour mould.
‘Mould’ is a widely used term, though it does nothing
71
72 CHAPTER 8. TO HASTINGS
to describe, visually, what one might be looking at; there

are surely hundreds of species. The particular one chosen
for this post was one of those large, hard, black lumps you
often find on rotting wood.
‘Hastings, 20,’ the post told me as I re-erected it. Un-
fortunately I had no means of securing it in position; no
nails, no rope, or anything of the sort. I decided it had to
make do with the support of the hedge.
A short way further up the lane I spied a raspberry
bush. My heart leapt. I had not eaten for two days, and I
loved raspberries for the nostalgia of growing up (we used
to have one at the bottom of our garden). By rough cal-
culation I was just over half of the way along my journey.
I sat down in the road and filled my belly.
Chapter 9
To The Pirellis’
I sat there for at least an hour or so thinking about abso-

lutely nothing. I watched as a bee carefully selected which
plant she would like to pollinate today, and wondered on
what basis she decided. Eventually she rested on a rosebay
willowherb that was advertising its nectar directly opposite
me.
I wondered what it might be like; the life of a bee. I
decided it would not be too dissimilar to my life at that
moment – tiresome, unrewarding and solitary. But at least
the bee had a plentiful food supply.
I wondered what the life of a plant might be like. Dis-
tinctly buddhistic I decided; calm, unphased, meditative.
It is at one with its surroundings like no other organism,
so much so that it actually gleans energy from the sun.
But maybe this is simply my perception; I immedi-
ately presume the plant’s life is seen within my timeframe.
Perhaps it experiences the world in what would seem like
seconds to us, seeing only a desperate hope to cling onto
73
74 CHAPTER 9. TO THE PIRELLIS’
dear life. Some wither and die, some flourish and thrive
but all reluctantly face death in the end; a fragile explosion
of pleading desperation. Hardly buddhistic.
The bee had finished her work and flew back over the
hedge on the opposite side of the road. I stood up to
see where she went, becoming witness suddenly to a great
crowd of bees I had somehow not noticed before. The
throng pulsated forward and back; ebbing and flowing like
a shore-side wave. And at its centre, like a wizard control-
ling the bees under some spell, was the beekeeper, his veil
hiding his face.
His arms and hands moved slowly but decisively, like a
conductor commanding an orchestra. Sometimes his move-
ments were fast – he hit the side of the apiary, he blasted
smoke in to suppress any potential onslaught, yet mostly
he was so smooth and calm that I was reminded of t’ai chi.
The hive community buzzed around like they knew he was
in charge.
Suddenly his head turned towards me, his veil shield-
ing his face like some hooded demon, yet his hands con-
tinued to work the hive uninterrupted, independent. He
shook a comb, causing bees to fall off and mill around his
head. His bare hands had bees crawling all over, yet he
continued, through the stings, robotically dominating the
colony he nurtured.
Then he turned away from me, inspecting the comb,
as he later explained to me, for parasites and infected hon-
eycomb brood cells.
‘The hive is open to all kinds of attack; varroa, wasps
- you name it - even other bees if you give them half a
chance,’ he told me once.
He replaced the comb and went to the next, shaking
the bees off and inspecting it. He went like this through the
75
whole hive, before replacing them all and closing it up. As

he walked away the bees started to meander back towards
the hive, as if they had been politely letting him carry out
his business; like they knew he was safe to trust. He took
off his mask and walked over to me. He had a fat, friendly
face and red cheeks – he looked like the kind of person
who could not stop talking once he had started, but I soon
found out he was far more serene. He let the world offer
what it cared to and took advantage of whatever might
come his way, yet rarely demanded sustenance from it, as
many might. This reminded me of the life of the rosebay
willowherb.
‘Do they recognise you; do they know who you are?’ I
shouted to him over the hedge and the bee-song.
He mulled the question over. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he
said as he walked toward me.
‘Do they not know your pheromones?’ I asked; ‘surely
a creature whose behaviour is dictated by pheromones would
respond to, or at least recognise, others.’
‘But the bees are not the only ones whose language is
based in pheromones. Could you tell if a bee is angry or
happy?’ he asked. ‘Yet I’m sure you tell if a human is.
Do you think I would recognise one of my bees, if I saw it
elsewhere?’
He invited me over to his cottage to sample the fruits of
his labour. He lived in a tiny cottage, barely large enough
for him and his wife. ‘It is enough,’ he said. ‘As long as
I can sit in the fields and watch the world go by, I am
happy.’
‘Maas Pirelli,’ he said, when I asked him his name.
‘Maas,’ I said, ‘that’s an unusual name.’
‘It’s Dutch. And it’s not as unusual as my middle
names.’
‘What are they?’ I asked.

‘Faas and Edward.’
‘Edward’s not so strange.’
‘It is if you take it out of context.’
His wife brought some tea in and poured me a cup.
‘You just sit down, my love,’ she told me when I offered
to help. ‘You look tired as anything.’
‘This is Fae,’ said Maas. I didn’t ask what her middle
name was.
Fae and Maas turned out to be the most generous peo-
ple I could have hoped to have met. As I ate their honey
on toast and drank their tea my belly gave thanks and
my mind relaxed. I had barely eaten for days - I had well
passed the hunger stage and was simply deteriorating, but
my stomach had not forgotten what food was. My body
moved sluggishly and my mind had been on its way out –
not entirely experiencing the world yet trying to keep up
with it. I don’t know what happened next, but I woke up
on the Pirellis’ sofa several hours later, feeling indescrib-
ably better.
The generosity extended to me could not have come at
a better time. After days of travelling, hunger and unclean-
liness infiltrating my life, the Pirellis fed me and washed
my clothes: the shirt which had acquired all manner of
stains and the socks I was embarrassed to show the world
as I took my shoes off.
I have no idea if it was hunger that perked up my taste
buds, or the delights of Fae’s rich cooking which ballooned
my appetite, but either way the feasts she provided for
Maas and me seemed nothing short of culinary genius.
They invited me to stay for a couple of nights, and it
was simply out of the question that I might refuse their
offer. It was during this time that Maas showed me his
77
hive.
‘When I first started beekeeping,’ he told me one day
whilst he was checking his hive, ‘I just thought of the bees
as animals; no more than thoughtless beings compelled to
do what is in their nature. But then I saw a friend’s hive.
Do you know that different bees have different personali-
ties? Some are aggressive, some are relaxed. I started to
think of bees more truly as animals. Different dogs have
different personalities, so why not bees?’
He lifted one of the combs out and started scanning
its surface.
‘What are you looking for?’ I asked him.
‘I am looking for queen cells,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the
bees will grow a new queen, but I do not want that to
happen. The old queen may be superceded, and I have
got used to this one.’ He squashed something on the comb
between his fingers.
‘Oh,’ I said.
He placed the comb back in position and looked at me.
‘But then I realised,’ he continued from before, ‘I had
been looking at the whole thing in the wrong way. You
can think of bees as animals but you are not getting at the
whole truth.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘The bee colony is an animal.’ He lifted another comb
and shook the bees. ‘Oh,’ he said, as calm as ever, ‘I’ve
just been stung.’ He told me later that beekeepers become
immune to bee stings before long. They still hurt, but they
no longer swell.
‘How is the colony an animal?’ I ventured.
‘Well the queen acts as the brain - she controls the hive
with her pheromones. The workers act as her body; they
venture out and collect food. Yet each would be nothing
without the other. If I was to let these queen cells grow

and hatch into queens, the old queen may be superceded.
The other bees kill her off in favour of her replacement.
But if I let that happen, the personality of the hive may
change. That I could not have. It would be like losing a
friend.’
He talked to me at great length throughout the rest of
the day about his views on bee society, continuing through-
out that evening meal - lemon and honey chicken.
‘This is amazing, Fae,’ I complimented.
‘Oh thank you! I got the chicken from Amos Boggis,
and of course the honey is our own.’
I smiled. ‘It really is very good.’
‘This is courtesy of the rosebay willowherb,’ said Maas.
‘Oh?’
‘Sure, the plants from which the bees collect their nec-
tar greatly affects the taste of the honey they produce.
That’s why I have a huge field of rosebay next to the api-
ary. It makes the best honey. I’ll show you tomorrow.’
The next day we walked through his field, looking for
a pollinating bee.
‘You see this,’ he said: ‘this bee is collecting nectar
from the plant, and by doing so she pollinates it, so that it
can live next year and the process can repeat. Most people
know that, but they do not appreciate the grandeur and
elegance of the system. Many people will tell you it is
symbiosis.’
He continued walking through the field. The bee fol-
lowed him, flying to another willowherb nearby. I hurried
after him.
‘What do you mean, “many people”; do you disagree
with them?’
‘Mmm,’ he said in not-quite-disagreement. ‘I think
79
there’s more to it than that. The plants around could not

survive without the bees, and the bees could not survive
without the plants.’
He paused and looked at me as if I should understand
what he was saying. I did not.
‘The plants are a part of the hive. They are an exten-
sion to it. They do not just act for each other’s mutual
advantage, they are mutually dependent on one another.’
I was stunned. ‘That is ridiculous!’ I blurted out be-
fore I could stop myself. I immediately regretted being
so rude in the face of the hospitality I had received. ‘I’m
sorry,’ I said.
‘Hey, don’t be. It is ridiculous; one can ridicule it. But
it is all just the way you look at it. What seems natural
to one person is a massive paradigm shift for another.’
He continued walking through the field and the bee
flew back to her hive to deliver the scavenged pollen; the
currency of the interaction of their species.
Fae and Maas were the best thing that happened to
me during my journey, and I would have loved to stay
with them for much longer, but since my outburst that
day I never felt quite as comfortable around Maas as I had
at first. Fae still cooked delightful meals, but Maas was
not quite as open as before – I think he lost faith in my
receptiveness of his views. Which was probably fair.
But I was also running out of time, and so it was that
on the morning of the third day of my stay, I left them to
continue my journey. Maas kindly dropped me in a place
which seemed like the middle of nowhere, but he assured
me had a fair thoroughfare, and I shouldn’t have to wait
too long.
But still, I felt like I had swapped one hitchhiking spot
in the sticks for another. I had not seen anybody except
my hosts, or any sign of civilisation, for three days, and as

I stared down the long, straight country lane waiting for
my next lift, I felt a desire stronger than ever before, to
get to my destination as soon as possible.
81
Chapter 10
To Cambridge
I have absolutely no idea how long I waited here, except

that it was a long, long time. And this was not just an
illusion brought on by intense boredom – at some point,
about half way through my wait, I built a crude sundial
consisting of a fallen stick knocked into the dusty ground
with a stone. The shadow made it about a quarter of the
way round before it was destroyed forever by a black car,
whose wheel came to a halt directly on top of it.
I was lucky the driver even stopped - I did not have my
thumb to the road at this point. I was just sitting, staring
at the sundial in such a trance that, when I was brought
out of it, it took me at least a minute before I understood
what had happened.
A head leant out of the window and looked at me. I
looked back.
I had been thinking about the shadow spinning around
the sundial. It is strange that we experience the world so
slowly that we cannot even identify that the shadow is
82
83
moving, yet it is never the same from one millisecond to

the next. Or microsecond, or however small moment of
time you care to mention. Put together any two snapshots
of its rotation and they will be different. And they will
both be lost forever, when they have passed.
I looked up at the man’s face. Old, but sharp. He was
clean shaven and looked like he had been his whole life.
He looked serious, but friendly.
He said something to me but I could not hear.
It is even stranger that we see snails moving so slowly
they seem like they are docile animals, like they have a
slow and boring life. Yet from their perspective this could
not be more wrong. They experience the world in fast
forward. As far as they are concerned the world moves
uncontrollably fast, and it sees itself moving at what it
would consider as a normal pace. The world is hectic and
out of control, according to a snail.
It makes you wonder how many different interpreta-
tions there are of the world, spread across the animal king-
dom. Think how a fly sees the world: segmented, omnidi-
rectional and with colours we cannot even imagine. And
yet we have the arrogance to think our view is the correct
one. How could we possibly say that our view, or any-
thing derived from it is more right than anything else’s, or
indeed, right in any way at all?
There is nothing in the mind except what was first in
the senses.
‘Do you want a lift or are you going to make me wait
all day?’ said the man’s voice quite impatiently, such that
I was plucked straight out of my trance.
‘Yes, please! Sorry, I have been waiting here for a long
time.’
‘Oh it’s alright,’ he said, but he said it as people do
84 CHAPTER 10. TO CAMBRIDGE
sometimes when they really don’t mean it. ‘Just get in the
car.’
His car was almost hearse-like; big, black and spacious
inside. I climbed in and said ‘Hi’.
He smiled, but not at me. It was meant for me, no
doubt, but he smiled at the road directly in front of him.
I tried several times throughout the journey to start con-
versations with this man, but every time I did I was faced
with a dead end.
I asked him what he did for a living. He looked at me
slowly, then back at the road. Then he told me he was a
truck driver.
‘How come you’re in a civvies vehicle?’ I asked him.
But he just ejected a short laugh.
Geez, I thought to myself, this will be a long lift. I
asked him where he came from, to no avail. I asked him
where he was going and he mumbled something I couldn’t
hear. I opted to stare out of the window in the same way
I had stared at the sundial. That is, mindlessly.
I thought how strange this situation was: most drivers
won’t shut up, and you have to listen to them go on and
on, just to be polite. But now I was so used to this that I
couldn’t bear the silence.
I decided in this time that my silent driver seemed like
the religious type, and, being a truck driver he must have
had a good time to think. Perhaps, perhaps not. But
either way it would stave off the determined silence for
another few seconds if I asked what was on my mind. So
I did.
‘I have an unusual belief system,’ he said to me, shak-
ing his hand in mid air in front of him, ‘I’m not sure you
really want to know.’
‘Try me,’ I said. I have never seen such a transfor-
85
mation in a person; it was like I had pushed a button or

something. His eyes lit up, his hands became animated.
He drove faster in his excitement. There was no stopping
him now – I began to wonder what I had done.
‘Well basically I believe there is an infinite number of
omnipotent gods, and if you add them all up they come to
zero. So, to all intents and purposes I am an atheist.’
Wow, I thought. I have never heard such a crock of shit
in my life. But he said it in the way people do sometimes,
when you can tell there would be no point pressing the
issue, and they will be impossible to convince otherwise. I
decided not to ask him his reasoning.
‘But how is the sum zero?’ I asked.
‘Well there is an infinite number and they are all om-
nipotent. Some are good, some are bad. Some try to ruin
the world, some try to improve it. But as there is an infi-
nite number of each, nothing can ever be done to change
the state of the world. None can ever have an effect.
I thought about this for a moment. It is like an in-
finitely long see-saw with gods clambering all over it. Each
tries in vain to weigh down the seesaw, and there is an
equal number either side, so it is in perfect balance. This
see-saw will never touch the floor.
‘But surely,’ I said, ‘if you consider just one god for a
moment; if you see the world from his point of view, then
all the other infinite gods will still balance.’
If you pivot an infinitely long seesaw at any point, it
will still balance. There is still infinity either side.
‘So,’ I went on, ‘that leaves the god in the middle to
do whatever he wants.’
The driver (I had still not found out his name – he had
seemed reluctant to furnish me with details) just looked at
me, expressionless. He looked like he was at that moment
when you are trying to work out if the person you are talk-
ing to is joking, or being ludicrously serious. This always
precedes a sudden change of expression and an outburst of
one kind or another.
‘That is ridiculous!’ And there it was. ‘How could
one god have the power to do anything - every god has an
opposite number to balance him out.’
‘But that is when you look at them as a whole,’ I
contested. ‘I am talking about one god’s point of view,
and the infinite number around him.’
He snorted.
‘That makes no sense!’ And that was all he could say.
For the rest of the journey we sat in silence, though
now it was far more welcome. He seemed so insulted by
my take on his views that he resorted to his initial inac-
cessibility. But I was happy with that, knowing now his
closed-mindedness. I just stared out of the window and
enjoyed my own thoughts.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made
to me and the clearer was my vision of the society of these
gods: a huge, seething community of possibility; the desire
of each god being pooled together to form a composite
of every world from good to evil. And from this ocean
of possibility each god chooses his own version of reality
- each sees what he wants and injects that into his own
vision of the world.
However, the more I thought about these things, the
more ridiculous became my picture. Each god affects us, as
far as he believes, so there is a different reality, for each of
us, corresponding to each one. There is an infinite number
of versions of us, experiencing every possible sin, prize,
shame and delight. Yet no one reality is more or less real
than any other. And worst of all, we are not in control of
87
our lives.
I had to sit up suddenly, like I was trying to force
back the floods of belief that were surging towards me, but
had only the resistance of a grain of sand – and somehow,
by sitting up my connection to our pre-conceived reality
became stronger.
I suddenly thought of a game of cards – it is irrele-
vant which one, but one partly of skill and partly chance.
However, it is not a game whose rules and tactics are hard
to grasp: one in which it is clear at every step which is
the best card to play, and which one must not. Thus, the
game is entirely of chance, as long as every player involved
knows the rules and desires to win, like their lives were at
stake.
I imagined what it would be like to play such a game.
Every player involved would play like a robot, like a
computer. No player has even an option of how to play,
assuming he is faithful to his goal (to win), and knows at
every point the best card to play. Every move is decided
as soon as the chance aspect collapses; when the cards are
dealt. No player is anything more than an agent through
which his game is played; an automaton lost in selfish delu-
sion.
Despite this, every player believes he is in control.
Such is life.
Suddenly I froze, like the world was spinning and I was
powerless to stop it. All I felt was a paranoid psychedelia
brought on by the intense feeling that everything was out of
my control. We are only puppets, forced to dance around
by whichever god may be in control of our lives. We exem-
plify, define – we embody the god’s vision of how he would
choose reality, his balance of good and evil, of sadistic sat-
isfaction and kindly altruism. As if my solipsism had not
reached dizzying levels already, my driver chose this exact

moment to return me to the side of the road and speed
away. Although it was without regret that I said goodbye
to him, now – of all times I did not want to be by my-
self, with only my subversive thoughts for company. Yet
we are entirely at the mercy of the world before us, and
it was a couple more hours before I was picked up again.
Sometimes it will provide, and sometimes it will humiliate.
In that time all I could wonder was – if it is true we are
only pawns, through which some god plays out his reality -
what kind of a god would desire me to realise this; that all
we are is empty vessels trapped in an eternal, existential
prison.
89
Chapter 11
To Liverpool
When a car finally did stop, the driver did not acknowledge
me at first. His campervan was adorned beautifully with
an intricately mosaicked design of a mermaid. He had long,
blond, scruffy hair with beads at random intervals around
it, and no shirt on – forgivable, given the weather. But I
could only see the back of his head. He was speaking to
the woman next to him (who turned out to be his wife).
She was wearing a bright pink and red tie-dyed t-shirt and
short, scruffy shorts. She had dreadlocks.
‘Look,’ said the driver, turned towards his wife as they
pulled up in front of me, ‘all I am saying is that your body
is, like, totally irrelevant. It is nothing to do with you, like
the clothes of your mind, man.’
The woman next to him did not look like she was in
agreement. She shook her head. And smiled. While I
suspect she was smiling at his comment, I could not help
being amused by his vernacular.
The driver looked around at me. He turned his head
90
91
quickly, so the beads in his long hair drummed a short,

quick beat on the back of his chair.
‘Where do you want to go, man?’
Oh my god, I thought. I was about to get a lift from
hippies. Somehow this is the perfect image of hitchhiking:
travelling across America on those long straight roads in
the back of somebody’s VW van. This was not a VW, but
it was still a campervan, and beggars can’t be choosers.
‘I’m going to Sheffield, are you going that far?’
‘I can take you to Liverpool, get in man!’
We quickly did the familiarities. It turned out the
woman next to him was his wife, and their names were
Chris and Jemima. But this is all I found out before they
resumed the debate it seemed they had been having before
they picked me up.
‘Hey man, we’re talking about the ridiculousness of
the idea of the “self”. Of you, of me, as people, both mind
and body. I was just saying the “body” makes no sense: to
say that this’ (at which point he prodded my leg) ‘is your
body, is ridiculous.’
‘How so?’ I asked. As usual, you have to be polite to
these people, and hear them out.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘your body is made up of thousands
of millions of cells and they are constantly dying: dying,
being replaced, dying, being replaced. This happens to all
of the cells in your body.’
What is your point? I thought. But I stifled this
outburst. ‘Oh yes?’ I said.
‘Yeh! It takes around seven years for all the cells in
your body to be replaced. I’m thirty now – that means so
far in my life you could mark out four distinct times–’
‘An infinite number of sets of four,’ corrected his wife,
though I am not sure which was right.
92 CHAPTER 11. TO LIVERPOOL
‘Ok, an infinite number, or whatever. But anyway,

more than one time when my body has been made of en-
tirely different material. All the cells in my body have
changed – so has my whole body. I have different arms, a
different nose and a different brain. So that means that,
if we are only considering the material part of your body,
you are now an entirely different person to who you were
when you were seven, or fourteen, or whenever.’
‘As long as it was more than seven years ago,’ his wife
pointed out.
‘Yeh, thanks, I think he got that bit. Do you see what
I mean, though? The cells that made up my body then are
now in the soil, along with the ones that will make up my
body in seven years time. They may be dogshit now, but
I will eat them at some point, and incorporate them into
me. You are only what was once in the ground, and your
body will be in the ground for longer than you are alive.
The material part of your body is no more important than
these seats we are sitting on.’
‘But there must be some part of our body which links
to us – I mean my body has been my body throughout my
entire life.’
‘All I am talking about is the material part of us.
Whatever our bodies are made up of is temporarily used
material - if anything at all then the idea of our body is
important to us, but ideas do not hold their import in
material.
‘Now,’ he continued triumphantly, ‘that basically leaves
the mind as being the defining part of the ‘self”
‘Wait!’ The woman looked sharply through her nar-
rowly parted eyelids. ‘We are still talking about the body!’
she said, and expanded on her challenge: ‘There is some-
thing which links your body to you, and to any other one
93
of your bodies at any other point in time; an underlying

description of your body, which tells your cells how to form
themselves so as to be much the same as the previous ones
- DNA, the basic code which prevents us from changing our
appearance drastically throughout our lives. Its presence
is apparent in the fact that a person will look much the
same from year to year, aging considered. This aspect of
our body ensures that it is peculiar to only us, and thereby
inextricably linked to us. It cannot, therefore, be excluded
in a full description of anyone.’
‘But you agree that the actual matter which makes
up the body is irrelevant? I mean, certainly there is a
code that describes how this material is placed in space
and time, but it is the code itself that is the important
aspect of the body, and not the physical matter, like water
passing through a you-shaped tube. Put better, matter
passes through the confinement of the code, as water passes
through the matter of your body. It is the code which
is important, and not the material.’ He looked across at
his wife, to see if she had conceded agreement yet. ‘Do
you agree, though, Jemmy, that the material part of us is
irrelevant?’
‘What about the soul?’ said Jemima, ‘That is surely
a part of us you are forgetting!’
‘Wait! We are still talking about the body!’ he said
cheekily, and expanded on his challenge: ‘The DNA code
we are given at birth is entirely out of our control: either
randomly selected or intelligently, unfairly distributed. All
it does is control the material, which has absolutely no
relevance to us. Why should we feel any great attachment
to it? Or, in fact, any attachment at all?’
‘If it is intelligently given by God, then you should feel
it is a part of you. To reject that would be to reject Him.’
‘Only if it is intelligently given by a god! If you do

not believe in a god, then it can only be randomly dis-
tributed amongst us, in accordance to nature, I suppose,
and we should feel no attachment at all to either the mate-
rial which makes us up, or the DNA code which describes
how this substance appears.’
‘But, if we may now come onto this subject,’ said
Jemima in a sarcastic tone, ‘It cannot be denied that this
code, or in other words, our appearance, affects our mind
significantly. If a person is smaller than the average, this
certainly has an effect on their character. If a person is
ugly they will have a tendency to grow up with lower than
average confidence. A blind man will ‘see’ the world in a
different way to one with full sensory equipment, and this
will surely have a profound effect on his personality. In
this way, our body is an integral part of us.’
‘Here is the rub – the mind. But in the same way as the
‘idea’ of our body does not hold its import in its substance,
so the way in which our DNA affects us does not hold its
import in the actual DNA itself: it is the changes which
are made in our mind due to this DNA. Or, the way in
which it affects our mind is the important part - not the
way in which it affects our body, even though effect on our
mind is at least in part due to the effect on our body. In
this way one can argue that our entire character is held
within our mind, and nowhere else.’
‘Again, what about the soul?’
‘Ha! The soul is an invention of man, of organised re-
ligion. Organised religion, hand in hand with the political
desire for social control, invented the idea of the soul in
order to keep the masses from misbehaving. I thought you
agreed with me about that!’
‘Well maybe I was just going along with you so you’d
95
shut up for once!’ she jibed.

‘You know,’ he went on, ‘the German word geist means
both soul and mind, and they have no comparative word
for either.
‘Anyway, all I am saying is that whether you call it
mind, soul, or whatever, all the person’s character is con-
tained within that concept, and none whatsoever within
the physical, material part of our world. Even the Chris-
tian agrees with this - otherwise how would a person rise
to heaven without his mortal body, and how could they
deride so the sins of the flesh?’
‘But how can we ever agree on the definition of the
soul, or mind,’ his wife challenged suddenly, ‘when we can’t
even agree on the word we are using? This is the problem
with languages. They are entirely inadequate at describing
anything. There is no word in the English language that
fully describes what it is trying to. Some come close, but
none get there.’
‘What are you talking about now?’ asked Chris.
‘Hey, I’m only saying–’
‘No you always do this - we’re talking about one thing
and you just change the subject entirely without warning!
I never know where I am.’
Christ, I said to myself, I thought hippies were sup-
posed to be laid back.
‘No, seriously,’ said Jemima, ‘listen to this. . .’
She rummaged around in the glove box for a few sec-
onds, filtering out postcards and maps and lipstick and
tobacco, eventually finding a brightly coloured magazine
from which she read.
* * *
‘There were once two people living in a room with only
two exits. The specific details of the room are, in fact, irrel-
evant, except that it had these two features only. However,
if you are interested, its walls are made of stone and the
doors are heavy, dark and wooden. It is cold and feels
damp. Alas neither of the men would ever leave through
either door, nor see what is behind them. But they both
knew what lay on the other side of each. One door led to
certain death and one to freedom, and the job of these men
was to guard these doors for the purposes of a riddle. One
man is bound to telling the truth in any situation, and the
other has no choice but to lie. That is their programming,
if you will. The specific details of the men are, in fact ir-
relevant, except that they have these two features. But if
irrelevant details are required, they actually like the cold
and damp, and the dingy, near-featureless room. They
have no desire to leave.
Suddenly another man appears in the room. This man
has been asked the riddle in question. He must work out
how to leave the room, and has little help. He can pose
one of the men one question, and from the information he
finds, leave the room by the correct door. He would like
to successfully answer the riddle – if he does not he faces
certain death. It is in his programming, if you will.
He looks around the room. There is no help from any-
where, save the two men in front of him, leaning on their
spears. They are dressed in medieval armour, but have
their shields leant against the wall behind them. They
hardly look well prepared for an actual fight, but some-
thing about them suggests that they would certainly not
lose. Previously riddled, foolhardy men have actually asked
whether or not they can win a fight, whereupon the answer
of ‘no’ or ‘yes’ only went on to prove which man was the
liar, and which tells the truth. There was only one door
97
by which this room could be left, and that could only be

found by asking one, specific question.
It is truly a shame that these men can never be subject
to a round of questioning; choice questions would reveal
some interesting truths. You see it could be argued that
these men are the same person. If we consider just the
truth-teller; when asked a question he replies with exactly
what we would say if we knew the right answer and wanted
to be helpful. This is obvious. Our idea of ‘truth’ is the
same as his. But the liar is more interesting.
There are two possibilities concerning the liar’s exis-
tence. The first is that he knows what the truth is, yet says
the opposite. If one were to ask him ‘is this door the one
to freedom?’ pointing to the one hiding death, he would of
course say ‘yes’. But in this instance one must remember
that, in essence, he has a different language structure to
us. When he thinks ‘no’, he actually says ‘yes’; he must
think to himself the correct answer before misleading. So
his thought process is as follows: ‘that door is the one to
certain doom, so I must say yes’, which differs from the
thoughts of the truth teller only in one respect. Consider,
for example, a baby who is brought up on an island purely
containing people who can only lie. That baby would not
have an infuriating existence as one might imagine, but
would instead develop language in a different way to us:
it would learn to say the opposite of the truth in order to
communicate successfully to those around it. And its life
would be no different to that of a baby brought up in a
truth-telling world.
The second possibility is that the liar firmly believes
what he is saying is right; to him it is the truth. He is
truly misguided, and simply incapable of agreeing with our
concept of truth. In this case he is the same person as the
truth-teller, only living in some parallel existence. They

are both intent on honesty, and both stick by it, but they
are living in worlds of opposite truth. In one world the
other man is mad, incapable of functioning normally. He
sees the world as skewed; it is so far stretched from his own.
But, crucially, this would be the same for either man, if
transported to this alternate reality. Both the truth-teller
and the liar believe they are telling the truth, except we
happen to be in the reality of the man we would describe
as the truth-teller.
So the liar and truth-teller are in essence the same
person, except that either their concept of truth is different
or their language is different. Neither of these differences
alters the person themselves, only their outlook on the
world, or how the world has affected them. This shows
that the concept of truth is a subjective thing. To many
philosophers this is well known, but by some people it is
disputed – not least the two guards in this story. They can
never agree on anything.
The contender stood in the room considered all of this,
and came to the conclusion that his question must involve
both of the men, in order to attain the absolute truth. Sud-
denly his face gave away the crystallisation of a thought,
a sight that the guards had become accustomed to. Tri-
umphantly, the contender took a deep breath, before pos-
ing his one and only question.’
* * *
‘So you see,’ she concluded, ‘our notion of truth is
ridiculous, and the same goes for most other words de-
fined by us. When you think about it, I believe all nouns
have inadequate definitions, or at least they inadequately
describe the ‘thing’ in question. The same goes for most
99
adjectives, adverbs and verbs – in fact, pretty much any

sentence.’
Her husband and I looked at each other in disbelief.
For a few moments we had let her continue with her spiel,
but I could let it go on no longer.
‘What question did the man ask?’ I demanded of
her, rather abruptly, I must admit. She looked absolutely
shocked; I think she could not understand why this was
being asked of her.
‘Well that’s hardly important is it?’ she answered.
We looked at each other again, slightly smirking this time.
But, not wanting to disturb her again during her flow, I
left it.
‘Anyway, where was I? Um, yes, so basically–’
‘I think you were about to say that the more words
you use in a sentence, the better gets your description of
the object,’ he interrupted, ‘with some cute little theory,
perhaps about an exponential decline in the descriptive
power of each successive word, implying an infinite number
of words needed for an adequate description. He smiled
cheekily. Was I close?’
‘Well, no, not re–’
‘Anyway, you want Liverpool don’t you?’ he said, and
pointed up to the sky. My eyes followed his finger to a huge
red sign with white numbers, lit up by floodlights: ‘10’, in
almighty clarity. Not far to go. But the drowsiness was
getting to me; seeing the floodlights drew my attention to
the lampposts, which, having sensed it was dark, were now
paving the way for motorists. These reminded me it was
evening, and of my inadequate sleep last night. I always
feel sleepy on the motorway at night – I think it reminds me
of so many family holidays, when I would sleep all the way
to Brittany, or Barcelona, or Bognor, or wherever. The
sleep is the best bit. There is something very comforting,

warm, and secure about sleeping in a car whilst a parent
drives. Like being inside the womb again. Protected.
‘Ok, here we go,’ said Christopher as we pulled into the
Liverpool service station car park. He parked the van per-
fectly within the white lines of a space, amidst an entirely
vacated aisle of spaces. Why do people do that? What
is to be gained by conforming to the restrictions of a car
park, when there are no other cars around? It annoys me,
though I also do it myself. It is one of many eccentricities
performed by most of the human race.
‘Do you want a coffee? I thought we’d stop for a quick
drink.’
‘I think I might fall asleep.’
‘That’s fine, man, you look wrecked!’
Chapter 12
To The Arctic
Ocean
‘Grey whales,’ I heard suddenly. ’These creatures make

one of the longest migrations of any marine mammal: from
Mexico, along the entire coast of North America, up to the
Arctic ocean; some twelve thousand miles or so,’
The television was on in the background, though I had
not been listening to it in the slightest. I had not been
listening to, or taking in anything. Only thinking. . .
‘The last to start this migration are the cows that
have just given birth – they wait until their calves are
strong enough to undertake such a trek. But naturally
their progress is slow. The cow stays alongside her calf;
travelling at only a couple of knots and venturing no more
than about 200m from the coast.
But they are not alone.’
I was in a café, it seemed. The man I was sitting with
was still smoking. Yes, he was smoking before, I think.
101
102 CHAPTER 12. TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN
He took a pull of his cigarette. Yes, that looks familiar,

I decided. He was looking over towards the TV, but not
out of interest – only because there was nothing else to
do except drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. The woman
who was also sitting at the table was reading a newspaper.
She looked familiar, too. She had black hair. Yes, that I
recognised. I leant forward, trying to read the headline on
the cover of her newspaper. ‘Man dies in . . . ’ was as far
as I got. I had to squint to read it for some reason, and I
was interrupted.
‘Oh, you’re back with us!’ She exclaimed. I was a bit
puzzled, I was not aware of having been anywhere else, but
I thought I would go along with her.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying not to give away the extent of my
ignorance.
‘So we can carry on?’ the man asked the woman, lean-
ing forward and putting out his cigarette. She nodded. I
looked mystified.
‘Let me ask you something, young man,’ he said thr-
ough the lungful of smoke escaping from his body. Some of
it blew into my face as I was breathing in. I coughed. He
continued: ‘What do you know about evolution?’ he asked.
He gave me little time to reply: ‘Animals – any animal –
has adapted to its surroundings. Or, more accurately, is
adapting as we speak. Every species is tending toward
the same common goal: to be the best. The animal best
adapted to the situation that the Earth presents to it.’
But he did not need to continue; there was no point.
I knew already what he was going to say. I wasn’t even
listening anymore. I get like this sometimes. I get an idea
stuck in my head and I can’t stop thinking about it, at
the cost of excluding everything else in the world from my
senses.
103
The earth is like a mould, with a vast number of nooks

and intricate crevices – subtly changing all the time, but
largely remaining the same. The air pressure changes slightly
in places, it rains. The seasons flow like a sine wave. But
at any point on the earth the conditions stay roughly the
same.
Animals adapt to this; they grow fur, they shed fur.
They lose their gills, they grow them again. They grow
blind. Or they learn to fly. And this is all in an attempt
to be the best, perhaps to gain world domination. To be
the one animal that does not need to worry about its own
survival.
But some ecosystems reach a balance. If both sides of
a fight equally want to win, then neither will – the scales
will balance, and the longer that ecosystem is allowed to
thrive the longer it will live in cooperation; no animal will
ever gain the ultimate accolade, for which it is in their
nature to strive.
So the earth, Mother Nature, or the god of evolution
or whoever, has invented a technique of renewal. If no
species has gained intelligence after a certain time their
existence is cleansed from the earth via a natural disas-
ter. A mass extinction to promote the advancement of the
animal kingdom, like the gardener who trims a plant in a
counter-intuitive plight to nurture it.
We may be the most advanced organisms on this planet,
but the question is: are we advanced enough? What is
Mother Nature looking for – an ability to live peacefully
with one another, or simply the ability to survive natural
disasters?
Perhaps nature has written a get-out clause; that if
such intelligence is achieved and the species does not de-
serve it, that species is programmed to self-destruct.
‘And so,’ continued the man – I had suddenly, out

of my control, tuned out of my thoughts and back into
the conversation – ‘it is irrelevant what species attained
intelligence in the first place, the same creature would end
up having it.’
I was confused. I don’t know where that had come
from. I took a nominal sip of my coffee, which had been
placed in front of me. I didn’t feel like having a drink
so much, I just wanted to do something to avoid the eye
contact, for a moment, of the couple at my table, who were
talking about things I did not understand.
I stared at my reflection in the bottom of my mug;
my pug nose flat across the glaze coating, my eyes gazing
exactly opposite themselves. I put it down and looked
across the table.
‘Maybe it would end up being shared between all the
organisms,’ added his wife.
‘Perhaps.’
‘I’m sorry; what?’ I asked. ‘How did you arrive at
that?’
He started answering my question, but all I could hear
was the television. I could see his lips moving; forming
words I would never know. His hands were flamboyantly
gesticulating, animating the evidence I would never hear.
All I could concentrate on was the television.
‘Killer whales. They are in pursuit of the migrators,
but are careful to remain silent. The grey whales have no
idea they are being followed.
‘At the slow pace of the calf, catching up is easy for
the killers, but they have to be careful – they are about
half the size of the mother.
‘But it is not her they are after. She tries to hurry the
calf along – she knows that her calf will be safe if she keeps
105
it moving. But after three hours of this it is too exhausted

to continue.
‘The killer whales throw themselves onto the calf, try-
ing to push it under the water. Being mammal, the calf
must breathe air to survive; the killers are trying to drown
it.’
I don’t believe that animals are any different to us –
why would they be? People question whether they have
consciousness, they doubt their sanctity, but I could never
understand why that is. We are intelligent, sure, but that
is simply a product of the direction that Mother Nature
decided to take our evolution – nothing more and nothing
less. It is no more incredible to be the most intelligent
animal on the planet than it is to be the biggest or the
fastest; they are all no more than superlatives. Except
that accolade comes with the arrogant belief that we are
the best. All we have is an advanced state of evolution,
and there is no spiritual or ethical difference, and no dif-
ference in consciousness between the existence of a tiger or
a rattlesnake, or virus or human. We are all species.
‘The calf is now so exhausted its mother must push it
to the surface so it can breathe.
But now the whole pod of killers is involved; fifteen
whales take their turn to attack.’
I saw every human trait played out during that scene.
The mother’s love and fear for her calf; she risked her life
to save her child, which displayed fear and frustration in
equal measures. The killers embodied the complacence of
the winning team, and spite and hatred for those that are
different. And these were all merely symptoms of the fear
of hunger.
To watch your offspring be murdered by fifteen killer
whales would be horrible. It would be devastating. You
could almost see it in the eyes of the mother. I know ani-

mals don’t cry, but that does not mean they cannot display
sadness. Watching the whale there, looking in despair at
its dying calf, I believed that any animal could display
emotions – which we think are our possessions – to those
of its kind.
‘Before long, the calf is dead. The mother now has to
continue the migration on her own, leaving behind the car-
cass of her child, for which she delayed her own migration’
I literally cried. And nothing else – I did not move a
muscle and I did not hide my tears or wipe them away. I
simply let them roll down my face and drip off my chin.
I did not look at my companions; I stared straight at the
television.
‘The pod of fifteen killer whales took over six hours
hunting the calf, but now eat nothing more,’ the voiceover
continued in perfect indifference, ‘than her lower jaw and
tongue. But such a feast will not go to waste in the ocean.’
And then, in that moment I saw the entire beauty of
nature. I saw the way it all fitted together like a million
piece jigsaw; every species has its place and nature would
be incomplete without even one of them.
The carcass of the recently deceased grey whale sank
to the bottom, where it was fed upon by countless species.
The grey whale eats probably thousands of lives in a day,
simply in order to prolong its own. And now, in death, it
funded the survival of millions of other organisms.
What goes around comes around.
Animals I recognised, animals I never could have imag-
ined, all came rushing to the platter of free food on offer.
I could not possibly explain the beauty I saw in a hag-
fish ripping morsels of flesh from the rotting carcass of the
whale.
107
Every animal has an instinctive ecology; every ani-

mal knows its place in the ecosystem and no animal would
dare question that, or the harmony and balance of the
earth would be destroyed forever. Take away one struc-
tural stone and any tower may be brought down.
I was not thinking clearly, I must not have been. But
in that one moment I had a perfect, profound inspiration
of clarity. I was fully absorbed in my own thoughts, they
had captured me entirely, and as I looked around the room
I felt like a blind man who has just been granted his sight
again.
I thought of the blind beggar who Jesus healed, telling
him not to tell anyone what had happened. Here I had
been shown a vision abnormal, crystal clear in detail, and
inaccessible, I felt, to anyone but me.
I saw two old ladies gossiping in the corner, and saw
nature’s beauty. All past instances had led to that point;
they continued idly bantering, unaware that all past evolu-
tion and the advent of technology had conspired to create
that moment.
I felt simultaneously aware of every single species of an-
imal that had ever existed on this planet. All were present
in my mind, and all had their place in the world. Each
one felt more like a personality; a mindset, and I suddenly
lost all distinction between the two. The species were per-
sonae themselves; personalities were simply manifestations
of evolution. I saw them both plotted alongside each other
on some great, ethereal, metaphysical plane; each had their
own place, important in the definition of the human race;
crucial to the definition of the planet. The species was
alive to me at that moment – not only the animals them-
selves, but the species, the human personality, and the
human race. I saw each species as being a rung on a lad-
der, so huge as to be nonsensical, and each was a part of

this ladder, each animal a part of the rung.
I suddenly became aware of the woman staring at me,
as if it was my turn to speak. No, as I focussed on her
properly it became clear she had, instead, a disgusted look
on her face. Or disagreeing. It seemed like she had long
since put down her paper. Suddenly she exclaimed: ‘What
you are saying is ridiculous! Are you saying the entire
world is alive? Are you saying every species is conscious?
We don’t even know if animals themselves are!’
I was not aware of having been talking, but it seemed
I had been. Now the man came to my defence; strange, as
I was not even sure what I had been saying.
‘Let the lad speak!’ he said. At some point he had lit
another cigarette, which he brandished and waved at her
like a violent flame, as if warning.
‘I think he has a point; think of a flock of birds moving
as one, or a beehive–’
And so they continued.
I stopped listening. But this time I could still hear
them; I simply chose not to.
Suddenly I felt more awake, more a part of the world
around me, no longer captivated by the television, no longer
without any level of concentration or unable to think my
own thoughts. I was now in control of what I said, of that
I was sure; this brief shadow over my existence had almost
passed and I could now be aware, a part of my surround-
ings. You see, I knew this phase well – it used to occur
quite often when I was around teenage, it normally lasted
a few hours when I was incapable of sensible conversation,
and would just sit wherever I happened to be, purely in-
volved in contemplation. Nothing but the physical part of
me was in this location; every part of me that mattered
109
was in some meditative parallel place, influenced beyond

my control by those things around me.
But I was not a part of them; I gained an extraordi-
nary sense of my own individuality, being no more than an
observer in a place untouchable. I thought about anything
and everything, taken from whatever stimuli were around,
be that posters, objects, people trying to talk to me. The
people were the only ones who noticed my state, sometimes
worried, considerate or frustrated at my inability to return
their comments.
Loosely stated, I used to read books – they were al-
ways interesting at those times. I used to read one or two
lines, then put the book down, incapable of reading any
more, for the thoughts dancing in my head, fighting for
airtime. This process would last maybe an hour or a half,
before I would read some other random line or two I could
never remember what I had already read. In this way, I
mean, the random dotting around of lines from some book
or other, in this way the experience was timeless – indeed,
once or twice I was convinced that I would be in that state
for ever, unable to ever again converse, yet constantly fas-
cinated by the endless possibilities that a free mind can
offer. The timelessness of the state meant that it was only
when it was over, only when I felt normal as I did at this
point, that I was able to reminisce, or look forward to what
might be coming next.
* * *
Just then I glanced to my left. For no particular rea-
son, I just felt like doing so, and one of the paintings caught
my eye. All the others were generic abstract paintings, as
you get in any one of these generic coffee shops all over the
world. But this one was realist, marking it out distinctly
against the backdrop of the others. I got out of my chair

and walked towards it.
At the time I did not recognise the man sat in the
grand, golden chair in the painting, but he was old and
had perfectly white hair and expensive silk cardinal robes.
But I have since found out, of course, that that man was
the pope. I’m not sure which one - I don’t know when the
painting was made, but they are as generic as the coffee
shops and the abstract paintings. The inscription under-
neath read:
High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
But I did not know what that meant. I don’t know

why I remembered it, it just stuck in my mind, and I felt
it was important.
I stood and looked at the painting for a while, but soon
enough I decided it was time to go. I slipped out of the
café leaving the two to continue their debate.
111
Chapter 13
To Sheffield
Time was severely getting on; the penetrating wind seemed

to be passing through my entire body, freezing my blood
and frosting my bones. I felt slow and sluggish, cold-
blooded, reptilian. I barely felt the inclination to hold my
thumb out to the road, though I surely had the impetus.
Thankfully there was no rain – teamed up with the wind
they would have had a fast victory over me. But I stood
shivering nonetheless, my scarf wrapped tight around my
neck and my other hand firmly pocketed.
The worst thing was the geography of this place; the
wind rushed from miles away, amplified by a huge, domi-
neering plain. I considered walking further up the road – I
could see, further along, a windbreak in the form of a hill
and a small coppice. Of course, walking there would surely
warm me up, but it also showed drivers that you were not
just a lazy loafer, and therefore safer to let in their car.
However, hitchhiking at night is always hard, and largely
luck based. It is not hard to convince drivers that you are
112
113
mentally deranged in such a situation; who else would be

stood by the side of the road in the bitter cold, holding
their thumb to the wind?
I had fully decided to walk the couple of miles or so
to the coppice and bask in the relative warmth, convinced
I would leave sometime in the next five minutes, though
this feeling persisted for at least another half hour.
But unexpectedly I could see dim lights in the distance,
approaching, though the only reason I knew they were is
that they were getting slowly brighter and larger – they
seemed to be entirely unwavering in their course, coming
right at me.
As they came closer I began pleading with the car – or
with the lights; the embodiment of the car. I was actually
speaking to the lights: ‘Please! C’mon! I have been here
more than three hours! I am cold, hungry and bored!’
Of course, had anybody been looking on, seeing this
event in isolation, these actions would only exemplify the
impression I was giving, of a lunatic.
But they continued, unwavering, looming. Their im-
pact seemed inevitable by their slow, constant increase in
size and brightness, and still I pleaded with them to rescue
me from the unbearable cold, which would be made almost
comically worse by this tease, my only chance at a lift in
the last hour at least.
No one can explain the feeling you get from hitching,
the moment someone decides to extend their kind hand to
you, and relieve you from prolonged boredom. It is like
being so hungry you cannot move, then being handed a
full roast dinner. Or sipping beer you have been craving
all day. It is the fact that you just don’t know when it is
going to happen, that, when it does, it is a godsend.
And this time it did. I picked up my bag and jumped
114 CHAPTER 13. TO SHEFFIELD
into the car, which had stopped in front of me, the ominous
headlights narrowly missing the space I had vacated when
I jumped back to avoid them.
I looked across at my Good Samaritan as I stuffed my
coat down at my feet. It is never fair to describe people
in just a few words; one can clearly never do them justice.
But it is sometimes adequate to describe first impressions
in this way, and in this case, my few words would be ‘over
the hill’. Tired eyes surrounded by bruise-blue bags, and
the peculiarity amongst the elderly; thinly visible veins
inside aged cheeks. But first impressions are frequently
incorrect.
I remember, once, a few years before, having an argu-
ment with somebody, which caused us both some distress.
As is often the case, a harmless debate turned into a heated
argument and neither of us talked about first impressions
again. His view was that his first impressions were always
right. I could not understand how anybody could be so
arrogant, and told him his first impressions have proba-
bly filtered through strongly in his view of everyone; he
could no longer view anybody objectively because of his
first impressions. Essentially he could not understand my
viewpoint and I could not tolerate his arrogance. I tried
constantly to calm the discussion down, but he argued un-
til he was blue in the face.
‘Hi, what’s your name? I said, out of formality. It was
Jerome Greene.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked him, more out of ne-
cessity. He was going to Newcastle, so we agreed he would
take me all the way to Sheffield - making it my biggest lift
so far. I was making good time.
Another amazing thing about hitchhiking is that when
you choose to accept a lift, it could be from anybody. It
115
could be your old next-door neighbour, or they could be

famous, or a serial killer. They could be experts in their
field. They could be male, female, old, young. They could
have the same name as you. Anything could happen. But
somehow I doubted, as I looked across at the driver’s dis-
cretely increasing bald patch, that much would in this one.
An inevitability of the excitement caused by entirely ran-
dom drivers picking you up, is that every now and again
you will be so bored you’ll wish you had stayed outside in
the bitter cold.
‘Have you ever hitchhiked?’ I asked, to relieve the
silence.
‘No, no,’ he replied, ‘far too dangerous.’ That is un-
usual, I thought, most people who pick you up have done
it themselves at least once before.
Just then his white shirt caught my eye, or at least,
predominantly white shirt. My eyes got captivated by the
area under his armpits, where I noticed the shirt had ac-
tually been stained green – one would guess, by years of
sweat. Perhaps it is the oil in human sweat, perhaps he
didn’t wash.
‘So what do you do?’ I asked purely to keep my eyes
from the sickening green patch.
‘Sales Rep.’ He said. It is hard work talking to some-
one who is simply not interested.
‘How long have you been doing that for?’
‘Not long at all,’ he said. Then he paused. Perhaps he
was waiting for me to do something, I’m not sure, but he
expanded eventually: ‘A week.’
‘Do you see a future in it?’
He looked at me like I knew something only he did;
something I shouldn’t.
‘I’ve packed it in today,’ he said, cautiously. ‘I’m mov-
ing cities.’
But now, crackled the radio, Francis Doolittle talks to
Dr Nigel Simmons, a leading expert in his field, about time,
time travel and the very nature of time.
It was one of those moments when the radio was quiet
as a dog whistle; barely audible, yet you know everyone
heard it.
‘Why have you–’
‘Ssh, I want to listen to this.’ He turned the radio up.
Good afternoon to you all, I’m joined today by Dr Sim-
mons, who, as you may know, is an expert in the field of
time. Now, Doctor, tell us a bit about your latest research.
Well, Francis, it’s interesting you said “field” of time,
because–
‘What is so interesting about this?’ I asked, ‘time is
time it flows, we move along it. Big wow.’
‘What? Are you serious? If you believe that you’re
living in the nineteenth century.’
‘Well what is your view of time?’
‘You don’t want to know mine, trust me. Mine is more
unusual than Dr Simmons”.
And so, the observer relative to whom the clock is in
motion measures a greater interval, Dr Simmons droned
on. This effect is called time dilation.
I turned the radio off. ‘Please, try me,’ I said, ‘it has
to be better than this shit.’
He looked at me, disgusted. But anyone interested in
a topic prefers to be talking about it than hear another do
the same.
‘My view, basically, is that time doesn’t flow. It doesn’t
even exist, I mean. If it doesn’t flow then it can’t exist.’
‘How so?’
‘Well I believe the past doesn’t exist, and neither does
117
the future - only the present, so how can we be sure if time

changes at all?’
‘Woh, slow down! How does the past not exist? How
could the present exist without the past?’
‘Well it is more a case that I believe in only what there
is enough evidence for. If the evidence isn’t there, then why
should we believe one man-made concept over another?
‘There is simply no evidence, or no hard evidence, that
the past exists. The only evidence, as far as I can see, is
my own memory. And that is contained in the present.
Whatsmore, it is an entirely untrustworthy thing. Human
memory changes to whatever that human mind wants to
believe. It is far from an impartial observer. You ask any
cop interviewing a suspect.’
‘But I have my memory – I know I experienced the
world five minutes ago, so I know there is such a thing as
the past.’
‘Do you? Did you? Do you really know ? To know
something is to have it proved beyond any doubt. That
is impossible. Think about your memories, they are not
tangible. They are ideas. And they are no different to
your imagination. Have you ever remembered something
but not been sure if you remember a dream or reality? Or
an imagined, possible eventuality? You cannot be sure that
the past exists any more than you can be sure I exist, and
so why choose that belief simply because so many others
opt for it? It sickens me when people do that; philosophical
beliefs are a personal thing and they are more varied than
there are people. When people opt to adopt another’s set
of beliefs they are false beliefs. There is no point having
them if they are not your own; if you have not come to
these conclusions through independent thought.’
‘So you don’t . . . believe in the past?’ I asked, trying
as hard as I could to display my contempt through this

phrase.
‘I believe it is an illusion brought on by the present,
and the same goes for the future. The future is a sham
inspired by the past and present. It is, perhaps, implied
by the nature of time within this framework. But either
way I say the same about the future as I do of the past
– there is absolutely no evidence for it. None whatsoever!
There is not even the fragile base of memory to build a
belief on. In truth, its only basis is memory – something
based in the past! Why anyone believes it is a mystery to
me. A belief in the future makes no sense whatsoever.’
‘So that leaves the present.’ I rolled my eyes, wonder-
ing where he would take this.
‘For that, though, I must concede belief. As Descartes
said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ And with this I agree, but
it is phrased in the present tense, and that is all I feel it
can be applied to.’
‘But if you accept that the current present exists, can
you not accept that it will be a different ‘present’ in five
minutes time?’
‘But I maintain: the present in five minutes time is
an entirely different situation, far fetched from my current
self, in my current time. As far as I am concerned, it does
not exist and will never exist. Perhaps a version of me will
experience that, but even if it does it will be a different
version. I will have changed, and it will not be the current
me who experiences it.’
For the next minute or so neither of us said anything.
A bird flew across our path and we passed four lampposts.
‘Why is it that time needs to be flowing?’ he resumed
of a sudden,
‘Perhaps it is just a stationary, unchanging point. The
119
past and the future are intangible, distant – a part of us

which is hardly there, if it is there at all. Our experience of
the world is based on our senses and they are only linked
to the present. And as it is only the present we experience,
perhaps it is only the current present we ever experience.
The current mix and locations of chemicals in our brain
are the only things which matter – they show our mood,
what our body is experiencing – the whole world according
to you.
‘Your brain is all that is needed for your world to exist,
and neither the future nor the past are requisites for that.
Indeed, if you are shot in the head there would be a split
second within which your brain contains a bullet, yet it
still experiences the world. Your world has no future; it
will not exist in it. Yet it is still witnessing itself.
‘This is preposterous!’ I regretted ever getting into a
car with this yokel.
‘So are many things in the world. Imagine the thought
that you never, ever touch anything in your life. You can
never touch the one you love, or your children. Indeed,
that no part of your body ever touches any other part. Is
that preposterous?
‘Here, let me show you something,’ he said, as he
pulled the car over to the side of the road.
There were a few ants around, scouring the floor for
nutrition discarded by other animals. As soon as just a
few were visible, so became all the others, their presence
like a gas-cloud dispersing from their colony.
‘This ant,’ he said, ‘believes there is a future. Not that
she has necessarily thought about it, but there has always
been a future in the past, so why not now?’
He brought his foot down as hard and as fast as he
could, removing the ant from the world.
‘Now there is no ant. The ant has no future, and had

no future at exactly the point it died. It believed it did;
there was no way it could have known it was about to die;
yet it had none. However, its outlook on life was the same
as before. As far as it was concerned its outlook on life did
not change throughout it.’
‘You didn’t have to kill an ant to show me that,’ I said.
‘What is your point anyway?’
‘All I am saying is that however much we believe the
opposite, it may still be a possibility,’ and this he stressed
by holding his pose; his finger pointing at me and his eyes
wide open, for a few seconds, ‘that we have no future.’
‘But that doesn’t mean we have no past.’
‘Where do you think the past is stored? What dictates
what the past is? No one – nothing – can appreciate, or
describe that ant’s past entirely except for that exact ant,
so now that ant’s past does not exist any more. Do you
think the other ants will miss her? It was entirely held
within her mind: a figment of her imagination.’
He got in the car and slammed the door.
I looked out at the landscape in front of me: mountains
to my right, veiled in clouds, the greyness threatening the
town, which was fighting back with it own. There was a
huge lake spread out before us, beside which the town was
located. I thought about the age of the world before life
evolved no one was there to experience its changes. No one
could ever see, first hand, that which caused the mountains
to be where they are today, or that which formed the lake
before me. How can we be sure such an age ever existed?
And I mean one hundred per cent sure. Maybe geologists
can work out what happened, but whether they are right
or wrong, a set of data and a bunch of theories do not bring
an age to life. Or prove that it ever, really, happened. I
121
turned around.
‘What is that?’ I said. Jerome was holding a knife.
‘There is no time. This is a delusion. So there can
be no matter, no world. No God. But still life strives to
exist. That is the power of life. And the nature of life is
delusion. Despite there being no time with which to exist,
life, it seems, finds a way. It invents an elaborate hoax
just so that it can continue. Yet all it sees is the same,
unchanging point.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m doing you a favour. You don’t need to thank me,’
he brushed a fly from his face, ‘none of the others did.’
‘What do you want from me? Do you want money?’
‘Why is it you want to stay alive anyway? What do
you see in this shallow existence? It is ridiculous! We
are not even sure if we exist, we certainly don’t know in
what form our existence is, even if it is there. We don’t
even know anything! Do you know that’s the worst fucking
thing about being alive! We don’t know a single fucking
thing. We don’t know if there’s a god, we don’t know any
of the people we think we know, we don’t even know if the
sun’s going to rise tomorrow.’
‘We know the sun’s going to rise tomorrow! If you can
be sure of one thing, surely that’s it.’
‘Again! Living in the nineteenth century! Wake the
fuck up!’
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say.
He peered out across the view as I had done minutes before,
the wind blew his minimal hair and the sun forced him to
squint.
‘Do you know what happens when a person drowns?’,
he said.
I remained silent. I looked down at the lake.
‘When someone drowns,’ he continued, ‘just before

they die they get a release of endorphins. They become
euphoric. They no longer care about dying; they accept
their fate. They no longer have a future, but then, they
never did anyway. By dying this way, this moment is pre-
served for ever. The present does not need a future to
exist.’
‘You are seriously messed up.’
‘No!’, he shouted, then said calmly: ‘no, no, no. I am
giving people the chance to live in euphoria forever. I am
giving people heaven. They may not think so at the time,
but soon enough they will not care any more. Now walk
down to the lake.’
‘No.’
‘Yes – walk down to the lake. I have a knife.’
‘Fuck you.’ I said this almost knee-jerk style. It is not
the best thing to say to someone who is clearly mentally
ill, and holding a knife.
I don’t know exactly what happened next. He lunged
with the knife and I dodged sideways. I think he must
have tripped on my trailing leg, or a rock, or something.
The next thing I knew he was falling down the scraggy,
rocky hill. I would love to say he died in the process,
inadvertently stabbing himself on the way down, but a
few seconds later he looked up at me and started running.
I wasted no time.
To my relief he had left the car keys in the ignition. I
turned them immediately and sped away, not looking back.
And in that moment, all I could think about was getting
away quickly, and safely. At no point did it even enter my
mind where I would go, where I had come from, or who I
was.
Chapter 14
To Bellevue
It was surreal to drive another man’s car, after what felt

like years of hitchhiking, and after years before that of
driving nothing but hire cars. The difference in inertia of
the steering wheel was actually noticeable, and the tone
of the engine sounded octogenarian. But I felt amazing
to have, finally, complete control over where I could go –
no one could affect where I chose to go next except me.
There would be no taking detours just to get closer to my
destination, and no more putting up with badly washed,
badly deodourised drivers as a better option to the bore-
dom of the roadside. I wound down the windows and let
the smooth, fast air part each of the hairs on my head. I
realised I must have reeked after days of hitching without
a wash, so I unbuttoned my shirt and let the wind freshen
me up as best it could.
Then I turned the radio back on – it had, in reality,
only been about twenty minutes since I had turned it off,
so I could catch the end of the program my previous driver
123
124 CHAPTER 14. TO BELLEVUE
had so wanted to hear.

I drove for some hours, nearing my destination with
every passing lamppost, watching the sun in front of me
tick-tock its way down to the horizon.
I released all kinds of music from the radio, turning the
volume up higher than I suspect it had ever been, louder
than I had ever heard, such that it had its own presence
in the car; tangible, almost.
Suddenly I noticed the flashing blue and red lights that
topped the car behind me, and that was when I heard the
siren. I was enjoying the freedom, and of course could not
hear anything from outside the car, so I had no idea how
long I had been followed for.
Police cars must travel with an adrenaline inducing
field around them, everywhere they go. Everyone who sees
a police car feels a sudden ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’
moment, as a natural instinct. Especially when you are
driving. But here I knew it was me they were after. I
pulled the car over.
‘License and registration number, please sir,’ said the
policeman in that machine like way, after he had stridden
casually to my window.
I naturally checked my pockets. But of course, I didn’t
have my wallet.
‘Can you tell me the registration number of the car
you are driving, then, sir?’
It always slightly amuses me when cops call you ‘sir’,
despite the fact you both know you’re going down. And
that I was.
‘Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr Greene?’
‘No, I don’t, but I’m not Mr Greene.’
‘Yes, of course you’re not,’ said the cop. He pretended
to jot something down in his clearly virgin notepad. ‘Who
125
are you then sir?’

But my mind went blank as I realised the situation I
was in.
‘I . . . ’ I said. He would never believe me.
‘I . . . ’ I added. I was fucked, I really was.
‘Please, if you would like to come with me I would be
much obliged.’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘Back to Bellevue,’ he said soothingly. ‘The doctors
will look after you there.’
Chapter 15
To a small window
’I woke up early, with a start’. Isn’t that what people

often say? Something like it anyway. But what does it
mean? It means nothing! In what situation would you
wake up, and that not signal the start of something? It is
tautology, in a way. All you really need to say is ’I woke
up’. I’ve never understood ridiculous phrases we have –
any culture has. Every culture has it phrases and sayings
that make absolutely no sense, and nobody really knows
where they come from. So I woke up, signalling the start
of my day. But it was a sudden waking, I was plucked out
of my dream state suddenly, without warning, abruptly.
But I didn’t mind. I was dreaming about shopping, as I
often do, and I was all in a frenzy, which I often am, in
my dream. I had forgotten to buy broccoli, and it was way
up the other end of the supermarket, and then I would
have to buy soup, which I was next to, but the man there
said no-one is allowed to buy the soup until they have
bought the broccoli. I felt like crying my eyes out it was
126
127
so unfair. I would have to walk twice the length of the

place, and then they would probably make me go back
before I could buy the milk, next to the soup. Why they
would put milk next to soup I don’t know, but they had,
and I had run the length of the place so many times now
my limbs were visibly weaker, I hadn’t eaten since I had
arrived there some decades before, and I was on the floor
crying inconsolably. Not that anyone was even trying to
console me; they were all just stood round me laughing at
the grown man who can’t keep his feelings to himself.
But I was woken, with a start, by a man running his
truncheon along the bars of my cell. I suppose he was a
guard, but you can’t be too sure. He was whistling, as
if he was walking along the corridor quite casually, trying
not to look round at the angry eyes set upon him, keeping
his own mind in a tranquil place where everybody finds
the noise pleasant and no-one cares in the least they have
just been plucked from slumber. I didn’t mind of course,
but that’s not the point. I wanted to kick that smug face,
with its constant message of ‘I’m out here; you’re in there.
And you’re not coming out until I want you to’. I could
do him some serious harm, actually – I could reach him,
if I leapt towards the bars, thrust my arm through and
jabbed my finger straight into his eyes as he looked round,
but before he had chance to register. But no, not today.
I wondered what would happen if I did it – nothing could
get much worse for me. I’m locked in a cell. But it would
get a world of worse for that fat fuck. And he deserved it,
too. But everyone would think I was a savage and I don’t
want that.
Especially today. The reason the guard woke me,
along with everybody else in this hole, was that I had
an important meeting with The Doctors. I think it was
128 CHAPTER 15. TO A SMALL WINDOW
just a chat, really, or at least that’s what they said. But

they said if it goes well they may let me out, which would
be good. I don’t know what that means though – I don’t
know what I have to aim for for it to go well. They said to
just be myself, but conversations don’t normally go “well”
if I am, so I’m not quite so sure.
‘C’mon dickwod, we need to get you up’
He always spoke to us like this, like we were shit. Like
we were incapable of dressing ourselves. Some of us are and
some aren’t, and he knows who is and who isn’t, he’s just
trying to rile me. I reckon he knows I’ve got this meeting,
and he’s trying to get me to do something stupid. But not
today. I don’t know if he even said “dickwod”, I think it
was just implied somewhere amongst his tone of voice, or
his facial expression. But I heard it, because he meant it.
I gave him evil eyes.
‘C’mon you freak, get your ass moving!’
‘I’m coming. I’m up. I can get myself ready though,
tough guy.’
I was delighting in moving very slowly, because I knew
the fat bastard was watching my every move, but I only
got about a minute of this exquisite joy before a couple of
The Doctors arrived. Of course, I had to look “normal” in
front of them, so I hurried up a bit. I think I tried to go
a bit fast, actually, and they looked at me disdainfully for
dropping most of my things.
‘How are you feeling today, Mr Jerrom?’ one asked
me. It was the nice lady, Dr Adams. She was always good
to me.
‘Fine, thanks’, which I tried to say as cheerily as I
could. Cheery happiness is not a quality I felt belonged to
the insane, so that was the impression I tried to give. I
decided on seeing her that I would not lie in this meeting,
129
I would answer all questions how I felt, but I would, all

the while, give the impression of a cheery, happy person.
This would work, I was sure of it.
‘Ok,’ Dr Adams said. She often preceded her speech
with “Ok”, like a woman in charge, but not demanding.
She had turned to the chubby dickwod for this request;
‘Marcus, I want you to make sure Mr Jerrom gets to In-
terview Room Three by nine o’clock.’
I’m not sure why they decided to have it so early in
the morning. I can’t think straight in the morning, and
it was now already quarter to. I had fifteen minutes of
waking up time before they would assess my sanity.
Marcus’ blubberous cheeks formed words in front of
me in slow motion, and, like thunder, the deep, slow words
followed shortly after: ‘Ok, Doc’, I think they said. He
had a wry smile before his eyes beset me. He watched me
continue to ready myself, though I no longer had the de-
light of deliberate deliberation; The Doctors would expect
me at nine. I cleaned my teeth and washed my face. I did
not shave because I do not see that as being a necessary
thing – unlike cleaning your teeth or your face, you will
be no dirtier if you do not shave. But if I had thought
about it I would have – sane people, quite irrationally, re-
gard a cleanly shaved face as being more important than
freshly brushed teeth. Once I was done the waddling Mar-
cus marched me up to Interview Room Three, where my
only appointment for the day would commence.
I walked into an extremely bare room, a musty smell
showed there was not an adequate turnover of fresh air,
and the dingy, tea coloured window had patently not been
cleaned in a while, possibly within my lifetime. There was
enough grey in the room to send someone crazy. Dark grey
walls marked the end of the darker grey flooring, which was
only punctuated by six dark grey chairs, on five of which

sat The Doctors in a line, wearing grey, uninterested faces.
The remaining chair was placed opposite theirs, awaiting
my arrival eagerly. This is more than can be said for my
adversaries, who acted quite like this was some tedious
formality they had to go through, which would probably
not go anywhere.
It seemed to take several minutes until anybody no-
ticed I was there, but finally one of them stirred, pushing
his rimless spectacles further up his immaculately exfoli-
ated nose.
‘Please, Mr Jerrom, take a seat.’ The command came
from the one on the extreme right, unfortunately oblivious
to the patch of hair he had missed whilst shaving that
morning.
‘Take a seat?’ I thought, ‘There is only one you stupid
twat. I don’t have much choice’. Take the seat, is what he
should have said. But that would make it sound more like
the command that it was. I think I will never understand
why people can’t just be honest when they talk.
Still, I understood what he said, so I sat down where
he wanted me. I think that is the difference between these
people and me; I am able to humour them and see things
from their point of view, but they will not go along with
me. I happen to be in the minority, perhaps because they
are more aggressive in this respect.
‘Ok, do you know why we are here today?’ asked Dr
Adams kindly, patiently. She could make someone very
happy, but you could somehow tell she had been hurt ter-
ribly by someone. Like her eyes were constantly letting out
a depressive sigh.
‘Erm, I think I do,’ I said. I was telling the truth, as I
said before. My plan was to tell the truth, but to do it in
131
a cheery manner at all times. Which was getting harder;

the nerves were kicking in like crazy. ‘I think that you are
all going to talk to me, or, to put it more accurately, assess
me, and if I am deemed sane enough you will let me out.’
‘What do you mean,’ cut in the Doctor with the exten-
sively sanitised nasal pores, ‘by sane enough, Mr Jerrom?’
He could see I looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean by
that question, Doctor?’
He had opened his mouth to reply, and was half way
through a drastic change in body language, adopting a
locking-horns kind of pose, when Dr Adams beat him to
the chase:
‘I think what Dr Schmidt is trying to say is that you
are almost correct in your summary of the reason for this
meeting.’
She had interrupted him before he had got a chance to
get angry with me. This meant she was on my side. But
she had stopped him from having his say against me, which
inevitably meant he would find another way to retort, non-
verbally. That meant from this moment he was probably
against me. I believed I had lost one and gained one.
She continued: ‘But there is a distinct difference. You
say “sane enough” as though everyone is at least partly
insane. What do you mean by this?’
‘Well, I believe insanity can be defined as acting out-
side of ones own society, so surely you are either a perfect
conformist or, as you say, at least partly insane. Can you
think of one person who conforms perfectly to society?’
The Doctors looked at each other quickly. I supposed
they were waiting to see which doctor would volunteer
fielding this question. Or perhaps it was a signal of group
amusement.
After a few seconds of each doctor re-arranging their
bodily posture – a common avoidance tactic – one doctor

reluctantly piped up. This was a young doctor, probably
late twenties evidently trying to prove himself in front
of his more accomplished peers. It was not just his youth
which gave away his novelty – he still fully buttoned his lab
coat and kept his shoes freshly polished; definitive traits
of a rookie.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘no-one conforms perfectly to so-
ciety – that would be the desire of a totalitarian system.
But many do conform to sanity.’
Dr Schmidt smiled briefly before resetting his appear-
ance to poker face; he was clearly pleased with his protégé’s
development.
‘But this only brings us back to the definition of sanity.
How exactly does one “conform to sanity”, doctor?’
‘Well there are certain expectations set down by soci-
ety; norms of behaviour, respect for laws. To conform to
sanity is to keep to these constraints.’
‘But if everybody kept to these norms of behaviour,
doctor, society would never move on. It would never de-
velop. Society is the sum of everyone in it, and everybody
is born different. Different people are born with different
skills.
‘Some people are just born thinkers – some of these
are philosophers, some scientists. Some are politicians,
some mathematicians. Either way these people are born
to experience the delights of knowing where the human
race is in terms of their respective, respected professions.
In some rare cases a lucky few are allowed the privilege
of advancing our knowledge of said subject. But in most
cases, and I believe only those of most import, it is only
a thinker who can do this – one who spends his time not
necessarily experimenting into a field, but purely thinking
133
about it. Einstein conducted many of these “gedanken”, or

“thought experiments”. However, for those born with this
abnormality it is both a blessing and a curse. It astounds
and it alienates.
‘There is no way that a person bound to deep thinking
in this way can ever be accepted into normal society; they
see everything in a vastly different light. Freud would have
constantly been observing his and everyone else’s interac-
tions with one another, and, though many people do this,
he would have seen them in a vastly different way to the
norm. On sharing his opinions, he would have undoubt-
edly only surprised and shocked. But then this was why
he was considered such a genius. Both Newton and Huy-
gens would have thought entirely different things to one
another when watching a sunset or noticing light stream-
ing through an open window, but still their thoughts would
be more similar to one another’s than those of the layman,
who simply notices the light, or even the average scientist,
who only wishes he could know its mysteries.’
I could see from the looks on their face they had no
idea what I was talking about. Newton and Huygens had
entirely different views on the nature of light; Newton be-
lieved it was composed of particles he dubbed “corpuscles”,
and Huygens believed it was composed of waves. Ironically,
they were both right, and both wrong.
‘These people can never be truly accepted into “nor-
mal” society, and yet their discoveries drive our knowledge
of the world, and ultimately pave the way for a changing
society. Einstein’s beliefs about time were entirely out of
the scope of thinking current at the time; he was insane in
that way, and yet he has revolutionised our understanding
of time. And our concept of it. It is a ridiculously different
thing now.
‘It is a cliché to bring up, but Galileo was considered

heretically insane, and suffered a lethal punishment be-
cause of his beliefs. As, indeed, did Jesus. They were both
considered blasphemous, yet the words they preached, in
both cases, are now so ingrained in our culture they would
be impossible to remove, despite extreme efforts being made
at the time.’
‘So what is your point, Mr Jerrom?’
‘My point is: what the fuck is insanity? There is no
such thing, surely, at least in this sense. There is crime,
there are actions outside of a healthy society, but what
have I done which could be deemed unhealthy to society?’
At this the doctors recoiled, in, I suppose, disbelief.
And again they looked around at one another, but this
time there was no delay in receiving a response.
‘Mr Jerrom,’ said Dr Schmidt like a primary school
teacher; like he was talking to a person lower than himself.
Perhaps that is why he stressed the ‘Mr’. He stood up and
put his clipboard on his chair, in exact spatial symmetry
with the square seat.
‘Let me explain to you my view of society, and my
view of what this meeting is about.’
I beckoned him to continue, but he did not even notice.
‘Many years ago, the human body – or at least, the
animal which would evolve into the human body – was
composed, in truth, of millions of suspiciously cooperative
micro-organisms. They acted for the greater good, but
despite this they were, in many ways, like an ecosystem.
They were still fighting for supremacy, to see who would
evolve to gain control of the whole.
‘In the end the species which would eventually call
itself “the brain” won out, paralleling the advent of hu-
man technology, and has been the driving force ever since.
135
However, Mr Jerrom, with you that species is losing con-

trol over its actions. It is beginning to surrender power, to
give up the fight.’
He had previously been pacing slow, decisive steps
around the room, but at this point, with a snappy stamp
of his soft leather shoes on the floor he turned his entire
body to me and looked into my eyes. ‘We cannot have
that,’ he said.
He was behind the row of chairs, such that the other
doctors could not see him. This must have been a deliber-
ate attempt to precipitate my reaction – an uncomfortable,
guilty feeling which seemed to cause dismay in the Doctors’
faces.
‘Now,’ he began again, ‘the other species would not
tolerate the brain being in control without some kind of
payment; this is how symbiosis works. The brain organises
payment to the other species; the other organs, Mr Jerrom.
This is in the form of energy, water and protection needed
by those organs. This is the currency of their interaction.
‘Think of the currency of the interaction of our society,
Mr Jerrom; a currency far more familiar. There are those
that are in control, those that provide protection. Do you
know what they provide protection against?’
I looked at the other Doctors. They remained abso-
lutely still – I did not know if they knew where Schmidt
was taking this or not.
‘Crime,’ I said, ‘famine, pain?’
‘And viruses,’ said Dr Schmidt.
‘Since when has society – to which I must conform –
included viruses? Please explain to me further, Doctor,
this vision of “sanity” so –’
‘It is all a question of semantics,’ cut in Dr Schmidt.
‘There are those that question the regality of the brain;
viruses. They have an exact correlation within our society.’

I could not believe what I was hearing – was this the
vision of society I should aspire to be a part of? My own
was so far removed from this I began to question my own
sanity – agreeing, I suppose on this point, with the rest of
the room.
‘Do you know the purpose of lymphoid organs, Mr
Jerrom? They comprise the human immune system, and
that is what we are in this scenario. We are cleansing
society of those that cannot form a part of it. We remove
and separate – excrete, if you will, or quarantine – those
that cannot be a factor in a healthy society.
‘Now, I feel we must discuss what we have observed
today, before we can make a conclusion.’
At this Dr Schmidt strode confidently out of the room,
followed by the other doctors: Dr Adams, sympathetically
glancing my way; the young novice avoiding my eyes.
I looked around the room they had left me in. It oc-
curred to me how little they had actually let me speak –
considering they were judging my sanity, Dr Schmidt had
done all the talking, and had done little, in my opinion,
except bring into question his own sanity.
As I glanced around I became suddenly aware, with a
rush of excitement, that the Doctors had made a mistake
I was both astounded and relieved to be party to.
There was only one window in the room, and, small
though it was, it was the only source of fresh air, and so was
left open. ‘Fresh air’ is a strange phrase indeed; next to the
asylum was a perfume factory, which ironically produced
a stench otherworldly, harrowingly pungent, and this was
the only smell permeating the lonely grey room I was now
left waiting in. I urgently needed to leave.
My escape involved a lucky jump and a hasty climb -
137
The Doctors were of course discussing my performance be-

hind mirrored glass – but I soon discovered the window was
just large enough to allow a person through and, combined
with the cushioning hedge on the other side, it was a god-
send. I rejoiced at my newly regained freedom as I scaled
the wall surrounding the grounds. I was as determined as
ever to arrive at my final destination.
Chapter 16
To Hastings
I ran. That was all I did for five full hours; that was all I
was. All I experienced, and every part of me went straight
into running. I just stared in front of me, all I took in
was what was approaching, like a pilot in a combat situa-
tion. An infinite string of possible destinations passed me
by, none of them good enough. I ignored any obstacle that
should happen to be in my path. I hurdled small fences and
jumped over gates as if they weren’t there, taking in only
the average height of the ground. Like a computer system
scanning the landscape mindlessly, blankly taking in noth-
ing but the absolute essential data of the land. At first I
took some slight care in crossing barbed wire, but after the
first half hour I cared no more; I just took my chances and
hurdled that too. Sometimes it snagged my clothes, some-
times it caught my flesh. It caught my shirt, billowing out
behind me, refusing to keep up and tantrumming violently
against the wind, which rushed past my ears and made my
eyes water. A few times it caught my trousers, normally
139
tearing a length into my thigh. But I barely noticed until

I had stopped, whereupon I discovered the hot, sticky mix
of sweat and blood in equal parts, binding my socks to my
leg hair. The pain was merely a fact. I thought of the
meditating samana who simply disregards his hunger and
thirst, pain and fatigue in the vain hope of nirvana.
I thought. I thought about those Kenyan tribesmen;
all they do is run, and they are the best in the world. I
was one of them; I felt like tearing off all my clothes and
leaving them, with my life, in a farmer’s field somewhere,
and screaming at every person I saw who was shamelessly,
blindly living out their futile, standard-issue lives with-
out even thinking about their options, while they stood
frozen, before rushing to guard their children, shielding
them from the madman with glistening, red-streaked legs,
screaming nonsensical words at the air; fiercely burning,
bright, white eyes punctuating his face, staring widely and
wildly at the houses and cars, and toasters and small pots
of loose change, and mobile telephones, screaming about
ice cubes and washing baskets, teasmaids and flat pack
furniture. And fashion. And religion.
I would have thought about so much more; I would
have thought my mind into oblivion, but suddenly, with-
out warning, my factory made and customer fitted shoelace
snagged on a mass produced atom of barbed wire, sending
me tumbling almost eight feet into a mini field of sting-
ing nettles, tended by the evil side of mother nature, my
fall cushioned only by a small, dense bush placed by her
merciful side.
And there I lay, panting, sweating and stinging. I
didn’t even bother moving. I didn’t want to. It takes
a good few seconds after a fall to know you are still in-
tact; no bones broken; you are still conscious and free-
141
thinking. But then how would you know, for sure? I

daren’t move though, for fear of exacerbating my damage
from the stingers. And frankly, facing up to the fact that
I was still alive, and my recent brush with the freemarket
economy had not saved me from potentially several more
decades subjected to it.
I lay there for several minutes, catching my breath and
looking at the birds in the trees going about their business.
Perhaps, if it had not been us who had developed deep, de-
batable intelligence, it may have been them. Then maybe
I would not be tortured daily by its implications – the
knowledge that we have nothing of the sort. Everything is
a mystery to us; we do not know for sure what world we
live in, and why. But the simple bird has none of these
problems. Eventually I stood up, moved my neck around
slowly to make sure I was still fully functioning, and I lis-
tened. I heard little above the chirping conversation of the
birds, but what I did hear was of paramount importance;
the slight humming one can hear through a wooded area,
of a nearby highway.
I scrambled down the hill, swinging my body round
trees to slow myself down, little discouraged by my recent
experience. I jumped over the last fence, came to the side
of the road and saw a busy thoroughfare of tiny little in-
significant lives speeding by with equally minimal care for
me. All I wanted to do was escape this life for as long as I
realistically could, I wanted to downgrade my life for a sim-
ple, base substitute where I need not care about anything
but the least important, most insignificant aspects of our
ridiculous existence. I wanted to live as most people do, as
a slave to their respective currency. So I put my thumb out
and I held it there with a smile on my face for three whole
hours, until without warning, after what seemed like aeons
of watching randomly generated cars pass me by, a beau-

tiful, wonderful Mazdedes Fiestarossa stopped in front of
me, ready to receive my totally heartfelt gratitude at sav-
ing me from the doubtless impending rain.
I believe what followed is a common ruse played on
most hitchhikers at some point during their journey. The
car stopped about twenty or thirty metres down the road
in front of me, and after three hours of waiting I was more
relieved than I could explain, to see a car stop. So I ran
towards it.
I was about two metres away from it, nearing the win-
dow to ask the driver where he was headed, when the car
simply sped away, shooting dust into my eyes and screech-
ing a hyenic laugh on the tarmac.
Perhaps it amused him. Perhaps he saw my torn,
bloody clothes and frightening appearance just in time.
Either way he was yet another driver along this road who
did not want me in their car.
I just stared after him as he drove away, until he be-
came nothing more than a red dot on the horizon, that
was once a part of my life.
* * *
I could not believe it. I now had three hours to make
a three-hour journey, and I had absolutely no prospect of
a lift. I had been waiting for four hours and, in that time,
I had seen about fifteen cars. Certainly no more. Things
were looking bleak – I could not be late. It was out of the
question.
I sat down and put my head in my hands. This is
a very symbolic human arrangement, and in the seconds
that followed I considered why it is that we do this. To pro-
tect ourselves from attack? This is hardly a position likely
143
to ensure survival in such a situation. To shield our face

from the tears we may have shown in youth? Whatever
the reason, it is unlikely a body expression passed down
from father to son. Everything has its root in primeval be-
haviour. Everything is caused, at least indirectly, by our
DNA.
But I didn’t get far through this train of thought. I
was disturbed by a hoot in front of me. Not, of course, an
owl’s hoot, as may be expressed by that single sentence, if
it were taken out of context. This was from a car that had
stopped in front of me.
‘Would you like a lift to Hastings?’
The car looked old, but in truth was relatively in its
infancy. It only appeared that way because of its single
blue door – whose relevance would have been minimal,
were in not placed in the context of a dirty white car.
Needless to say I accepted his offer with relief and grat-
itude, and he said he could make it easily in three hours.
It transpired I was much further up the road than I had
thought.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, referring to the shabby looking
lever arch file currently using the passenger seat. It was
teeming with paper, a mix of scrawled notes and typed
pages, every leaf tired and torn.
‘Oh that’s my book,’ he said, ‘just chuck that in the
back.’ This I did, and meanwhile noticed hundreds of
books piled and scattered across the back seats. Some
clearly had pages or chunks missing, which it appeared,
from a quick glance, had been exported to a small box in
the well. I added to this box the file I had taken from the
seat.
‘You’re writing a book?’ I asked, with surprise. I had
never met an author before. ‘A novel?’
He looked at me and smiled. ‘No, and yes, respec-

tively.’ I sat down, and he started the car up
‘How do you mean? You’re not writing a book?’
‘No.’
‘But it’s a novel?’
‘Yes.’
I was confused. ‘You will have to tell me what you
mean, I am afraid; I can’t just play the guessing game.
We’ll be here for hours.’
‘We’re here for three anyway,’ he smiled, then he ex-
plained: ‘Ok, I am taking different chapters out of differ-
ent books and arranging them to make an entirely different
story.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, my first chapter is from one book, and that tells
the first part of the story.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘Yes. And then the second is from another book, it’s
really not that complicated. That tells the next instalment
of the story.’
‘OK. But is the story a continuation?’
‘Well that’s a matter of opinion really, I mean they
weren’t originally. What makes something a story simply
because sentences are arranged in that order? Or what
makes a sentence just when words are juxtaposed? This
question is easily answered at first glance; you know a sen-
tence when you see one, but at what point does it stop
being a succession of words and starts being something so
much greater than the sum of its parts? At what point is
life first breathed into it?’
‘Um–’
‘Yes, it is a continuation. It once was not, and now it
is. But it is still, of course, a collection of entirely separate
145
chapters.’
‘Well how do you make sure it flows as one book?’
‘You see my pile of books back there? I have spent
years tracking down viable extracts. In the end I have very
few whole chapters, and instead had to resort to cutting
fractions of several chapters, and pasting it all together. It
is not quite as elegant, but I have been working on this for
years. I suppose I am starting to get desperate. People
always set their sights high, and only a modest set ever
achieve them. The rest of us have no choice but to lower
our goals or never achieve them.’ He sighed.
‘It doesn’t mean we don’t achieve something,’ I assured
him. ‘The world would not work if only geniuses achieved.
And no-one would achieve anything worthwhile if everyone
was a genius.’
He shrugged. As he did he caused a dusty turbulence
in the air above his shoulders. He was frail – gaunt, al-
most. Undernourished. He seemed like the type to sacri-
fice everything he could for his goal – the full depression of
humanity; we constantly aim outside of our abilities. This
may increase the race’s chance of survival, but it results
in disappointment, pain and unhappiness. It benefits the
race, at the expense of the individual.
‘It fascinates me,’ he continued, ‘when things are taken
out of context and placed elsewhere. They wind up mean-
ing something so totally different that they lose all their
original meaning. That’s why I’m making this book; to
show how much assumption there is when things are placed
together. The human mind cannot think objectively.’
‘But is it not obvious when you’re reading it, that each
part comes from a different book?’
‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it will be, but you
see the reader assumes so much. When they read books,
people are piecing together what they can, and as such see
a huge portion of the story that is just not there, like a
silhouette at night might appear like a fox, or a man, or
whatever. The brain plays mischievous tricks on you.
‘You see, all the chapters I am choosing are written
from the first person,’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘and though they are all from a different person’s point
of view, if the story flows then the brain follows.’
‘Yes, I think I understand,’ I said. I wondered how
much of a novelists character would come from themselves,
and how much is added by the reader.
Hedges rushed by and the windows rattled. Pages on
the back seats flapped up and down with the wind from the
sunroof. Words came and words went. Words approached,
were used, and receded.
‘But how do you think about the story?’ I asked, back-
tracking only slightly, ‘I mean, to you is it one story or is
it a collection of individual parts?’
‘It is both, as I said.’
‘But surely you must see it, yourself, as one or the
other. As the author, you must know which one it is.’
He looked across at me, and rubbed his head not in a
comforting way, but in the way many do from time to time,
pushing hard with his hand and moving his face around it;
relieving, as far as he could, frustration, or perhaps stress.
‘Let me tell you something about writing,’ he said,
‘people have this misconception that when a person writes
a story, it is their product, like their brainchild or some-
thing, like it is a part of them. That is just not true. What
people don’t realise is that the author merely comes up
with the preliminary ideas; he sets the initial conditions.
Once he begins the writing process he can only guide it.
147
It becomes this thing, which he must tame – this monster

which, once alive, consumes his thoughts, his time and his
life.
‘Once an egg is inseminated, it is no longer a part of
the mother, and that is when the mother ceases to have
control over its development. It is merely given nutrition
and nurtured. It is exactly the same way with a story,
except that instead, words are the currency of the interac-
tion.
‘I take no responsibility for the words contained here,’
he pointed with his thumb to the boxes in the back. ‘I
didn’t even write any of them myself!’
* * *
He had been calm and affable upon my entry to his

car, but by the end of our journey together he was quite
volatile, unpredictable; a nuclear bomb waiting for one in-
evitable, random expulsion to start the reaction. Tem-
porarily static, tectonic pressure building up in one site
alone.
By now he was gesticulating across almost the entire
width of the car – nearly encroaching on my own personal
space, and, at times, my person. His maniacal grin seemed
unwavering in its presence, matched only by his wide eyes,
so that nothing else seemed to exist; like The Cheshire Cat,
these were the only parts of relevance.
This had been an interesting lift but, like most, I was
relieved to get out of his car. This was in part due to the
fact that he dropped me in Hastings, miraculously, exactly
where I needed to get to. I stared at the University building
in front of me. I had finished my journey.
Chapter 17
To Dr Symonds
I knocked, opened the door to Dr Symonds’ office, and

walked in. I immediately halted.
Dr Symonds’ chair was turned round towards the win-
dow, so that he was entirely invisible to me. It was a small
office, but large enough for his purposes. One side of the
room was entirely bookcases and shelves of books, with no
apparent order to them. They were seemingly randomly
missing books, these all being strewn across the floor on
the other side; some left open at pages, some stacked in
piles. Covering the wall on this side of the office were
photocopied portions of books, pages torn out and pages
roughly scrawled, I suppose of ideas he had had from time
to time. These all had paragraphs, or random words here
and there, highlighted, so that one’s eyes were automati-
cally drawn to them, although they were not legible from
this distance. His desk was entirely bare, except for a sim-
ple black revolver placed in the centre, its barrel pointed
to my right. It was the first time I had ever seen an actual,
148
149
real gun, and I had not expected today, here, to be my first

ever sighting. It was larger than one might expect, and it
had a distinct presence, like there was another person in
the room remaining silent, undeniably ominous.
Dr Symonds swivelled his chair round to greet me, a
large smile on his face. He knew I was coming; the gun
was clearly intended for this meeting, but I suppose he was
pleased that it was not another lecturer who was walking
in.
‘Please, sit down,’ He told me cheerily. He seemed so
relaxed I had to check again that I had seen correctly what
was atop his desk. I sat down tentatively. He glanced down
at the centre of his desk and smiled.
‘Please relax,’ he said, ‘I am not going to harm you.’
He slightly stressed the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ of this statement,
such that I was not in any way sure exactly what he meant.
He registered my look of puzzlement, and returned one of
calm friendliness. ‘Please, relax,’ he assured me again.
‘Why did you ask me to come here?’ I ventured.
‘I would very much like to discuss something with you.’
He stood up and walked to his bookcase. I could see al-
ready that he was wearing a neatly kept suit and a red
tie, but now I glanced at his feet, with surprise, to see him
wearing odd socks laced with holes; most of his toes pok-
ing out onto the carpet. He looked at his arsenal of books
for a few moments before selecting the one he desired, and
placing it in front of me, open, at a page somewhere near
the back. In this case most of the words were highlighted,
it seems he had started off picking out a few words or the
odd paragraph, but by the by had realised it was all rather
important. ‘Please, read it out,’ he asked of me. So, I be-
gan:
‘The Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) involves an
150 CHAPTER 17. TO DR SYMONDS
unusual twist in the “normal” tale of Quantum Mechanics.

That being that the Schrödinger Equation never undergoes
collapse; that the whole world evolves according to its rules
and all outcomes are a superposition of all possible states.’
I looked up at him, pleading an ‘I do not understand’
expression as best I could.
‘Please, go on,’ he said. So I continued.
‘This is known as the Everett postulate, after the man
who first conceived it.
‘So the world may be thought of as containing several
branches of possible reality; a separate branch for each
permutation implied by possibility. As far as each branch
is concerned its future behaviour is just the same as if
collapse had occurred and the other branches disappeared
from reality – there is no way two branches can ever in-
terfere with one another. In this way there are now an
unimaginably large number of parallel “worlds”.’
‘Right,’ he blurted out, his expression excited and his
finger pointing straight at my eye. I could feel the yang.
‘This is where our phrase “parallel worlds” comes from!’
His zeal and fanaticism towards this idea was fright-
ening and infectious. He continued for over an hour to
show me fragments from textbooks and journals he had
accumulated; building blocks that formed the structure of
a mindset he was slowly presenting to me.
He admitted his viewpoint fell outside the consensus
of physicists, but was careful to tell me what was his con-
jecture and what were others’.
It seemed, as I had, myself, read aloud to him, that
some physicists believed that reality was a communal bowl
from which we all drank partially. Put this way perhaps it
seems intuitive, but the length to which he took this idea
was complex, far-fetched and wonderfully extravagant.
151
He believed that there was an outside world which

none of us can fully experience. This is the mathematical
world – that which follows nothing but mathematical and
physical laws - Schrödinger’s equation, which he kept on
citing, amongst others. This forms an ocean of reality from
which every person filter-feeds.
‘Don’t you see? The wave function collapses in our
brains, and that is where reality gets turned into percep-
tion!’
He described it more clearly to me than this; thus: if I
roll a die, it has an equal probability of coming out as a one
or a six. There is a ‘superposition’ of all these possibilities.
That is true reality: not that it is any particular number,
but that it is all of them at once. It is only when an ob-
server is introduced that that superposition collapses, and
one particular number is observed. This is when reality
becomes perception.
‘Throughout our lives we are constantly rolling dice in
the synapses of our brain to determine what we experience.
Furthermore, each of us experiences a different branch of
reality. The dice rolls will be different for everybody, yet
all sample the same vat of existence.’
Perhaps it is to this ‘vat’, I thought, that all Buddhists
aspire. This is the ‘one’, the unification of everything.
The reality we experience is merely one permutation of
the Brahman; of possibility.
‘But let me show you something.’
He walked over to his shelves once more. He had shown
me so many books so far it seemed he could have nothing
more of relevance. But he had been saving his best till
last.
‘Do you know what I find the most infuriating aspect
of being alive?’ he asked me before sitting down once more.
He answered his own question nearly straight away: ‘There

is nothing we can know, for sure. Philosophy is the worst
thing to have an interest in because you start to question
everything. You no longer believe anything you see, you
don’t really believe you exist, you don’t really believe that
you don’t. You don’t really believe there’s a god - you
realise it’s a childish, silly concept, yet you want, so much
to believe in one. You want to return to those childish
thoughts you had so many years ago. You don’t really
believe the world is predetermined – quantum mechanics
disagrees with this, yet it appeals to your intuition. The
more you think about these things, the more you realise
that everything is a matter of faith. Everything we think
about the world is based on belief, and we cannot know
anything.’ He turned his chair slowly towards the win-
dow, looking away from me. I guessed he was gathering
his thoughts for a moment, so I remained silent until he
swivelled his chair and spoke again: ‘But here is one aspect
of reality which is testable,’ he said.
He opened the book he had just selected and placed it
in front of me. ‘Please, read,’ he instructed me.
So I did.
‘Is there any experiment that could distinguish be-
tween, say, the MWI and the Copenhagen interpretation
using currently available technology? The author can think
of only one: a form of quantum suicide.’
I looked up at Dr Symonds, who simply motioned me
to continue.
‘The apparatus is a ‘quantum gun’. Which fires either
a real bullet or a dud click, based on a perfectly random,
fifty percent probability. The details of the trigger mech-
anism are irrelevant. The experimenter tells her assistant
to pull the trigger ten times: it may be predicted that she
153
will hear the gun fire five times out of these ten.
‘She now places her head in front of the gun and asks
her assistant to repeat the experiment. Since there is ex-
actly one observer having perceptions both before and after
the trigger event, the MWI prediction is that she will hear
the dud click with one hundred per cent success rate. Oc-
casionally, to verify the apparatus is still working, she can
move her head away from the gun and hear it going off
intermittently. Note, however that almost all terms in the
final superposition state will have her assistant perceiving
that he has killed his boss.’
I looked up and saw the cold, dead gun on the desk in
front of me. It was suddenly different; it had taken on a
new persona. But it was not the only change. Dr Symonds
had produced another from somewhere, and was holding
it in his right hand.
‘I have in my hand apparatus as you have just de-
scribed, and identical to the one placed in front of you.’
‘Are you being serious?’ I asked, and somehow, beyond
my control, started backing my chair away from the desk;
from the situation before me.
‘I used to think there was nothing – nothing we could
know about reality, yet here, finally is one thing we can.
Although, from your point of view, you may see me die’ –
he pulled the trigger of his quantum gun, the only reper-
cussion being a loud click, – ‘but from mine, however many
times I pull it’ – which he did again, resulting only in a
click quieter than the alternative – ‘all I will hear is–’
I stood up in reflex shock at what happened next; the
sound so suddenly loud it stunned my ears for a minute or
two, and the sight before me so horrific I would plead that
no-one else need ever bear witness to it. All over the wall
behind Dr Symonds’ desk was the sanguine décor implied
by impromptu suicide; spread in randomly thick and thin

patches around the central point – the entrance point in
the wall of the bullet, which had recently violated the brain
that caused its own downfall.
I looked again at the ‘quantum’ gun in front of me.
During the process of one conversation this object had not
moved or changed itself in any way, yet it had changed
incredibly. When I entered the room it was a worry, an
anomaly. Yet now it was something very different: an
opportunity. Suddenly I was reminded of an event in my
youth, which culminated from the hardest period of my
life.
I was thirteen, and sat in my bedroom looking down
at my palms, far from empty; containing, at that moment,
more than a few tablets of paracetamol. People say if you
smell something peculiar to an incident in your life, you are
taken right back to that moment. Here, however, I was in
a situation so similar to that one that I could suddenly
smell my bedroom from those years ago. Like then, I had
a chance, a ticket out. But what I was escaping in each
case was hugely different. Life was not a good thing to have
at that moment, and I simply didn’t want it anymore.
I will not go into my reasons; you do not want to hear
them and I do not want to relay them. But here I was,
sat on my bedroom floor, staring at my cupped hands and
their contents. ‘Everyone is out,’ I thought ‘this is your
chance’. I moved my hands so as to stop dripping tears on
the paracetamol. I needed to think about this carefully. I
needed to be sure.
I did not know what the paracetamol would do to me,
but I had seen once on TV that if you take too much then
it will kill you. I looked on the box: ‘for a child, take one
every four hours up to a maximum of four in a twenty-four
155
hour period. I counted the contents of my hands; all of

the pills I could find in the house. Twelve. That should
be enough, I thought. I took them all.
Of course, as I can tell you for sure, twelve does not kill
you. I didn’t even feel any side effects. I looked down at
the gun. One. That was all it would take, and I knew that
for sure. I picked up the gun and let it fulfil its purpose.

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PHANTASMAGORIA

First pulished by Lulu 2008

Copyright c David Atkinson

All rights reserved. No part of this publica-

ISBN 1 59971 776 X

I would like to give my sincerest thanks to

1 To Holly Lemon Cottage 1

12 To The Arctic Ocean 101

15 To a small window 126

My fractured story begins: The reflection from my head-

window sealant (which I could not), splash in my face and

characters; scripts: people who do not really exist. I felt

profound. The old lady described to me where I must go to

I was on my way to meeting Mr Brown, a character from

frustration at one’s poor efforts at the time. In this case

way in which many parents argue, and the only hope of

it close-up I looked in on it – to check it was still there,

Haunted House. The crowds of people themselves wore an

clopaedia at home. On thinking about this I calmed down

itary about her, or ruthless businesswoman. But the most

then, that I walked up the flight with these strangers and

they knew I was not with my parents, although surely that

‘Sir, you don’t need to worry about me,’ I said as po-

some reason I am experiencing, remembering and affecting

anything before this point in time. It does not exist.’

simply because He has the power.’

pure, benevolent being. In order to create the devil he must

‘But you agree there must be an omnipotent, benev-

‘How do you know it would end in stalemate? God

some entirely pleasant. Each was created by a particular

To all intents and purposes there is no God. If you insist

along; all one had to do was look, and think.

of vision aptly, yet ironically known as the blind spot, and

awe of a person, yet he was sleeping in front of me, curled

covered-cloth covered table, and my curiosity got the bet-

for the tedium. So:

spect’ from society is non-existent. You think that your

‘You must leave your life.’ He looked straight at me. From

‘Go and see a friend of mine, this is all you have to

I left the house feeling energised - finally my life was head-

surviving in a PoW camp, but life is nothing more than

“Give a rose to a loved one” and other such clichés. But

bonus. It had stopped. I took it off and threw it onto

He was, it transpired, a biologist. Or, at least, he used

to be polite. You are in their car and you do not want

the first thing I learned in the way of biology, but it is also

I decided I had to voice my disagreement, otherwise I would

‘No mate! We have perfectly sufficient means of inter-

it to go. What’s more, the ant is nothing by itself. It is

will never even know I exist.

food like hunger normally manifests itself. It had not been

I carried on along the street, past shops and restau-

‘Don’t be too alarmed if we get pulled over by the police,’

For this reason a hitchhiker is happy to get in the car

In doing this it is largely similar to its parents, but it may

This is not universally true, but generally those with

The lady dropped me off in Salisbury, and from here I

‘Yes, that’s interesting,’ I said, humouring him.

yet he had had no defining theorems. There was nothing

all the respect he had amongst his peers, and he became

ply a mixed bag of assorted chemicals; a typical scientific

approximation. She scatters around this curve, trying with

maths as we see them, are only a result of them.’

found to a few, and how many of these would never see