Our elitist overlords, lest we forget
Though educated and well-versed in etiquette
Peer down from ivory-towered parapets
Upon us, their fiscal marionettes,

As we plebs, alarmed by erratically rising rents,
Scurry, in futility, between concrete tenements
Our government, unfettered by moral conscience
Exert their wealth and power for malign influence.

Their spin doctors, committees and political whips
Concoct the financially vicious economic edicts
Which then spew from the caviar-stained, rictus-grin lips
Of these harbingers, these horsemen, of the Torypocalypse.

The flop-topped Boris Johnson champions the heroics
Of ‘The City’ and those bankers who fucked up our economic
Situation, but don’t be fooled by his goofball antics,
For only his name is honest; Johnson means dick.

Whilst Osborne (born Gideon, not George, as he’d like to insist),
Looking like the escaped, evil dummy of a...

The boy made his way along the path, half-trundling, half-skipping and from time to time daring the leap to the other side of the ditch dividing the bank from the roadside verge. He hummed a tune without rhythm or structure.

Another nimble leap took him back to the bank and an internal crowd whooped their approval of his second majestic feat of agility. With his stick he rattled a staccato rhythm against the fence posts to his right, tracking his passage with a ‘clunk-crr-clunk’ as it passed from post to wire and back to post again.

The stick (acquired at the beginning of his journey, having been bravely retrieved from a prickly hedge) had been an invaluable companion, serving him faithfully as a staff, relieving his weight at every other step as he had seen a similar one serve his Grandfather; as a stout and trusty sword, ready to repel highwaymen (should they be foolish enough to...

I was recently asked what ten books that I can think of that have had a significant impact on me, and I thought I would use the exercise to write a little about them.

Many of my favourite books were from when I was young. As such, and for the sake of not offering any favouritism, I’ll list them in the order I read them; a developmental chronology, if you will.

Oh, and favouritism is moot anyway. 1984. Most important book of my life. But I digress…

Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl

The beauty of Roald Dahl’s storytelling lies in the ease with which he wraps the fantastical with the horrific. Kids love to be scared by a nasty fairytale and Dahl pitched every story perfectly, projecting its young heroes into terrifying and wondrous peril and against villains so grotesque that no adult would ever have believed the stories. I could as easily have picked James and the Giant Peach though, or...

The lights change and I scurry across the road, tucking in my scarf where the wind is getting through. It’s chilly for April, and I hunker against the cold as I walk. Looking up, I can see a group of four youths by the bus stop, two boys and two girls. I don’t like the term ‘youths’, it sounds like the words should be dripping from the scowling face of an aged, middle England Daily Mail reader. It has the same cringe-worthy cadence as ‘oik’ and ‘rapscallion’ and, at the relatively spritely age of thirty-four, it pains me to use it. But that they were, around sixteen years of age, loud, obnoxious and loitering. ‘Loitering’; there’s another one.

One of the youths, a disdainful looking boy leaning against the bus stop, laughs unnecessarily loudly and throws his empty coke can onto the floor. Right in the centre of the pavement. Directly in front of him. And on the other side of the bus...

‘Why d’you talk like that?’

It’s an odd thing to be asked, but it wasn’t the first time, so I replied, shouting a little over the pub’s music.

‘That’s just the way I speak.’

His eyes screw up like I’m being deliberately difficult.

‘Nah, why’d you have to use all those long words? It makes you sound stupid.’

For the record, I actually sounded fairly coherent. I was commenting on a Pavlovian reaction I have when I encounter the smell of piss. I find, especially when in enclosed spaces, that the smell will transport me, faster than a Proustian Madeleine, to the Paris Metro, which reeks of urine. I called it the Paris Micturo while I was there.

However, that wasn’t the point he was making. He actually did, in fact, sound pretty stupid. For one thing, he was pissed out of his gourd, however his question was actually a valid one:

‘Why do you choose to use the sort of language you do...

I’m quite surprised at how broken I am. I probably don’t appear to be (who does?) but I am a mess. I guess I’m high-functioning enough to pack most of it away where it won’t show but recently the crazy has been bleeding into my day to day a bit too much. It’s odd, because it’s happening at the same time as I’m beginning to feel better about myself. I’m like Shiva; the creator and the destroyer. I know it is probably part of my final restorative purge, but it really does have arsehole timing.

There are benefits to all this self-analytical masochism though. The emotional bedrock throws up stuff I probably needed to revisit. Sometimes, literally… At the beginning of one week in my office, I vomited, and at the end of the week was huddled under my desk breaking down in tears. The vomiting was not lifestyle-related but rather a debilitating and retch-inducing bronchial virus. Fortunately I...