I suppressed nearly all the references to poetry. Most employers won’t even look at anyone with such a background; there is a strong correlation with untrustworthiness and unreliability.

Tuesday August 21st

‘Do poets use LinkedIn?’ was a question I’d often pondered in quieter moments, along with:

‘Do Poets drive?’ (conclusion: not if they can help it)

‘Should poets drive?’ (conclusion: probably not)

and ‘Who would win in a fight between Auden and Eliot?’ (conclusion: unsure – although it would probably end not with a bang but a whimper).

But as I looked today at my LinkedIn account for the first time in five years, the answer seems unequivocally yes, if Toby Salt is anything to go by. He has 500+ connections, including radio and television producers, newspaper and poetry magazine editors, arts correspondents, publishers. I have three connections: Tomas, Timothy Pain from Jenkins & Pain Funeral Directors and Cora Nesmith from the Mongolian Yurt Company.

Wednesday August 22nd

I was idly perusing the job pages today, minding my own business, when I was disturbed by an unwelcome intruder in my kitchen.

Radio 4 had been on all morning and I’d already absorbed programmes on the Dewey Decimal classification system and a debate concerning the ethics of driverless cars. But the schedule appeared to have moved on, and a vaguely familiar voice emerged over the airwaves, amidst background sounds of stamping, hammering and whirring. I heard the words ‘This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave’ and I realised I was listening to the nasal tones of Django from Shooting from the Hip. It was a programme on the history of letterpress printing and Django was talking from a print shop in Swansea, where Shooting from the Hip produced their artisanal, hand-crafted special editions.

‘Letterpress printing is one of the great lost arts,’ he was saying. ‘In construction, it is as beautiful as a Toby Salt poem. First, one must—’

I switched it off in irritation and took a look at my phone. A notification on LinkedIn! I’d barely finished ‘optimising’ my LinkedIn page – or making it fractionally less pessimised: had I worked some magic already?

I took a closer look and sighed deeply: the message was headed Stuart Mould has invited you to join his professional network.

Please send help! I am being assailed in my own home.

Thursday August 23rd