I’d been stuck in the house for four days and I needed to get out. I called Tomas to see if he wanted to meet up. He was busy, unfortunately, but asked whether I’d be interested in coming along to a lecture he was giving this afternoon on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in between cleaning shifts. I sat at the back, near the exit, struggling to understand a single word he was saying. I looked at the rest of the audience. A lot of nodding was going on. I was trying to stop nodding off.

‘But, of course, we place our own interpretation on the world around us,’ Tomas was saying. ‘Wittgenstein knew this. “The world of the happy,” he wrote, “is quite different from the world of the unhappy”.’

That was something I could understand.

I thought about the world of Toby Salt with his new book and his prizes and his media appearances.

I thought about the world of Stuart Mould with his positivity and his relentless acts of charity and his unflagging confidence that things will get better.

I thought about my own world. How I’d messed things up with Sophie. How I’d messed things up with Liz. How I’d squandered all my money. What my world might be like without Dylan in it.

And I thought about how the world of the unhappy is quite different from the world of the happy.

My phone pinged. Another LinkedIn message from Stuart. He’s has been endorsing my skills. It’s all a sham, of course; if he was being truthful, he’d have endorsed me for Blundering, Bungling, Fluffing and Muffing.

Friday August 24th

I have now applied for fifteen jobs in total. These include roles as various as quantity surveyor, solutions engineer, accounts assistant, project manager, haberdasher, window dresser, trainee hair stylist, Oxford Professor of Poetry and several customer-facing roles in the fast-food industry.

In other news: I have had another LinkedIn recommendation from Stuart Mould and I seem to have put out my bags for recycling on the day for general landfill.

Saturday August 25th

Stuart Mould has invited you to join his professional network

I. Stuart Mould has invited you to join his professional network

He is wearing a tuxedo and the smirk

of a man unfamiliar with the concept of rejection.

Stuart Mould has four thousand and fifty-eight connections.

Small wonder given he holds the keys

that unlock the door to inner peace.

It’s all there in his results-driven profile.

It appears Stuart Mould will go the extra mile

as your Life Coach and Dream Architect.

I don’t know why but I click accept.

II. Stuart Mould has endorsed you for the following skills

Marketing ✓ Leading Teams ✓ Targeting ✓ Weaving Dreams ✓

Scuba diving ✓ Semaphore ✓ Lego building ✓ Harp (Grade Four) ✓

Chess playing ✓ Home baking ✓ Soothsaying ✓ Lovemaking ✓

Balefulness ✓ Masturbation ✓ Aimlessness ✓ Procrastination ✓

III. Stuart Mould has written you a recommendation that you can include on your profile page