Before he came over to England and found himself cleaning middle-management officles, Tomas was a Professor of Modern Philosophy at the University of Warsaw and one of the world’s leading scholars of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I asked him how he felt about this reduction in his circumstances.

‘As the good Ludwig once said, “If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would get done”,’ he replied enigmatically before proceeding to empty my bin of its Twix wrappers.

Friday February 16th

I think Allen Ginsberg was right when he said that he’d seen the best minds of his generation destroyed by never-ending PowerPoint presentations on branding, social media and value propositions.

It is 2 a.m. on Saturday as I write this entry. I have been working on the Leamington Spa PowerPoint now for seventeen consecutive hours. It now contains 211 slides. My presentation is supposed to last for thirty minutes. That is an average of 7.03 slides per minute. Or a new slide every 8.53 seconds.

43 custard creams have been consumed during this period.

Saturday February 17th

We traipsed wearily back from football. 0–8. I suggested to Dylan that he might consider forgoing football for Lent.

‘Whenever you feel like giving up,’ he said, fixing me with a meaningful look, ‘you need to remember why you held on for so long in the first place.’

I looked at him with renewed respect. What a mature and positive approach to the world that young man has.

But it all came out over lunch. It appears that Stuart has a sideline in motivational speaking and Dylan went to see him in action last night. I tried hard to suppress my laugh but Dylan looked at me disappointedly. He told me that cynicism is just another word for giving up.

We finished our remaining spaghetti hoops in silence.

After I’d dropped him back home, I resumed work on the Leamington Spa PowerPoint, breaking off briefly to check Twitter. Toby Salt has tweeted that he’s very much looking forward to performing at the Saffron Walden Poetry Festival in July. This golden nugget of information has received fourteen retweets and twenty-six likes. It must have been a slow news day.

Sunday February 18th

Mrs McNulty’s face flickered in the light of the seven candles that surrounded the board. In the darkness behind, I saw the curtains billow dramatically in the wind from a fan that had been strategically placed behind them. A soft howling came from the fireplace, although I suspect its true source came from the Natural Sounds: Windy Winter’s Day relaxation CD, whose empty case I’d noticed on the sideboard when I’d entered the room.