When I moved the milk crate, not only did I find a couple of fossilised biscuits, a pair of boxer shorts and twenty-three pounds’ worth of coins from late-night dumping of pockets, I also found a folded-up wodge of paper that turned out to be three torn-out days from a personalised Angelo’s Kebab Shop bunch-of-dates counter calendar. When I read the quotes, it proved illuminating in more ways than one.

Sunday the eighth featured an offer of free small chips with any kebab purchase and proclaimed, Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. Fair call. Monday the ninth trumpeted 10 per cent off the purchase of fish sticks and pickled onions with a declaration that, While the optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole. True story. And Tuesday the tenth featured two-for-one jumbo kebabs, a picture of a serene-looking tabby wearing a stylish Edwardian ruff, and the immortal quote, A cat may look at a king.

From there it was a case of events rapidly falling into place and blanks being exceedingly filled in with memories of drunken counter surfing and attempts to make my own kebab. And it certainly explained the cold shoulder I’d been getting from Angelo ever since.

I sat there for a while looking at the crumpled Tuesday the tenth, then I carefully smoothed it out and tucked that tabby into the corner of the framed Arctic Monkeys poster. Damn straight you can, fella.

Pete continues to drop in like he owns the place a couple of times a week, and last time he arrived unexpectedly early during working hours with another good offer. After his follow-up story and some of the letters came out in the Double, it went over so well with the punters his editor said he wanted to make it a regular thing.

‘A proper column, where you get to talk about all that stuff you like to bang on about so much. You know, how to live a fulfilling life, listen to your heart, follow your dreams, yada, yada, yada.’

Pete seemed to have obliterated all memory of my original philosophy, ethos and credo having been a total fabrication assisted by his unnamed but highly cooperative source, Professor Google. Either that or he was a lot smarter than his editor gave him credit for.

‘It’d be due every Monday. Answers to a couple of letters plus five hundred words on life, the universe and all that shit. Just for seven weeks to start, because that takes us up to the next budget quarter. Standard freelance rates, then see what happens. You’d be doing me a favour to be honest, mate, because Jeremy said that I started this train so if I didn’t get you to agree he’s going to kick me off at the next station.’

Oh, Pete, you diamond. I looked out of the window of my shed and thought about standard rates and budgets and how much a regular deadline sounded like a routine. I thought about a budgerigar named Barry and a dead man called Martin Matthews. I thought about a man not called Rich T. Biscuit who couldn’t tell day from night, and a time not too long ago when all I had to worry about was getting to the two-pound-pint happy hour and remembering to bring home Gentleman’s rabbit in gravy.