I admire you greatly, Mr Mulberry, and although I recognise the ethos you subscribe to as being a rather well-worn sentiment your delivery of it in such a spirited way, by literally giving two fingers to the world, is quite marvellous. Inspirational even. I could only dream of displaying such honesty. And flamboyance.

I have no query, no question, no challenge to your beliefs, simply a foolish urge for a late-life confession between the lines of a letter. As this old fool writes, there is a small shaft of light coming through my double-lined bedroom curtains (Liberty, of course). My watch is turned face down, so it could be the sun, or it could be the streetlight and it’s just struck me that I’d be interested in your thoughts on whether that even matters.

So there is a question after all, to which I humbly await your response in due course, with great hopes but no expectations.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Rich T. Biscuit, Wandsworth

(As mentioned, not my real name, but I have an inkling you may find it amusing.)

THE DOG IS A GENTLEMAN

Dear Mr Biscuit, or can I call you Rich? (I think you might enjoy a bit of humour as much as I do.) Despite what you read in the paper I’m nobody special, but cheers for thinking I am. I do know what it’s like to feel alone, though, even though my version of solitude (and dishonesty) is probably very different from yours.

You’ll have heard the old cliché about being lonely in a crowded room of people, I’m sure. Well, I spend a lot of my time in a very crowded room called the Lamb and Flag. It’s like a weird little microcosm of completely incompatible people with the same goal, which is to drink beer standing next to other people drinking beer. Just recently, I’ve started to realise it might actually be the loneliest place on earth.

Like I said, no doubt you and I have very different stories, but I have a feeling we may not actually be so far apart. (By the way, that realisation was as big a surprise to me as the suggestion may be to you, but stay with me, Rich.) A few years ago, I was working in a music shop on Tottenham Court Road – not for long, I grant you, but it turned out to be one of the most significant jobs I’ve ever had.

One lunchtime I nipped over to the pub across the road for a sneaky half, because I’d had a particularly mindless morning in the company of about forty cartons of CDs that needed unpacking and shelving. I was standing at the bar contemplating a second drink when I overheard a couple of guys talking. One of them had just had a call that his dog had been picked up by Croydon Council for the second time in a week and it was going to cost him a hundred and fifty quid in collection and admin fees. He said bugger it, he was done and no way was he throwing good money after bad, because he hadn’t even liked that dog. Apparently, it was his ex-girlfriend’s, and when she’d gone back to Amsterdam he was convinced the dog blamed him for the break-up. He went on about how retrievers were supposed to be smart but that Arnold was dumber than his own shit, and then he straight up said he wasn’t going to pick him up.