As for everyday life, only you can do it. You and I, we know it’s all make-believe. But it’s still not worth giving up on altogether. That’s what I think. Every day I go to my boat, though I know it’s not really important. Then again, what else have I got? If I weren’t fishing, what else would there be?

Best wishes,
Hamish M.

My friend Mr MacKay,

Thank you for your latest letter; it was a great help to me. The very next morning I went to my workshop, tidied up and set to work. I started simply: pot holders! They are nicely rectangular, clear in every way. (Find one enclosed within.) A rectangle is a pleasant shape, isn’t it? Anything you can contain within four corners is clear. A little like the frame of a painting. In fact, all the things I make – carpets, wall hangings, pictures, pot holders – are rectangular. Now that I think of it, the rectangle is my favourite shape of all time.

My niece plays at murder mysteries. She appears to be obsessed with the business of bodies. Lately she has been asking me to draw a line round her. She lies down on the floor, sprawls there as if she has just been stabbed in the back and demands I draw round her with chalk. It is really important to her that the line is unbroken and reflects her actual size. Then she stands up, examines the figure, walks to the other end of the room and dies again. Our library upstairs is currently littered with bodies.

Annu

PS the story I am sending this time is from a newspaper. You might think it is not relevant but I could not get it out of my mind. Not so much what happened, but why.

A WRESTLING MATCH

Jürgen fell out with his school friends. The boys started wrestling, and Jürgen lost. He was annoyed but went with his friends to a bar. Then he decided to leave, and ran home. He grabbed his father’s guns and returned to the town centre on his scooter.

Jürgen climbed on to a shop roof and sat down. He listened to some music on his phone, and when the track ended, he looked at the street below through the sight of a small-bore rifle. ‘After watching for a while, I began shooting,’ Jürgen explained to the judge.

Jürgen fired twenty shots with the small-bore rifle but when no one seemed to take any notice, he swapped it for a hunting rifle. He only stopped when he saw two men fall to the ground.

‘Then I ran off. I suddenly got the feeling I wanted to go to sleep,’ Jürgen says. He slept in the woods for a while and then walked home. When he saw the police in front of his house, he went to sit down by the side of the road. That’s where the police found him.

In court, Jürgen was asked why he began shooting.