I Prefer To Write First Drafts As

What More Chilling Indictment Of The Modern World Is There Than This: That The Condition Of The Smartphone User Is That Of A Dumb Animal. Moooo!

The British And American Literary Worlds Operate In An Odd Kind Of Symbiosis: Our Critics Think Our Contemporary Novelists Are Not The Stuff Of Greatness Whereas Certain Contemporary Americans Indubitably Are. Their Critics Often Advance The Exact Opposite: British Fiction Is Cool, American Naff.

You May Have Gathered That I Am Not The Most Cheerful Of Revellers - Some Characterise Me As The Death And Soullessness Of Any Party But It Wasn't Always So, Believe Me.

Because I Was A Young Man So, Of Course, I Did Get Into Fights. The Last Time I Actually Was In A Fight, In The Sense Of Throwing Punches Myself, Was Probably When I Was At College, Not Since 1980. But I Remember Being Attacked Quite A Few Times In The '80s.

Just As The Blurring Between Childhood And Adulthood Has Produced The Kidult, So The Stretching Of Middle Into Old Age Has Fostered Another Peculiar Chimera: Septuagenarians With Apoptosis Sporting The Depeche Mode.