Walks home from work at seven in the morning are so enjoyable that I refuse to steam ahead at top speed through the fog and the drizzle. I’m a naturally fast walker, a trait inherited from my father and his father. It used to be so difficult to skid and shuffle like so many of the others I briefly share footpaths with, but now a swift twenty minute sub-dash has turned into a half-hour stroll. Thirty-three minutes to be exact.

For some reason I and my weird brigade of fellow peasants clockout at 6.57. I do not know exactly why this is the case. Is it normal practice in other treadmills of unskilled manual labour to clock out three minutes early? I should probably ask someone why we do this. But I feel too sheepish to do so for some reason.

My better half and the wonder dog are usually waiting for me in the living room at half seven, and it is a joy to come home to the excited tail stump and to be reunited with the only person in the world who I trust wholeheartedly.

O dear, there is a risk that things might get too personal and gushy here. I do my best to not write about home activities.

I occasionally scribble down paragraphs about this and about that which I feel happy to have written. Being that I do not have readers to converse with on the web, if I am quite content with something I’ve published on my blog I’ll encourage the future Mrs B to read it. And she will most certainly give me an honest opinion of my babble. The criticisms can be rather harsh at times, but always constructive.

One of the main criticisms is that I almost never write about her and seldom mention Jack.

The reason I tend to avoid writing about her is born out of protective love.

I’m scared that one day my lofty goal of becoming a mediocre third-rate writer of some sort will be realised. If that was to happen, it probably would not be all that hard to convince a publisher or and editor of some kind into thinking I was a good, or maybe even excellent, writer.

I had a mini bout of mania last year. Well, actually, no it wasn’t. I wrote an email to someone who is one of many excellent master in a imaginary school in my childish mind. I sometimes get a little too immersed in this little big world of make-believe.

The vast majority of my imaginary teachers died in the reality we share before the summer of 1968, but a few are still very much alive.

I might send an email to a scribbler, an old teacher, a comedian, a seemingly conservative intellectual, an editor of a magazine or newspaper, a musician or two that I quite enjoy listening to. In almost all instances I do not get any sort of reply or direct reaction. That is such a relief in many ways, most of the time.

But last September, I wrote an email on a rare weekday off work when feeling slightly off colour. I wrote what was on my mind, and sent it to a writer that I’ve sent plenty of emails to before.

A handful of minutes passed and, unexpectedly, the person I sent the email to replied.

For a moment my the imaginary universe I’m creating and the real universe that I believe God created both existed in the same space and time on my ‘smart’ device.

You see, when I send emails to people I do not know personally, it is part of an imaginary series of conversations.

I got overexcited. And I hastily took a tiny bit of constructive advice and pitched ideas to an editor of a magazine . And I must have made quite a fool out of myself. I dread to think what kind of terrible impression must have been made. The first impression made was probably bad enough, but then I dug deeper and deeper into a hole. I got confused between my imaginary world and the real world, I expressed thoughts and ideas that had no place in an email to be sent to an editor of a well established weekly magazine.

I intend to write in detail about this embarrassing episode in the future, but I’m still too embarrassed to do so.

My imaginary universe is most prominent in my mind when I walk home from work. By the time I get home and settle down after the future Mrs B leaves for work, the universe is not as easily as observable and the 33-minute daydream I intend to write down almost vanishes completely,  until the next 33-minute daydream begins. . .

I need to find a way to get these thoughts down onto paper.

It is quite frustrating. But as long as the 33-minute daydreams continue to occur like clockwork five or six mornings a week, seven  mornings a week during Advent; I’ve decided to work hard, and earn as much as I possibly can. It will hopefully help us save money towards a foreign excursion in the spring, and it’ll help me feel I’m paying a little bit extra back in tax to the taxpayers who contributed to the employment support allowance I received  during the period of time that  I was a moronic cannabis smoker.

I think I might be sane. Scary thought!