Emotions are feelings, after you have thought about them.

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AND I CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN DOING SOME THINKING, after you exploded that bombshell on the front porch of my mind.

How many more shocks can my bruised and battered psyche take? That’s what I would like to know. I just don’t understand this world any more – I really don’t. What happened to all the innocence of my childhood? Fishing for tiddlers in Mulvey’s Pit. Flying model aeroplanes on the back field. Hanging around the street lamp on misty November evenings. Playing ‘fuck’ in Alfie’s mum’s bedroom.

Where has it all gone? Swallowed up in the great maw of yesterday.

Alfie is long dead. But he makes frequent appearances in my dreams. I don’t know what happened to Maisie – she never turns up in my nocturnal wanderings.

When I look at the photograph of that happy carefree boy, rowing on the river Dee, I think: was it all written in his brain - what was going to happen – like some script, waiting to be acted out? And if he had known then, could he have re-written the script?

Society is coming apart at the seams. What happened? When did it all start to go wrong?
I blame television. When we got our first set – black and white, of course – I knew it was the opening of the floodgates. As I sat there in my buggy, watching those flickering images, I remember thinking to myself: This is not right: little people in boxes, jumping around, pulling faces. Of course, at that time I lacked the language skills, not only to understand what these fiendish puppets were saying but, more importantly, to apprise my parents of my grave misgivings about the effects of this devilish box of tricks on a young mind.

And I was right. I always was a forward thinker, but even I could not have foreseen the depths to which this new medium would take us. And then, of course, we have television’s bastard offspring: the home computer. All right – it allows us to communicate with people the other side of the world; it means you and I are able to talk to each other when we cannot meet face to face. But we are responsible people – well I am. When I hear on The Jeremy Kyle Show how people abuse one another on Facebook, washing their dirty linen in public, I think: When I was a lad you didn’t even wash your dirty linen in private – not that that was a good thing, because it wasn’t. But I have discussed this in a previous paper – or maybe it’s a paper I have yet to write.

I also blame the invention of the zip fastener. Once upon a time, trousers had button flies. Okay, it could be a bit of a nuisance on cold winter days, when your fingers were frozen and you were dying for a pee – but we managed. That was the pioneering spirit of those days. Then came the zip fly.

Now, the potential hazard of a hastily zipped fly is well documented and, in any case, that is not my point. Quite the opposite, in fact. The real danger lies in the unzipping rather than the zipping. Statistics show that the birth rate in Britain increased dramatically with the introduction of the zip fly. Consider. If you find yourself in the position where sex is about to rear its ugly head (perhaps not the most appropriate metaphor), one swift zip and everything is to hand.

Whereas with the button fly… Well, having to wrestle with each separate button took time – not to mention the initial decision: whether to start with the top or the bottom button (there are plusses and minuses for each method). And in that time you might pause to reconsider the whole business. Indeed, I have known trousers whose buttons were so recalcitrant that the wearer would give up and say – Sod it. Let’s go and have a coffee. And I remember my father telling me that he once owned a pair of trousers (I cannot mention the brand name) that were said to have done more for contraception than the Durex factory.

I have been re-running our conversation most of the night, and I really cannot believe I heard you properly. (we did keep getting interrupted by Clive and Eric). So, before I say something I might regret, will you please spell it out in writing, so that I can be sure that I have understood you correctly.

Urgently awaiting your reply,

An anxious George.