That day the universe was on my side. Because for the first time ever it gave me not just a second chance, but a third; and that really had never happened before. I never even normally get the second chance, for the simple and obvious reason that it’s just very unlikely to come about, so to be given a third chance: imagine how lucky I felt, and how happy.

I was on my way to the party; that was on Monday. I was in a good frame of mind, I had just arrived in town and seen two decent…

I wake up wondering once again, as so often, how the little horse got on the boat in the first place, let alone why it voyaged so far: who let it on, was there no-one to lead it off, by its halter, for example, back onto dry land, to its own pastures, that were maybe not so green, but familiar, at least? Why was it by the pier, near the harbour even? I suppose horses do live by the seaside, it is not unheard of, but it vexes me…

‘My girlfriend is getting texty,’ the man who ticks every box and makes me go aglow inside informs me. He’s a trombonist, and that alone should tell me everything I need to know. Except he’s also tall and blond and a bit Scandinavian looking and exceptionally friendly, and he has that borderline cute proportion of a long torso and comparatively short legs that make him just simply adorable.

I have nothing to say about this. Therein lies the ‘interesting’ realisation. It’s ‘interesting’ in so far as I normally have…

How grown ups ruin things.

The little boy on the District Line is giddy with insight, his eyes are aglow with love, his voice alive with excitement. Swinging round the pole he’s meant to just hold on to, he tells his friend, ‘sometimes I think that everything is just a dream.’ His friend, just slightly taller, but still little, exclaims: ‘so do I!’

It’s a moment of sheer wonder. A wonder dad has lost. Dad says: ‘That’s the question my dad likes to think about, how do you know…

My dad tells me the story of when he, back in 1951, aged eighteen, goes to the Lido on Lake Zürich — where he’s grown up and where he has turned himself into a Swiss Youth Champion swimmer — to try out nude bathing.

Being Switzerland and Continental Europe, Zürich has no problem with nude bathing in 1951, and so there is a designated nudist section of the Lido where swimming naked in the Lake may be relished at nature-embracing liberty by anyone so inclined.

“I walked out of the changing rooms, a little shy and uncertain, holding my…

(Apologies for the poor quality of the video: recurring streaming issues.)

I see my Science Communicator Friend next at a party I drag him along to, where we have a long and involved conversation, and where I introduce him to the hosts and to some other people.

It is so easy to talk to him and so comfortable, and he’s so easy and comfortable with talking to other people, while I’m distracted talking to other people still, that I begin to formulate in my mind a fantasy that features him and me together. This, I think, is what I…

(Apologies for the poor quality of the video: recurring streaming issues.)

Somebody I speak to at length on a regular if not particularly frequent basis, and whose thoughts I greatly respect — not least because they are more abstract than any other thoughts I hear routinely expressed — plays through the possibility apparently inherent in a Large Hadron Collider, such as the one operated by CERN near Geneva, of accidentally causing a mini black hole and thus precipitating and essentially causing the End of the World.

Instinctively, I consider the likelihood of this happening minute, but she holds my…

The man who runs the studio in East London where we’re filming has everything he needs to be happy today. A smoothie, the sun, and a freshly cleaned lounger. His is an oasis of rare and extraordinary freedom, and encroaching on it, from all sides, are the capital, the development, the oppressive tentacles of material wealth, and he reckons the days of his haven of creativity are certainly numbered.

‘Do you live here?’ I ask him.

‘Yes,’ he says. And then, after a moment’s reflection: ‘You know, if you’re an artist, you have to live differently; otherwise I’d be…