What a frightening story. I have a theory that certain people are prone to either fortunate, unfortunate or interesting experiences. You certainly fit the latter. I love the image of your maladjusted toupéed twin, separated at birth, perched on a Starbs barstool, blueberry muffin in one hand, bank vault blueprint in the other. It’s straight out of an episode of Dallas.

P.S. Thank you for the lovely new word: pilose!

You might not want to swap childhoods for real; these 5 facts, from the bottom of the life-barrel, are the sum total of what may be called interesting. You would have spent the rest of your time looking for escaped hamsters in the garden and under the floorboards, playing PacMan and falling off ponies.

“Adulthood” is, I find, happier, easier, and a lot more fun than childhood anyway. There is also much more vegetarian junk food on the market these days, which has to be a good thing

Always a pleasure to spend time reading your beautifully crafted words.

I empathise with your initial panic in the customs hall. Flying into America a couple of years ago the immigration officer went very serious, stopped scrolling on his computer and also eyeballed me long and hard. I met his gaze, and began to get worried. The freeze went on for 20 seconds; he looked at my passport again, then back at me. ‘Er…is there a problem…?’ I asked. ‘Nah, we are just looking for a bad guy with the same name as you. The other guy has hair, though.’
So, he’s out there somewhere, my pilose fallen doppelganger, causing chaos and mayhem. More maladjusted and dysfunctional than I, by the sound of it. Sitting in Starbs, drinking a Frap, planning the next heist.

Can we swap childhoods please? I really had to scratch the early memories barrel to come up with my list, but you have a list of facts each worthy of an entire blog-post (or chapter in some future book).

Mummy, mummies, cheese and mind-reading—and then you charm and inspire us with Age Does Not Matter.

Officially inspired, I think it is my turn to post a fitting response…