A Conversation with My Aunt.

So here I am writing a post about Harry Potter and conspiracy theories. It’s all too silly, isn’t it? Silly seems to be what I do these days. It’s the sort of thing your Aunt Alice would remonstrate with you about.

‘Jeffrey,’ she would say in that implacably calm manner which so endeared me to her (she was the only person who ever called me Jeffrey until Zoe Mintz engaged with the habit a few years ago.) ‘You really should have taken your mother’s advice when you were but a callow youth and sought an apprenticeship with the Michelin Tyre Company while you still had the chance. Instead you succumbed to a life of indelible impoverishment and look what it brought you to.’

‘Indelible?’ I would reply, thinking it an odd choice of adjective.

‘Well you can’t rub it out, can you? It’s too late now. The moving finger writes, and all that.’

‘Oh I see. I suppose you’re right.’

‘But at least your impoverishment had a certain honourable air about it. You used to be so earnest once; you used to write such sensible things, and now you’ve descended into rampant silliness and I really don’t know what to make of you. You’ll be writing about imaginary llamas next. Couldn’t you see your way to writing about sensible things again?’

‘What did you have in mind, Aunt?’

‘There, you see: you don’t even know what sensible means any more. I despair of you, I really do.’

Well, there you have it. Maybe I should be grateful that Aunt Alice died quite a long time ago.

It’s just that life on the surface of civilised society is so tedious. Brexit, Brexit, Brexit is all we’re hearing about these days. We’re being force fed so much bloody Brexit that it’s pouring out of every orifice and turning the place into a sludgy cesspit reeking of rancid politicians.

And so I ask you: what is so wrong with elevating your tortured mind to the level of the fictional, the fantastical and the unknowable? It all makes so much more sense to me than the economy, international relations, and the price of school meals in the age of austerity.

(Zoe Mintz doesn’t call me Jeffrey any more, by the way, because Zoe Mintz doesn’t write to me any more. And I do wish the dear old llama would show up again because I miss him. But at least there’s still pudding.)