At any given moment, the world is completely crazy by the standards of any time but that moment.

If you’re in the present, the past is a crazy place. They did things weirdly differently there. If you’re reading this in 2029, or 2039, well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t see further than 2019.

The moment – I mean the big moment, this point in history, not just 11.09 this sunny morning on Church Street, Falmouth, heading for The Moor – defines acceptable behaviour.

Our forefathers and foremothers would think us insane for doing things the way we do, and chances are, the next generation will look back on us as sadly unenlightened about what was happening in the world around us.

But we’d think them totally out of order if they turned up and told us how to behave, just as the Edwardians would have had difficulties with, I don’t know, the third week (say) of a modern gender-studies course. Today, at worst (old guy speaking here), we’d just go pink and sit at the back.

Boy, we believe in our own way of doing things. Girl, we do. Same down through history. The prevailing belief system is correct in its own time, incorrect twenty years later.

More than that – in its own time, the prevailing belief system can get to be nigh-on compulsory.

For example, whether or not the science is correct and we’re all gonna die, I’d say the social pressure (around here, at least) is now enough to ensure that a lot happens to tackle climate change. After all, only an outcast or the wrong kind of rebel would drink through a plastic straw these days.

I’d also have to say that the psychology of climate-change denial is probably no longer “I’ve looked at the science and I disagree with you” but instead “I’m a contrarian and I will disagree with anything you say.”

Which brings me to Extinction Rebellion. I have friends who went off and demonstrated recently, and that prompted me to find out enough to defend myself in the inevitable after-protest conversation.

Not that I’m a contrarian or anything, you understand, but with these friends, “You should have been there” can shade very quickly into “Why weren’t you there?” and then just possibly (if they’re tired after their exertions) “Don’t you care enough to be there?”

“I was busy” doesn’t work as an excuse. What’s more important than … et cetera.

“With friends like those, you need other friends.”

“Yeah, but I’m fond of them.”

“So why weren’t you there? Don’t you care enough?”

“Come on, Ed. Don’t you start.”

Edgalcius and I have come to Espressini on Killigrew Street for a coffee. He’s picked himself a pair of square tortoiseshell spectacle frames, and while I write he’s amusing himself by taking them off and putting them on again. Bifocals don’t exist in his world, and (I’m beginning to realise) nor does crystal-clear vision.

“Look at the grain in this table-top.”

“I’m trying to write about Extinction Rebellion. It’s a serious subject.”

“That tree out there. I can see the leaves, the branches.”

“Their demands.”

“It’s all so clear!”

Extinction Rebellion want the UK government to create and be led by a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice (my bold type). Which is why I want to write about them. Think about recent UK-government efforts to decide anything. This isn’t a “declare that it’s horrible” demand, but “create a body that can make a decision,” which is a rare kind of realism these days.

“Yes, but what’s different about a Citizen’s Assembly?”

“As I was about to say.”

If you sort the population into quotas according to demographics, and then you select randomly from those quotas, you end up with an Assembly of Citizens that is more directly representative than, you know, at least one other body I could name.

“Ah, yes. And then - create and be led by. In bold. I get that part.”

“Citizens don’t have a political agenda. They can do the bit that politicians can’t.”

“Like holding a referendum, really.”

“Not quite. Citizens’ Assemblies have been used before, successfully.”

“So have–”

“They’re handy for sorting out controversial issues. A Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland dealt with same-sex marriage, and another achieved the repeal of the ban on abortion. There are other examples.”

“And that’s it?”

Extinction Rebellion also want the UK government to “tell the truth” by “declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change” (although imagine a UK government that was competent enough to hold together a lie), and they want the UK government to “act now” to “halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.”

This is Extinction Rebellion and not It’s All Fine Really, Honest Rebellion, so the truth is going to have to be pretty dire – see above re social pressure – although I think the manifesto does add somewhere (can’t find it now) that if the scientifically verified, openly disclosed truth does turn out to be less ghastly than expected, Extinction Rebellion – may I call you ER? – wouldn’t object.

I think I’ll join these people.

“Not like you, to get into politics.”

He’s reading over my shoulder again.

“It’s not politics, though, is it? ER wants a decision-making body capable of making decisions. That’s actually progress. Evolution, even.”

Edgalcius is tipping his head back to see my laptop screen through the lower part of his bifocals.

“So it’s not just the looming extinction of the planet.”

“Well, that too.”

“But really, you’re joining ER because they’ve come up with today’s equivalent of the coalition government that took over in 1940. A decision-making body capable of making decisions.”

“If we can’t move forward, by deciding what to do, we’re going to lose big-time anyway.”

“Speaking of moving forward…”

“That’s my line.”

“They’re loading up.”

A caravan of yaks and camels is forming just outside the (open) North Gate of the walled town. Princess Eustacia’s voice can be heard over the hubbub – “No, Mummy, I don’t need the Praetorian Guard! I’m going with my friends!” – and in the background, Roland’s voice too – “Of course I’ll wash my hands! Mother! Of course I’ll make conversation with her!”

Pipsqueak is defending his yak against servants trying to load it (her) with bundles of Princess Eustacia’s luggage. Myrtille has ridden a short distance up the road. They’ve been exchanging glances, sharing the joke of all this preparation, but Pipsqueak can tell that Myrtille is getting impatient.

[Ed is too. “Have you seen her tent? It’s going to take hours to pitch. And all those monogrammed bundles. They need to leave now if they’re going to unpack before dark, or they might as well wait for morning.”

“Ed. You’re imaginary. Don’t be difficult.”

“I’m imaginary. Ha!”]

Princess Eustacia comes galloping out of the crowd to where Myrtille is sitting on her yak.

“Can’t we just go?” she says. “Leave it all behind? Do I really need all this stuff?”

Myrtille eyes Princess Eustacia’s horse.

“Sunflower,” Eustacia snaps. “I didn’t name him. And call me Stace, okay?”

[“Ah, plot twist,” says Ed. “She’s feisty now.”]

Roland comes trotting up. “Princess–” he begins.

“Can it, Roly! We’re leaving. We can, right?” Stace turns to Eustacia.

“You’ve got–”

Stace grabs the strap of her rucksack. “Everything I need. Packed it myself this morning. All this” – she sweeps her hand around at all her other luggage, the yaks, the servants – “just anxious parents.”

Myrtille glances across to Pipsqueak. He’s heard. Their eyes meet as he slides a bag of thermal vests off the back of his yak and onto the ground. “Ready?” she says. It’s a challenge.

He grins. “Yeah.”

Stace has caught all this. She spurs her horse, taking them both by surprise, and disappears over the horizon.

“Go!” cries Myrtille, and her yak lumbers into motion.

“Yee-haaah!” shouts Pipsqueak, and his yak raises her head from the grass verge.

“I say! Hold on!” Roland, who has dismounted to pick a posy of wild flowers for the Princess, scrambles back into his saddle.

Together, the three of them ride slowly northwards in pursuit of the Princess formerly known as Eustacia.

And behind them, at the gate, the Queen raises her arm and points. “After them!” she shouts.

Digital identity. Defined online as “an online or networked identity adopted or claimed in cyberspace by an individual, organization or electronic device”.

Further down the same page of search results you find “A digital identity is information stored online that relates to a single individual. We generate our own with every on-line interaction and the data that we leave behind builds a profile of us – which may not be an accurate representation.”

Which is – thanks for those definitions to techopedia.com and shu.ac.uk – not the only problem. All parents sooner or later realise that their children are learning more from what they do than from what they say. In the same way, all users of networked technology sooner or later realise that the entities to which they submit –

– it’s always submit isn’t it? You’re always submitting online, never commanding or controlling or just ordering people about –

– to which they submit their information are learning from what they do, not from what they write in their online profiles.

I went to a presentation recently, by a high-up retail person in a well-known business (and consumer) software company. The subject was how to combine a “seamless” customer experience with effective security.

How they can make sure that you’re you, without getting in the way of whatever you’re trying to do. [Nice idea, huh? They should try it.]

And I learned for the first time that companies can track your competence with the keyboard and the mouse. [Okay, I’m slow.]

I’ve given over a certain amount of information to my, ah, online suppliers. I buy vegetables from companies that know my date of birth, et cetera.

I know that those companies have access to a lot more data about me. I’ve signed user agreements that allow social-media companies to analyse how I behave and (for example) work out how I’m likely to vote. I don’t like it, but I realise that if I want to post pictures of cats, they need to know what I bought last Summer.

I didn’t realise that those same companies are now collecting data on how competent I am at typing, how slow I am to work out which button to click, et cetera.

They know that I’m a fast but not always accurate typist; that I sometimes hit the mouse pad with the heel of my hand when I’m going for numbers; that I always use the number [Redacted] and the symbol [Redacted] when I’m setting a new password.

And if they know how I get around my keyboard, it follows that they’re on the other side of the little inbuilt camera above the screen of my laptop. Cooee! I’m waving.

I’m not surprised by any of this. Nor am I outraged. But I do wonder.

Why isn’t my life perfect?

These people, they know my wants, needs and desires. Their whole preoccupation is with putting exactly the right thing in front of me, just at the moment when I want to buy it.

They’ve spent billions on knowing me.

Why don’t they know me?

Let us go, then, you and I, to take a photograph of diggers.

There’s a building site in Falmouth, half-way up the walk back to my place from Tesco’s. Stop, lean on the wall, and look down.

When the builders have finished, you’ll be looking at the roof of a house (one of two being built), but what you’re seeing today is flat, not-quite-cleared ground – and diggers.

There was also a skip lorry yesterday, for the removal of dumpy bags full of waste, and then there was a tipper truck delivering more ground – or so it seemed; a load the same colour as the surface onto which it was being tipped.

I stopped for long enough to be – impressed, actually.

The big digger flattened the surface onto which the skip lorry would drive, and then parked between the skip lorry and the dumpy bags. One man hooked dumpy bags onto the digger’s arm, and then the digger swung them round onto the skip, where another man unhooked them.

Then the man in the blue plastic hat roped a net over the skip, and reversed the skip lorry out to make space for the tipper truck. While that was happening, the hooking-up man and the unhooking man went and moved other diggers, and presently it came to pass that the tipper truck was able to dump its load of ground into a newly cleared space.

I’ve left out the tiny diggers and their drivers, and the smaller skip full of rubbish that had to be compressed, and the container that was clearly being used as an office, because this is complicated enough to describe already.

But what I want to get across is that there were multiple vehicles, mostly big with caterpillar tracks, moving in a co-ordinated way to enable a lot of things to happen all at once. And men walking about between them, not being run over.

I’ve never worked in construction, but it seems to me that a lot of co-ordination must have gone into the half-hour that I watched. Big vehicles moving out of each other’s way just in time; other big vehicles moving just in time to where they needed to be. If you’d speeded it all up, there would have been a symmetry.

There seemed to be no one person whose job was to tell all the others what to do. But – maybe I’m just not observant. Maybe the planning had been done earlier. A corps de ballet doesn’t need a bloke on stage blowing a whistle, so why should these guys?

That was my first time watching a building site for half an hour, and I’m not sure what I would have expected to see if I’d thought about it in advance. Men (and women?) rushing about at random? Stopping to discuss each move before making it?

If I was to tell the internet about this, or share it on Facebook, I suppose modern practice would be to declare outrage at some prejudice I was revealing in myself. Not to share my interest. You see, I’m clearly -ist about building sites and should be consigned to outer darkness.

“I really don’t get that.”

“That we use the technology to vilify each other?”

“That you’re so vigilant against each other.”

Edgalcius has borrowed an old suit of mine and we’re down at Specsavers on Church Street waiting for his check-up. I offered him a pair of denims and a hoodie, but he wanted the suit. With the braided hair and the beard, and the tan, he looks … distinctive. But I still say the beads in the hair were a mistake.

“We’re a competitive species, I suppose.”

“Predators. You’re always forming into packs. Left, right, colour, gender, nimby, trolls…”

“Nimby?”

“That rare thing, an expression of contempt coined by a politician to attack voters. If a developer wants to build student accommodation – Not In My Back Yard. By opposing builders in your back yard, you’re against progress.”

“Or homeless centres. Or refugee accommodation.”

“Maybe the guy had a point. Human nature again. No wonder so many young people these days turn to fantasy.”

“Speaking of which…”

“Cinema, games, books; it’s the dominant – oh, they’re all fine. Against his mother’s–”

“Mr Mage? If you’d like to come with me?”

“Take a look for yourself. Below the picture.”

“Oh yes, I see. Against his mother’s wishes, et cetera.”

“That’s it. Am I over sixty, by the way?”

“Of course you are, Ed. You’ve been doing this for–”

“So this check-up is free.”

“It’s just this way, sir.”

“Call me Ed, why don’t you?”

Against his mother’s wishes, but somewhat at Myrtille’s urging, Pipsqueak has accepted Roland’s invitation to a Frappuccino at a coffee bar in the centre of the walled town, by the fountain.

Actually replying had been a bit of a problem, until a talking bird had dropped out of the sky, having collided with some levitating plastic waste, and Pipsqueak had nursed it back to health.

Out of gratitude, the talking bird had asked Pipsqueak if he needed any help with anything, and together, man and bird had worded the reply.

They’re all drinking Frappuccinos, because Pipsqueak had just said “Oh, I’ll have what you’re having” when Roland had offered to buy, and Myrtille had said “That sounds great!” and smiled at Pipsqueak in a way that made him feel both comforted and a little bit suspicious that she was finding him funny.

Princess Eustacia – yes, she’s here – had said “Hey, cool, Roly!” in a way that had made Roland look embarrassed and Pipsqueak feel just a little bit sorry for Roland.

The two yaks are outside drinking from the fountain, the two horses are parked in their bays, and a court painter is crouched next to the table, working up a selfie for Eustacia with this amusing company.

It had been a shaky start.

But now, Myrtille and Eustacia are deep in conversation. Pipsqueak has heard the words “socks” and “precautions”, and he’s eyeing the court painter uneasily, wondering what parts of his private life will be going into the selfie’s caption.

Roland is telling him all about what a drag his life in the palace is, and Pipsqueak is regretting asking Roland where exactly in the palace he lives – round the back, to the side, in one of the hangers-on apartments in the annexe; you can’t even see his window in the postcard.

But he braces himself. There’s some scene-setting dialogue to be got through before they can continue the conversation.

“We’ve decided that we’re going together,” he interrupts.

“Eh?” After a second, Roland gets it. “Yes, and now we’re discussing the route and the timing. The Mage has told us that it’s urgent. But we can’t leave until after the party on Saturday. So we’ll have to travel fast when we do go.”

“Eustacia and Myrtille are insisting on coming with us. We’ve told them that it’s– we’ve told them that we can– we’ve accepted their kind offer to lead the expedition.”

They both relax. That’s done. Eustacia and Myrtille are still talking. Without missing a beat, Myrtille reaches out and retrieves the cake-fork that has somehow become embedded in the table-top in front of Pipsqueak. Around the coffee bar, conversations resume. The court painter comes out from under the next table and gets back to work.

“That was clumsy, wasn’t it?”

“We need a writer skilled enough to get that kind of background information across without clunking it out in dialogue.”

“With this guy, imagine if we were on a stake-out.”

“And now it’s not even clear which one of us is speaking!”

Pipsqueak eyes Roland. “Maybe I should be the hero and you should be the sidekick,” he says.

Pipsqueak says. To Roland. Pipsqueak said that to Roland.

The other two are off in their own conversation and didn't hear anything. They're not in this bit..

Roland looks shocked. By what Pipsqueak has just said to him.

“Aheh…hum…ah…” Roland begins. In his mind, there’s an obvious reason why Roland should be the hero and Pipsqueak the sidekick, but he can’t quite put it into words.

He lives at the palace – okay, but it’s still the palace. And Pipsqueak is a – is a – he wouldn’t even get in through the front door of the palace!

Roland, who has his own side-door key to the palace, can’t quite meet Pipsqueak’s eye.

Pipsqueak pushes his Frappuccino aside and stands up. “I need a strong black coffee,” he says. “Anyone?”

“Some more of that cake?” says Myrtille. “For all of us to share,” she adds. She pushes away the plate in front of her, which is empty but for a few crumbs. And a twisted cake-fork.

Pipsqueak, who likes the curve of Myrtille’s hips and her sexy little tummy – but who isn’t an idiot – says softly “I’ll share it with you.”

Eustacia says “Ooh, could I have one of those? With warmed oat milk and sprinkles?”

Pipsqueak looks at Roland. Their eyes meet. The two young men share a moment of perfect understanding.

Meanwhile, two hundred miles up the Frozen Trail that lies ahead of our Hero and her friends, far North of the walled town in which they’re drinking all that coffee and sharing all that cake...

...a teeny weeny little adorably cute fluffy little kitten, recently born, really adorable, tiniest and cuddliest of its (his) litter, who will be looking for an owner soon, somebody to love and be loved by, gazes up at a tall tree with lots of twisty branches and thinks: “I could climb that.”

It's the relentless conversation, isn't it? The endless, endless, endless discussion.

Waking up this morning to a panel debate on the radio about immigration and racism in the USA, my immediate reaction was: these have become such comfort-zone subjects for you, haven't they?

You know what gets said in discussions on these subjects, and you know how to say it. You're at home in this flow of voices expressing safe opinions that we've all heard before.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But did you go out in the world, with a fresh mind, and research these subjects as though it was the first time? What's new?

Or did you invite people you've heard before, people whose opinions you know, to give a balanced discussion that won't offend?

How often, when we think we're at the cutting edge, are we really fighting for a cause that's already been won?

Some days, I just sit here and watch the weather.

I like the easy back-and-forth of the trees, the movement of the clouds, the clear Autumn light.

Today, I also like the occasional sweeps of rain that make the wind visible – sorry, but I’m aiming for a slightly more pretentious tone this week – and if we have to mention it, the wet-look magpie that’s problem-solved my “Small Bird Feeding Station”. Scruffy bird.

He’s too big to land on it, so he knocks seeds from the seed-feeder and takes them from the ground. If I now say “clever bird,” it’s not because I’ve got him/her typecast as stupid – he worked it out just as I was deciding that I’d have to take out a dish of seeds and put it on the wall for him.

Cleverer than I am. Maybe we’re surrounded by clever animals (cue ominous electronic music) and we just don’t realise it because they don’t use facial expressions that we can recognise.

Did I mention the duckling? I think I did, but at this age I’m pretty much expected to repeat myself. Month or two back. Little tiny fluffy ball of duckling, swimming along and grubbing around for things to eat like he/she had just completed the How To Be A Duck training course.

Maybe that was instinct, but does it matter? Functional intelligence. At that age, I had the startle reflex and an instinct to cry if I wanted attention. If you’d dropped me in a pond, I wouldn’t have floated.

Let alone found breakfast.

And what happened to bird tables, anyway? “Small Bird Feeding Station” – ha! You hang things from it rather than put things on it. I suppose the clue is in the word “Small”. Big birds can’t get a foothold, so they can’t steal the seeds, etc., left out for the small birds.

Inclusion by exclusion; human nature.

Except that, in the grand tradition of unintended consequences, we’re training a generation of bigger birds – that magpie, crows, seagulls, escaped parakeets – to problem-solve. Their brains are getting bigger. They’re evolving.

Ah – there’s the other magpie. I read somewhere [It was on Quora – Ed.] that one defining characteristic of an English person is that he/she (this is exhausting) reacts to single magpies.

I remember being told, right around the age I learned to swim and pour out my own Rice Krispies, not at the same time, that if I ever saw a magpie alone, I should say, “Good morning, Mr Magpie, I hope your wife and family are well.” It was always morning in my childhood, and everything was masculine unless it obviously wasn’t.

Magpies pair up for life, so a lone magpie might be a bereaved magpie – and they’re creatures of myth and legend, so you don’t want to be impolite to an unhappy magpie.

But two magpies – remember the rhyme? I saw seven once, all picking up seeds on a lawn. I didn’t notice a Small Bird Feeding Station in the tree above them, but now I understand. Clever birds.

I’ve just looked up magpies in Country Life. If you’re not following any of this, here’s the link. And no, I’m not talking about the television programme. I was a Blue Peter man, myself.

Memories. Once, although this might not have been a morning, I stood on the edge of a field looking up at a tree that was noisy with crows, and the person holding my hand said, “That’s a parliament of crows.”

If that’s too topical for you, An Unkindness of Ravens is a 1985 book by Ruth Rendell, a 2009 book by Lucas Scott, a 2014 collection of collective nouns by Chloe Rhodes, a rock band and a song. So far.

Wikipedia also tells me that you can have a charm of magpies, or a murder of magpies – but you probably won’t. I came across a magpie trap once. You had to start by trapping a magpie. Other magpies would be so curious that they’d join it in the trap.

Not that I wanted to trap magpies. And no, I never came across a first-magpie trap. Although curiously enough, I do know a way to–

“What about the book?”

“Aaah… Oh… My heart! Give me a second…”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that – the post’s getting long again, and…”

“Ed. I’d forgotten you were there.”

Edgalcius the Mage is sitting on my sofa, still decently wrapped in the enormous multi-coloured dressing-gown. He’s platted his hair and his beard. His feet are up on the low table and his (multi-coloured, did I say) carpet slippers and hanging off his toes. This isn’t a story in which podiatrists make housecalls, although I might revise that in a future draft. Edgalcius’ feet–

“I told you it was Quora.”

“You spotted that from over there?”

He holds up a pair of opera glasses.

“Sorry.”

He isn’t. He thinks it’s funny. Smug, arrogant, old – person.

“Yeah, okay, you got me. But did you spot that reference to seven magpies?”

“Story yet to be told? Sure. Cute. But you haven't even explained–”

“Wouldn’t that have killed the momentum? You and I know that they spent another whole hour on the mountain-top. A whole hour! Most of it spent making tea and cutting the crusts off cucumber sandwiches. You're saying take them through that and make it interesting…”

“You haven't worked it out yet, have you? Your own story?”

“I’ve only just started! But I know the shape of the story. It’s a quest, it’s character-led, and increasingly, I like The Old Guy With A Thousand Faces as a title, if that tells you anything.”

Edgalcius is still fixed on what he wants me to understand; he’s not hearing what I’m telling him. I don’t know how long I can spin this out, but he’s still convinced that either Pipsqueak or Roland is the hero in a book with Old Guy in the title. For a Mage, he’s quite thick, actually.

“Yes, but your readers need to know–”

“Look what’s happening now! Pipsqueak is explaining what happened on the mountain to Myrtille. The scene fits exactly where it’s needed, and it serves the purpose of establishing their relationship.”

“How can he explain what you haven’t worked out yet?”

The argument continues. Meanwhile, below the picture…

Pipsqueak and Myrtille have sneaked round to the back of the yak shed to smoke a couple of cigarettes and talk over what’s been happening.

“So your dad killed that dragon?”

“Yeah – hang on, of course he did. How do you think its head got to be hanging over our fireplace?”

“I thought – maybe it was a tourist thing? Some kind of interior-design quirky conversation-piece thing?”

“He killed it.” Pipspeak takes a long drag of his cigarette and blows a smoke ring that morphs into the shape of a dragon and then a three-masted tea clipper (which he doesn’t recognise; he’s never even seen the sea). The smoke sails off into the distance.

He’s thinking back, in improbable detail, over the hour-long argument he and Roland had with Edgalcius the Mage after the genie had vanished back into its – Pipsqueak frowned. There had been something odd about that genie.

Quickly, in no more than a paragraph, he summarises to himself the details of the Hero’s Journey that he and Roland have so firmly refused to undertake.

He thinks: but I haven’t really refused it, have I? He had realised, as he told his family about his encounter with the Mage and then answered their questions, that he’d actually just rejected Edgalcius’ ridiculous idea that he might be the hero in this story.

Roland had done the same – for different reasons; Pipsqueak smiles faintly at the idea of either of them as hero.

Roland! Likeable guy, but really? For a Mage, Edgalcius had struck Pipsqueak as quite thick, actually.

Myrtille stubs out her cigarette. “Where’s Tobeya Nounced anyway?” she asks.

“He killed it in the mountains here,” said Pipsqeak. “What? Oh – it’s beyond the town, apparently. Way off in the fog.” Actually, it’s The Fog, he corrected himself. Not just any old fog.

“Can I come with you?” says Myrtille.

“What?” Pipsqueak’s astonished. He hadn’t thought for a moment – but a much bigger smile spreads itself across his face. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” Myrtille nudges herself closer to Pipsqueak and puts her hand on his chest. “You need somebody to…” He turns his face and his lips find hers and they – look, we needn’t get into this. They’re healthy young adults, they’ve known each other since childhood and they’re behind the yak shed, where they’ve made a comfortable nest of straw bales.

Myrtille slides her hand down Pipsqueak’s – and Edgalcius is doing something with a small pair of scissors and a nail-file, yeuch, we can’t go there, and Roland is telling his friends, again, about this really cool guy he met with the silly name, and they’re bored out of their skulls, so not there either – and Pipsqueak feels the warmth rising through – no, no, NO! This is none of our business!

Myrtille moves her body forward over his, and Pipsqueak feels the soft pressure of – and there’s a knocking on the door! A hammering! On the lintel above the main entrance! To the hut complex!

That was close. There’s a horseman. On his horse. He’s exactly the horseman you’d find in a story like this. Phew! Arrogant, impatient, but doing what he’s told. With bad grace. A caption shows briefly along the bottom edge of however you’re visualising this: Here is a messenger from Roland, bringing an invitation.

Myrtille helps Pipsqueak struggle back into his several layers of thermal underwear, and his jerkin, and his Authentic Peasant accessories, and after ten minutes of effort, Pipsqueak is ready to join his family.

He bursts out onto the street, still tucking something into something because that’s dramatically necessary in a scene like this, to find his family standing around the messenger (on his horse) like the other actors on stage when the main character misses his cue.

Pipsqueak’s father hands Pipsqueak a parchment. It’s roughly A4-sized, torn around the edges, and the colour a plain white parchment would be if you soaked it overnight in tea. On one side, a treasure map has been scribbled out. On the other, in really curly writing, we can read the word Invitation.

Pipsqueak’s father stares at Pipsqueak with an expression that suggests (a) he’s trying to suppress his irritation at being kept waiting, and (b) he’s a humble peasant dad impressed that his son is receiving invitations delivered by men on horseback. The rest of the family stand around looking variously humble, impressed, impatient, envious, annoyed.

A voice from nowhere hisses: “This is for you!”

“This is for you,” says Pipsqueak’s father, handing the invitation to Pipsqueak.

The messenger wheels his horse round and gallops off up the road towards the top of the map and the walled town beyond.

Pipsqueak stares down at the invitation for a long moment and then looks up.

“What’s a Frappuccino?” he asks.

So this is what I suggest we do now.

I write blog posts in the usual way. You read them (or not) in the usual way.

Every now and then, we pause for a digression while I check on progress with the fantasy novel that I inadvertently started last week. I was intending to write about the difficulty of starting something – and then I went and did it. I started something.

So we’ll have it in the background. The occasional paragraph. Although this week you get more than that. This week is for pure (sic) self-indulgence. Normal service resumed next week.

If you’d asked me, at around the time I wrote last week’s opening sentence – “Okay, so today we’re going to start the novel.” – whether I was about to start a fantasy novel, or any other kind of novel, I would have said no.

I would have told you that I was going to write about – and then I would have done a lot of telling. About opening scenes, structure, blah blah. There might have been diagrams. I like to think that I would have been quite convincing.

But it occurs to me now that what I actually did – starting something – was showing rather than telling. If I really want to talk myself up, I’d tell you that I acted out the moves I suggest you make, rather than standing behind you and telling you what to do.

That’s a good thing. If you can enable your reader to see what your characters are doing, as she reads, that’s a lot better than just telling her they did it. If you can show (demonstrate) what you want to tell about starting a novel…

The sentence “William started a fantasy novel” is no substitute for the experience of reading last week’s post, however dreadful that experience might be.

Actually, I’m extremely modest and unassuming, thank you very much. Embarrassed, too. A fantasy novel? Really?

I just think that if I’m going to write about how to do something, I should have a crack at doing it as well. The chef who taught me how to fillet a fish, all those years ago, did it by filleting a fish.

Other analogies are available: ride a motorcycle (I followed him); fire a gun (we each had a single-shot target rifle); do joined-up writing (Mrs Thompson did it first on the blackboard); break the siege of a walled city (sorry, that just crept in).

You can pick up learning from people who don’t (can’t?) do what they teach, but it’s never quite as useful as it would be if they were writing from experience rather than from examples of what other people have done in the past. Discuss. Or just get on with it.

Ahem! Anyway. This week’s blog post – the one from which I’m digressing to check on the novel – is all about politics, as you’d expect. It’s perceptive, incisive, and it makes a number of very cogent points about the current situation in the UK. It’s very nuanced and the prose is richly coruscating as well as spare.

That said, my imaginary reader this week is a former Kremlin-watcher who has just started an Eng. Lit. degree at a fashionable university. Out of respect for his old skills and to help him hone his new skills, as he embarks on his first Eng. Lit. Crit. essay, I have contained the entire blog post in the subtext of this paragraph. Read between the lines, Yevgeny.

Back to the digression. I’m mostly happy with last week’s work on The Old Guy With A Thousand Faces (which we might as well use for now as a working title). Provisionally, it gets us past the opening-sentence thing – “You are the chosen one!” et cetera – and provisionally, it gets us past the opening-scene thing. That whole conversation outside the cave.

Provisionally, because we might delete it all later. But for now, it gives us characters to work with, and the makings of a story. A Mage. Two possible heroes with (so far, only lightly shaded in) back-stories. Yak trains, mountains, a monastery with a library. A father, a mother, lots of uncles and brothers, Princess Eustacia and her party on Saturday.

We could take any of them, any of that, anywhere. We could delete all of it in favour of something we haven’t written yet. But at least we’ve started. If there’s anything to be learned from last week’s post, it is: you’ve got to start somewhere. Even in the middle of a blog post if you have to.

Then, just write what comes. I don’t write fantasy novels. I can say that because I know what I do write. I’m a traditionally published and independently published author of books ranging from children’s stories to tax guides (I found a tax guide the other day, that I’d forgotten, with my name on the cover; strange moment).

I’m also an obscure blogger who has only recently grasped the point about specialising in something – writing – and I write elsewhere as well. But I can say with confidence that I don’t–

“I do have one question.”

“Yerk!” William jerks back from the laptop. His coffee mug (empty now) goes flying.

Edgalcius the Mage is standing behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“Yee! What? How? What – you doing here?”

William’s heart is beating so fast you can see the pulse of it in his face. He’s white as a blank sheet of paper and breathless. He puts his hand to his chest. “What? How?”

Edgalcius the Mage shrugs.

“Cut! Do we have to put ‘the Mage’ after my name every time?”

“Action!”

Edgalcius shrugs.

“You wrote me. I’m here. Look, do you mind if I use your shower? Living in a cave, you know? Keep writing; it’s different. I’m interested.”

“What’s the question?” William is getting over the shock.

“It’ll keep. Won’t be long.”

“There’s a towel on the rack.”

I don’t write fantasy. But I do say: write what comes. Said that twice now. Even if it’s fantasy. Don’t edit while writing, and plan whenever you feel like it. But any inspiration that wants to get onto the page, should be allowed to get onto the page. Tidy it up later.

“How do I–?”

“There’s a switch just outside the bathroom door. A red light comes on.”

“Got it.”

The shower starts.

So all of a sudden, I do write fantasy. It’s derivative, I suppose, and the “Mage in search of an author” thing isn’t as original as I believe it is.

But I think I can say the story is alive. That’s what matters. I’m interested enough to be writing this while all the sensible bloggers are rabbiting on about Brexurrghzzz (but see below the picture). I want to know what happens next.

Anyway. Opening scene completed, it’s time to drop in some information.

Come with me for a moment. Stand where Pipsqueak was standing last week and look down.

See his village down there?

Yes, I see the bird. Yes, isn’t it odd to be looking down at a bird in flight? Yes, nice bird, but look. The village.

See how the road – no, he lives in the hut complex to the left of the market square, see? – the road goes – very small, yes, tiny, like ants – the road goes up through that valley, past the lake – wouldn’t it, yes? But cold – and then into – this is Summer; we’re in the mountains – the fog? That fog is where I haven’t built my world–

No, you’re still looking at the track up the mountain. I mean that road over there. Yes, through the valley – no, not that road.

Okay, step back from the edge. You can let go of my arm now. We’ll do this the hard way.

Pipsqueak lives in the hut complex that is to the left of the market square as you look down at his village from the ledge outside Edgalcius the Mage’s cave. It’s a hut complex rather than just a hut because Pipsqueak comes of a large family that’s lived in the same spot for generations – they just build on an extra hut when necessary. Nobody in Pipsqueak’s family ever goes anywhere, and if you want me to lay it on thick, there’s an inbuilt bias against shopping trips into town, let alone heroic quests.

Got that? We have some family tension coming up.

Below us, we can see the track – the yak-trail – winding down the mountain to the market square. There’s a road that goes through the market square, from left to right if we switch to map view, but the one I’m talking about is the twisty one that goes up through the valley into the – oh, there’s less fog now. You can just make out the spires and the towers of the faraway walled town that’s just come into my head.

Yes, I suppose it is the continuation of the winding track, if you start from here, and, yes, I suppose it does lead to adventure, if you want to be overtly symbolic.

The shower stops. There’s a moving-about noise, and then a bolt-sliding-back noise, and then Edgalcius – “Didn’t expect to like the name Ed,” he says indistinctly – appears on the stairs. He’s wearing the enormous multi-coloured towelling dressing-gown that William wrote onto the hook on the back of the bathroom door just in time, and he’s using both hands to rub at his hair with the white towel that he would have been wearing round his waist if William hadn’t suddenly remembered this post’s Universal rating.

I know. Clumsy switches to third person. This is an early draft.

The enormous multi-coloured towelling dressing gown is belted securely around Ed’s waist. It covers him down to his ankles. His feet – ugh! – he’s wearing carpet slippers. That was close.

“You put your clothes on to wash?”

We can hear the faint thrum of the washing machine.

“I love your shower!” Ed lowers the towel from his head. His grey hair flies out in all directions. William imagines a shaggy dog photographed in the moment of shaking the water out of its coat.

“It’s just that you’ll have to do the whole first chapter in that dressing gown, while they dry.”

Ed holds his arms out from his body and looks down. The message is clear: Ed likes the dressing gown.

William hands him a hairbrush. “What was your question?”

“Oh yes. It’s a plot point. You’ve set up Pipsqueak as the Chosen One, obviously, with Roland as some kind of comic relief, or whatever he might turn out to be.”

“Some kind of sidekick, I think. Casting against type.”

“What’s Pipsqueak doing now? You’ve established the character, set up the idea of a quest, and dumped all that–”

“–dropped–”

“–dropped all that information about the scenery.”

“With the hint about the direction–”

“–the walled town–”

“Faraway walled town, yeah.”

“But what’s he doing? Is he refusing the call to adventure? Going back to his ordinary world? I need to know.”

“You’ve been reading that book by Christopher Vogler, haven’t you? The Writer’s Journey?”

“Third edition, published in 2007 by Michael Wiese Productions? Yes, I have. Had it out of the monastery’s library so long I might as well keep it.”

“I like The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, 1949, which of course is where I got the working title.”

“Yes, lately published by New World Library. But didn’t you say something about a kitten…”

The conversation continues. Meanwhile, Pipsqueak is sitting at the family table in the big hut, listening to his mother tell him not to be so silly. His father hasn’t spoken yet, but his brothers’ teasing has stopped and they’re beginning to glance up the table. There’s an atmosphere that you could almost cut with a lot of talk about keeping warm and wearing socks and not going off on silly adventures.

Myrtille, the girl from next door who comes round whenever there aren’t enough women in the story, is leaning in the doorway. Whenever Pipsqueak glances across at her, he finds she’s looking at him. He’s known her since childhood; she’s his closest friend.

“That’s a bit obvious isn’t it?”

“Why are we speaking in italics?”

Finally, Pipsqueak’s mother stops talking. She looks at her husband, opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again. She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Well, I think it’s ridiculous,” she says. She stands up and hurries out of the room.

Myrtille comes away from the door, raising her arms as if to hug Pipsqueak’s mother, and goes with her.

There is silence except for the muffled sound from the next room of Myrtille comforting Pipsqueak’s mother.

Pipsqueak’s father stands up from the table. He looks at each of his seven sons in turn. Then he goes to stand behind Pipsqueak and lays his hands on Pipsqueak’s shoulders.

“This is my son,” he says. “Like me, he's a seventh son. He has been chosen. But the decision is his, and his alone. If he goes, he goes with my blessing. I hope that he will have yours, as well.”

Pipsqueak’s father leaves the room. In the silence, the seven sons hear their mother and father argue, urgently but quietly, and then Pipsqueak’s father reappears. He places on the table in front of Pipsqueak a small brass lamp.

“This was very useful to me,” he said. “When I–” He stops and turns away.

Pipsqueak looks up and meets the glass eyes of the dragon’s head mounted above the fireplace.

As he listens to his mother opening and slamming cupboards next door, he thinks to himself: how many genies are there going to be, in this story of mine?”

Somewhere in the future is a history book in which all of this is past.

All of this week’s political shenanigans in the UK, the whole B– Br– no, still can’t say the word – reduced to a line, or a paragraph, or a page, or just possibly a chapter, in a book about the early twenty-first century. Or the pre-modern era.

What will be remembered, if anything, is the outcome, and that will colour everything that went before. The bit that hasn’t happened yet will give meaning to the bit that we’re in at the moment. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the future history-book reader to understand that we didn’t know how it ended.

Last Sunday, there were ceremonies to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Nobody knew, back then, how big that was going to be, nor how it was going to end. It wasn’t even “the Second World War” until later on in the conflict.

History normalises the past. Until [insert your own catastrophe] happened, we lived in a world where that couldn’t happen. Then it was one more item in the index.

There’ll be an ending to whatever’s happening now – and we have to wait for that history book even to know what is happening now. There’ll be an ending to membership of the EU, the revolt against membership of the EU, the two-party system, representative democracy, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party…

…and I don’t have the faintest idea where I stand on any of it.

There does seem to be a mismatch between the decision-making apparatus we have, and the problem we face. There doesn’t seem to be much scope for a comfortable two-thirds majority on anything. So maybe this is a bigger change than a tussle over – whatever it is we’re all arguing about today.

Perhaps the role of the media will come under scrutiny. I wonder. Perhaps some enterprising young historian will come up with The End of Liberal Democracy as a riposte to Francis Fukuyama.

Perhaps this is the end of the post-war settlement, or the end of the long century of hot, cold, proxy and trade wars – not to mention the end of wars by other means.

Perhaps we’re reverting to a historical norm whereby the EU takes the role of the Holy Roman Empire, with some version of the Ottoman Empire on one side, and maybe something on the other to fill in for one of the other European empires. Maybe we’re just leaving the century of nation states.

Jillian Becker wrote a book called H*tl**’s Children (my asterisks) about the Red Army Faction, although it was pointed out that Andreas, Gudrun, Ulrike and the rest were grandchildren-aged, relative to him. Maybe Thatcher’s – no, because she did have children. Sorry.

What I would like to try to remember is that we didn’t try to understand each other. We imputed motives to each other, accused each other of lying, labelled each other – “Brexiter” was more enduringly adhesive than “Remoaner”, I think – and each side ranted about how mistaken the other side was. How deluded, delusional, misinformed, et cetera.

We were all confident that we could see the future that we didn't want.

How easy it was to take sides; how difficult it’s turning out to be, to move on.