Above this is a heading that refers to time (the date, the hour), but time has lost almost all meaning for me. I can say ‘some time ago’, but I’m not at all sure how much time the ‘some’ might cover: weeks, yes, but perhaps even months. Well, whatever it means, some time ago these words appeared in my head: ‘The never-ending small hours’, and I thought they should be the title of this book. It’s a bit of a pretentious title, and far too poetic; but that’s how the words came out, and those words seem very accurate, very true, very fitting and exact. A never-ending series of small hours is what my life is, and what it has been these past years – best not to ask how many.

Saying ‘the small hours’ isn’t the same as saying ‘night’; they look similar in the dark, but something about the small hours makes them ill-suited to life – perhaps the inexorable quality of the solitude of whoever is alone at that time. Especially if they’re awake.