‘That’s OK,’ the reader tells me. ‘I understand. But what I don’t understand is why the hell you’re dumping all this rubbish in your novel rather than talking it through with your therapist. Stop messing me around,’ the reader adds, ‘and write something that’s actually entertaining: images, not sob stories. Like those legs encased in black fishnet stockings.’

‘Point taken,’ I say, ‘point taken. I, too, scrupulously avoid poems written by housewives, and all the sob stories and psychoanalytical material people want me to swallow as if it’s literature. But wait a bit longer, be a little more patient and trust me. I promised you a bunch of grapes, and I can’t get on to the grapes themselves without crossing this squalid, vulgar terrain.’

‘Fine,’ the reader responds. ‘I’ll give you half a page more to masturbate over your delayed adolescence; but I swear, if this goes on much longer I’m ditching this book. You see, I actually have a Chandler on my bedside table that …’

‘OK, OK, let me do things my way, and stop interrupting. You’re not the only one with better things to be doing; I myself have a Beckett on my bedside table …’