Being a Writerer

Dear Fellow Wanderers of the Written Word, permit me to introduce myself: I am a writer. (There, I’ve said it. Please don’t judge.)

But not just any writer. No, I’m the sort of writer who trips over life’s banana skins, then spends three paragraphs describing the shape of the bruise.

You see, the world is a very serious place, full of very serious people doing very serious things — like ironing their socks or alphabetising their spice racks.

But to me, it’s all gloriously, irredeemably absurd.

I can’t walk down the street without noticing that pigeons have better social lives than I do, or that the man in the hat at the bus stop is almost certainly a retired spy. (Or possibly just cold.)

Being a writer is a bit like being a detective — if the only crimes you solve are misplaced apostrophes and the occasional missing biscuit.

I collect oddities the way some people collect stamps:

• The woman who talks to her shopping trolley.
• The dog who looks like it’s plotting a coup.
• The postman who delivers existential dread along with the gas bill.

My pen has a mind of its own.

Ask it for a love poem, and it gives you a limerick about a lovesick llama.

Request a serious essay, and it returns a treatise on why socks vanish in the wash.

(Spoiler: government conspiracy.)

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe the world needs more writers who find poetry in puddles and philosophy in the way toast always lands butter-side down.

Maybe you’re one of them. A collector of oddities. A noticer of nonsense. A scribbler of silliness.

I’m a writer who celebrates the ridiculous, the peculiar, and the gloriously daft. Because if you can’t laugh at life, you’re probably not paying attention.

So goodnight if it’s night, good day if it’s day — and if it’s neither, check what planet you’re on.