I was always interested in dropouts, refuseniks and people who lived outside the mainstream, who didn't play the usual “accrue resources” game, but wandered off and did their own thing, and still got housed, fed and loved.

This seemed way better than towing the line and feeling bitter and frustrated as the years turned to nothing, waiting for real life to begin.

Of course, I tended to ignore the fact that many of these people only existed in fiction, or ended up broken and broke, or were cushioned by wealth that enabled them to take refuge in the arts and launder their inheritances.

I was on the wrong kind of outside looking in. Without talent, drive, connections or money, without even much interest beyond myself and my own immediate vices.

When looked at in a cool, dispassionate manner, it’s amazing I’ve had any kind of success at all, never mind a veneer, however thin, of modest respectability, or at least not too obvious a loser and creep.