Or, at least, nearly so – or else what would the remainder of this book be other than a long litany of pages made blank by the author’s death many years ago? It would be a mightily short book, or perhaps a mightily long book with multiple pages devoid of ink, words, story, emotion, grammar, spelling misteaks and autobiographical anecdotage. Indeed, the last words of it would not be ‘Alas, we died in the attempt’ but instead ‘No, look out— Eurrggh!’ followed by acre upon voidy acre of this: Trees would have been felled and paperized for naught, horses would have been boiled into book-glue for fun, not purpose, and print-setters would have lost their jobs through lack of print to set – though the publisher might have made a goodly saving on ink and, indeed, simultaneously created a new product, part book, part blank notebook, a literary-stationery hybrid that would surely have been both financially viable and vinancially fiable.1 I may have digressed a little. Let me now return to my life story.2 Trapped as I was in Britain’s cruellest school, the question of how to escape was one with no easy answer, as opposed to questions such as ‘Would you like a brandy?’ or ‘What is the capital of France?’ to which the answers are clearly ‘Yes, please’ and ‘Who cares?’ Then how lucky it was that my new-found best friend and chum-us maximus Harry Biscuit should have had plans for an escape, indeed plans he had already planned.
