This book started very quickly. Most of it was scribbled during National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) in 2004. It has been finished more slowly and painfully, thanks mainly to encouragement from friends and family. Thank you Ishbel Addyman, Jake Black, Jemima Cooper, Ana Milusheva, and Róisín Thérèse. Jemima and Róisín also put in sterling, unpaid service as proofreaders and cheerleaders extra magna gratias agens to them.
Thank you also to all the philosophers who replied to my impertinent questions. Your answers increased my confusion and left me with questions than when I started. So I would say you have done your job well.
A huge thank you to my first English teacher, John Painter, for introducing young school children to things that people think they should not know, like Wilfred Owen and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. And to every other English teacher who ever tried to teach me anything. I did not understand it at the time. I probably still don’t but it bothers me less and less.
Firstly and lastly, I must thank my dear friend and occasional dealer Mr White for providing me with some excellent Psilocybe Cubenis and the good people at the People’s Republic of Disco for providing an amazing environment in which to be confused by them. Under the influence of these mushrooms and those tunes I understood that everything all made sense and that if you could just explain this to anyone who cared to ask then you could all get on with experiencing it. Staring at the vacant stage, I thought of a little story that encapsulated that moment of vision and clarity. I thought I ought to write it down. This is not it, but that’s probably for the best.