Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the “Midnight Writing Club”.

The clock will tick past 1am in 4 minutes.

I’ve spent much of the day watching a long running process on a distant server farm slowly report onward progress.

After scraping myself out of bed this morning, and standing rather conspicuously in the middle of the kitchen in my underwear sipping coffee – while waiting for a turn in the shower – I pulled some clothes on, and prepared to set out with the rest of the family for a day in London together.

After trying to convince myself that I wanted to live in my own castle for the last several weeks, and after sitting high atop my invented throne, admiring my own handiwork, I had a moment of clarity – or rather the thought “why the hell am I doing this?”

I just got home from a visit to the cinema with my eldest daughter – to watch “Nosferatu” – a new version of the story inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Over the course of this weekend – for no other reason than to satisfy an unending curiosity, I have re-created a simulacrum of a computing platform I last saw perhaps thirty five years ago.

While sitting atop my fence with a bag of popcorn, waiting for the Facebook, Instagram and Threads mud-slinging escapade to calm down, I’ve been trying to understand the anger, spite and fury that seems to have consumed so many.

For the last several years, whenever asked how frequently I write on the blog, I have replied “almost daily”.

I received a message on my mobile phone yesterday – I didn’t take much notice at the time because I didn’t recognise the name.