Mad

Hmmm.

Hmmmm.

Who here is without flaws or blemishes?

Like many - maybe even most - with some kind of mental illness, I generally decline to talk about it. After all, it's boring, isn't it? Instead I construct a pattern of behaviours and linguistics based on the cultural concept of normality. That is to say, I behave normally, whatever that means, as demanded by the context, and ignore the tendencies in my head towards doing something different, or, well, less boring. As it turns out - and I've been studying life for 53 years now - most of it is rote learned stuff, habitual, repetitive behaviours, pieces of conditioning that, once learned, are difficult to shake off. My parents taught me to obssess about money (look after the pennies...), to desist from showing overt emotions, that life is unfair, and that everyone is corrupt. Some of which may be true.

But I digress. Yesterday, out shopping with my daughter, I wore my new clip-on shades. I rather like them, and I like the fact that they cost £2.60. In the niche expresso cafe we visited, I showed off their function to the proprietor, and we discussed their cultural significance, and whether they are due to become A New Thing, like beards. Then I pretended to know a lot about coffee beans. It was a hilarious and entertaining trip out for me, an airing to relish, though apparently slightly too eccentric for Sheffield's more select environs.

But I digress again. The battle is always on to balance the inner impulses with the outer expectations, to suppress any eccentric sense of absurdity that most social situations seem to offer, and to behave according to norms. It's a battle raging in my head all the time. I must be mad.

Also, I do sometimes sing to animals when I am out cycling in the countryside.

These things have their limits in England, I'm sure. I mean, the admirable and wry behaviours of the eponymous 'Amelie' exuded a wonderful gallic charm and cozy wit in the film, whereas they would have appeared perverted , disturbing, and probably led to her being arrested here.

This is why, presumably, mildly self-concious middle class rebels like me (oh, the worse sort) spend happy hours skip hunting, or asking roofers not to throw their worn slates down but to pass them gently to me. Thanks to the generosity of a wasteful culture, I have log stores, the king of bike sheds, a refurbished kitchen, bathroom cupboards, shelving, a greenhouse, a festival-ready trolley (caster wheel repaired), an electric saw (on/off button fixed), a number of rare maps and artists sketches, and several sacks of kindling for the wood burner.

Quite mad, you see. I should be throwing stuff away like everyone else. I sense that I can just about get away with this, though my pupils used to laugh at me sometimes and call me a tramp. How proud I was. But one must be careful. Normality is an aspiration for most, and the common herd, particularly the dominant suburban breed, are the rulers of the new orthodoxy.

And they have never been caught singing to the animals.