mostly david ephgrave

It's a measure of my constant overthinking that I'm worried I sounded too upbeat when on the phone to the funeral directors' today; from the tone and colour in my voice, he probably thinks I'm having the time of my life. "You haven't heard back from the vicar yet? Brilliant!" Like The Monkees, I was just trying to be friendly. I also happened to be on the bus, talking handsfree, so it was hard to judge how loud I needed to be to not sound weird. Having said that, however much I tried to not appear unhinged, I ended up pitching my replies like a T.I.E. performer speaking to a reception class; I may as well have been leading a conga line for all the enthusiasm I put into it. That's why any form of human interaction is to be strictly avoided, particularly if it's over the phone. It's also why I'll mentally prepare when I'm standing a cue waiting my turn; I'll mull over the various subtle variations on the theme that might come up...

If television programmes are to be believed, the Seventies were brown . As I was born in 1981, I'm unable to comment on this theory first-hand. Whilst being a couple of years shy of the opportunity to offer an eyewitness account, I’ve certainly seen a lot of secondary evidence.   A nything that wasn’t brown was a brownish-grey or orange. Take Columbo, for instance. I’m a big fan of the dishevelled detective, owning the complete series as a DVD box-set. There are two things I’ve learnt since watching so many episodes back-to-back: that instances of homicide in 1970s' Los Angeles were alarmingly high – and that most were committed to a sepia backdrop. It’s as if they’d decided to work to a very specific colour-scheme: nothing darker than Peter Falk’s cigar; nothing lighter than his raincoat.   If only the perpetrators had stuck to this formula with more rigidity, they could have got away with murder. A young David ...