Every time I see that goal that Michael Owen scored against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup I am amazed at the pace, the skill, the naďve confidence that propelled him from just inside his own half, past three ineffectual challenges, and into the opposition penalty area.
To actually see him shoot with such unerring accuracy and power…well it’s almost too poignant to watch.
The moment of celebration, the explosion of joy that follows is – this may sound dramatic – effectively the end of Michael Owen’s life. In his mind and ours, he will only truly exist within those few seconds.

I am a bisexual woman of 25, who has never experienced orgasm. Or at least I don't think I have. I am told that there is such a thing as a 'vaginal orgasm' and also a 'clitoral orgasm'. I suspect that I may have experienced the former. It was - if that is what it was - like a big sneeze, but nice also. I think I may have had an ice-cream headache once, but again how can I be sure? No one tells you these things. Isn’t there some kind of machine? Or an instructional video? Or a DVD?

What am I doing? I am standing here in a state of contemptuous awe. The fact that you strode so confidently over to the chiller cabinet and instinctively reached for the can of Coca Cola, in my opinion, speaks volumes. What the hell are you thinking? Are you insane? You are. You are fucking insane. I do not take life to seriously. As you stand there, greedily slurping your capitalist, war-on-terror, freedom-fries, ‘Dubya’-loving, evil, capitalist, capitalist, capitalist cola drink, Afghanistan burns. Starbucks is draining the blood from our children. McDonalds is worse than Hitler. Well, not that bad. But bad.

I would like you to compliment me.

Pick some aspect of my physical appearance (or, if you are really struggling, of my character), observe it, think of some words inside your head that are pleasant and affirmative, and then use your voice to say the words. My ears will hear them, I will interpret their meaning, and my synapses will buzz with pleasure. Momentarily, I will - regardless of the truth of the words - hum with the full, glorious beauty of my potential. Then my psyche will twist your words into a grotesque hubris that will destroy us all.

This month I will not be judging others. I will be giving myself a break and them a break. Negative-nancy style thinking is what is making my hair fall out, and probably also what is causing the goitre that is slowly strangling me. This is the type of thinking that is causing me to wake up in the night, my face flecked with some mysterious effluvium, the source of which remains unknown at this time. Positive thinking doesn’t come naturally, but I will be giving it my best, and maybe doing a bit of self-harm to take the edge off.

I am writing this for you. If you are reading this and have even the slightest sense that the ‘you’ I refer to is in fact you, then rest assured, it is. I am writing this to you because I have got no voice to say these words. I’m slowly disappearing and, as anyone who has ever slowly disappeared will know, it is the voice that goes first. These words are, in effect, my will. I bequeath them to you.

I fucking hate words, they only confuse things. I will be pleased to be rid of them.

I love you.

If it’s OK with you, I will answer your questions in turn:

Minestrone or tomato.

Cats

In a branch of Halfords in Stroud

It was good but it was over much too soon.

Much too soon

More than words can say

A giant foam hand smothering me

I will never forgive you for this

Careless Whisper by George Michael (not Wham)

A pain that never ends

Anyone who has ever used the following terms: ‘have it!’ or ‘oy oy!’ or ‘blingin’!

A single shaft of light shining a light of sudden clarity onto the heartbreaking mess that is my life

Don't hang up.

Listen to what I have to say. If you just give me one moment, I will explain everything. You probably have a lot of questions right now, things you need to have explained. If you give me just five minutes of your time - two minutes then - I will explain all the things that you need explained. I will explain and you will be satisfied by my explanation.

My explanation will follow. Parts of the explanation may seem implausible to you, but rest assured that each part of the explanation is entirely true.

Don’t hang up.

I should pay attention more. Too much of my time is spent daydreaming, lost in my own imagination as the world shifts around me.

It can annoy and frustrate people. I know my colleagues find it difficult. I’ll be there, staring, lost in beauty, imagining faces and forms fluttering and unravelling in the flames while they rush in with their hoses and axes and whatnot. Boy, they get angry.

Just this morning my wife was complaining about it. She was standing at the door, a small brown dog at her feet. Or maybe a suitcase. She was crying I think.

I’ll be honest with you. I know this is your first time, and I take no pleasure in this. Perhaps you will improve in time, but right now there is no room for passengers my friend. Frankly, your baby-sitting this evening was a fucking joke.

Granted, when you arrived I was already over-tired and fractious, and you could be Mary Fucking Poppins, I wasn’t going to drink my milk for no fucker. But did you even make the most rudimentary efforts to mollify or even distract me? Did you fuck.

My advice? Go home and have a word with yourself.

Nothing annoys me more that when life seems to shrink until it resembles nothing more that the lyric from a Snow Patrol album track. Burble burble….I miss you…..burble burble….why can’t you be mine….burble burble something about skin and bones, or some other cheap and transparent anatomical metaphor to make the physical pang of emotional longing forehead-slappingly obvious.

It pisses me off because I want to believe that I am more complex than this. I also want to believe that Snow Patrol are dreary arbiters of clumsy emotional truisms. Probably I am the clumsy one. Big clodhopping emotions trampling over me.