Killing yourself is a lot harder than I'd imagined. Ask Stephen Fry. Ask me. We've both tried exactly the same number of times, and failed.

Life is exactly like a loaf of bread. At first, it tastes delectable and fresh, but after a while you only enjoy eating it after it's been toasted. Gradually, though, it gets staler and staler, becoming barely edible in the process. In the end it gets covered in mould but you have to keep on taking bites out of it, even though you gag and sometimes find yourself forced to spit pieces out again, because there isn't anything else to eat.

In my sunnier moments - which are increasingly few and far between these days - I like to imagine myself as generous, selfless and warm-hearted, predisposed toward spreading sweetness and light, like PG Wodehouse's famous character Uncle Fred. However, most of the time I feel suicidal rather than sunny, and that's when the truth hits home. I'm actually a misfit, a waster, an essentially obnoxious person. This truth hit home the other day when iIplucked up the rare courage to post what was intended as a light-hearted, friendly shout on a fellow Last FM user's page. The user's response? To…

Occasionally, the weakness of will which might be classified as my “faith” is challenged by events which appear to imply the existence of an escape route. For hours, sometimes even days, I am lulled into a pathetic, unseemly optimism which holds him hypnotised, like a moth drawn to a flame.

Never underestimate the power of delusions.

is and was she real or just an invention
some frail chimera built to dissipate the awesome loneliness and pain
the dearth of feeling
lack of choice
my own imaginary Doll-God
either way
every single day I dream of her
i don’t know why it’s really quite insane
and yet I cannot help myself despite the fact she won't have thought of me in nearly fifty years
she is and will remain my fulcrum
my Rosetta Stone
until the day I die

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I was swathed in sunlight, arms outstretched as though attached to an invisible cross, legs rotating haplessly, or perhaps determinedly. It was as though I could feel myself disappearing.

The swimming instructor, whose separate identity I had never properly allowed myself to imagine, was counting towards infinity: "Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four……."

As though such things were meaningful.

But as for me, swathed as I was in sunlight, simultaneously protected and imprisoned by a membrane wrought from my very essence, floating aimlessly and haplessly and hopefully…….

As for me.

Denouement loomed, cascading from the unblelievable swimming instructor's lips, a vibrant…

It occurred to me the other day that I have suffered from clinical depression now for more than forty years. Over the decades, the intensity has fluctuated, but some level of depression has always been there. In view of this, I think I can feel justified in offering some observations on the subject, not in order to depress you (sorry!) but so as, I hope, to clear up some fairly common misconceptions about it.

One accusation that is frequently made of those who suffer from depression is that arises out of too overriding a focus on self, on being too…

It was the most exhilarating, captivating, sumptuously delectable dream I've enjoyed in ages. The Hollywood A-list actress (whom I won't name for fear of embarrassing her) were locked in a sensuous embrace, our mouths pressed together as we French-kissed passionately. Obviously there was a real chemistry between us that transcended our on-screen personae. I don't mind admitting that my manhood was …….. well, you get the picture.

Then I awoke to find Izzie (my miniature poodle) perched on my chest with her tongue halfway down my throat determined that it was time for "Daddy" to rouse himself from his afternoon…

I bought a copy of NME this week, mildly intrigued by the cover page which announced that it contained a run-down of “the top 500 albums of all time”. Between my teens and late 30s, before it became a comic book aimed at morons with the attention span of a gnat, I was a regular and pretty avid NME reader, although to be honest I slightly preferred Melody Maker. Anyway, I was interested to see how out of touch I’ve become over the past couple of de cades or so, and reasonably confident that I’d find this supposed top 500…

My pills tend to impact on the law of gravity in haphazard, unpredictable ways. Today, for instance, I am weighed down, not so much by guilt as disenchantment, for the pills are fairly good at mitigating blame.

So I stagger more than stride, perhaps believing that to do so will in some way make me less conspicuous, and hence less readily assailed.

Occasionally, however, without the slightest warning, my stomach lurches in reaction to an uncoiled spring of nausea, and I find myself briefly floating, feet kicking haplessly at air.

Unwanted air. A space between the palpable and the possible,…