I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.

All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.

After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.

Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.