I’m sat in Costa, the most enigmatic of all the coffee shops, drinking an Americano that tastes as though it’s been brewed from the rotting ashes of an industrial fire and filtered through a chimney. My beard is a monstrous 8-week beauty that rests upon my chiseled jaw like morning dew over a rolling meadow, peering disdainfully from beneath my aquiline features at all contenders.

Across the room a beautiful woman is slowly turning her stilletoed foot, no doubt gazing wistfully in my direction whenever my back is turned. I have been sat here for almost fifteen minutes, and so has she. Coincidence? Unlikely, though you, dear reader, are free to draw your own conclusions so long as they are essentially this: she doubtless lusts after me. Were I not presently penning this treatise, I would strut to her table like a gazelle dancing rhythmically across the Serengeti, gifting her the privilege of accompanying me as I dine.

Atop my head lie a mass of florid curls that lap at the corners of my sculpted brow as gently as ripples on a flat summer sea. My eyes are a brilliant green-grey, swirling tempests of wisdom and equanimity. They glisten with the vigour of youth, yet somehow evoke a comforting wonderment that soothes all who they enrapture. My eyebrows, slits of brown ice, provide a foil to my mischievous and endearing smile.

It is Tuesday. A much-maligned day whose elegance is often lost due to its unsavoury position near the middle of the week, not quite providing the thrill of a Monday, but yet failing, too, to elicit the guttural joviality that Wednesdays so often provide. No matter! For this morning, dear reader, though you likely awoke with the sense that today would be no different to any other, you were wrong. Today, you have encountered my work. Today, my ignorant friend, you and I begin our journey into the beating heart of the Human Condition itself.

I begin by musing pensively on the events that befell me at dinner last night. Thoughts of devouring a lasagne I had masterfully prepared for myself the evening before had consumed my very being since the ending of luncheon. Wandering toward the refrigerator in a veritable fit of ecstasy at the prospect, I was bemused to notice that where once my delicious multi-layered prize had lain in wait, there now remained but an empty tray. Horror coursed through every sinew of my statuesque physique, and my eyes narrowed to a slit of unwavering fury. My head swivelled maniacally left and right, searching for a culprit, my glare scarring the kitchen in a manner reminiscent of Sauron’s death-stare as it swept across the charred landscape of Middle-Earth.

Franklin. Even his name made the bile in my stomach churn. My long-time housemate certainly lay behind this evil. I had heard him drunkenly return from an evening’s revelry the night before, but had foolishly allowed my sleep-deprived state to get the better of me. I should have halted his brutal march then and there – Gandalf on the bridge, forcing back the Balrog! Instead, my gremlin-like roommate had surely snuck towards his pasta-prize unhindered, launching it into his gaping jaws with a vigour best understood by reference to that memorable scene in which Smeagul finally clutches the one ring within his tentacular fingers. An excellent movie that I highly recommend. Where was I? Ah Yes.

Stampeding up the stairs I barrelled roughly through Franklin’s door, its sturdy iron hinges snapping backwards violently under the herculean weight of my outstretching arm. Clothes, formerly resting limply upon the filthy carpet were reanimated, thrown in to the air like ghosts before me. Cups chattered in terror, curtains fluttered and shrieked. There, amidst the squalor and destitution lay the man-beast, belly protruding slightly from beneath an ill-fitting t-shirt, one arm bending over his head and down to his ear. Swiftly, swiftly, I snuck toward him, invigorated by the prospect of retribution. His mouth moved, his pupils swirled in my direction. ‘Hi’. But it was too late for my soon-to-be vanquished foe. A fist sliced through the heavy air with brutal precision, a lightning strike. The soft flab of his belly, formerly contented to rest heavily upon a dinner that was rightfully my own, caved inwards as though struck by an asteroid. I heard the villain groan, as I stood towering over his limp form. ‘That’, spoke I, ‘was for eating my lasagne’. Behind me, a rustle. I turn. Garrett. An absolute gimp of a man who scurries around my flat in the dead of night, reeking of beans and undigested ham. In one hand, a fork. The other clutched a plate. And on that plate – my lasagne. I sprung into action once more!

Clambering like a rabid hound across discarded crisp packets, empty bottles and an eclectic array of unappetising jetsam I locked my sights on the spectral figure across the room. With discerning elegance my foot raised as if possessed of its own spirit – planting itself robustly in the crotch of my enemy. A satisfying thud spelt the end for Garrett, and the beginning of my meal. As his knees kissed the floor I swept the food from his grasp, spun on my booted-heel and descended to the kitchen victorious.