I couldn’t say I’ve had such a bad life. I can’t join the almost fashionable trend and tell of abuse whether at home or at school, about how isolated I was with few friends having to fight for survival in a hostile world. I can’t say any of that because nothing like it was remotely true.

I can’t say I’ve led a happy life either. But I don’t think that has much to do with what has happened to me or been visited on me by experience or the poor form necessarily of others. It’s probably fair to say that for the most part I have been treated quite kindly by people.

I think my problem is more innate, like being born with a certain kind of make-up. This has imbued me with a base melancholy so that when faced with the downside of events a greater toll has been taken than would otherwise have been the case.

The relatively small degree of bad acts I’ve been subjected to therefore seems of greater import than it would otherwise have been. Add to that some faulty thinking and the result is a tendency to misanthropy probably not much justified.