They kept sending us money, that was the problem. Even after the drugs which made your mind spiral into rainbow hell, and the noxious smelling salts, and the obscure rituals, they never cut funding. Even when we got desperate, they still kept pumping in the surplus of our good taxpayers. It wasn’t just money either, they kept us in good stock of all sorts. This included the drugs, obviously, alongside the sleek and sinister machines, chrome-plated man-made horrors. They kept us in good stock of all sorts of horrible things, yes, but arguably the worst things they kept sending us were the kids. More hypersensitive and/or strange children from all over the country than you can shake a menacing middle-school…

My parents live up North, and so every Christmas my drive to their house is defined by a lot of grey, brown and white, as well as bitter cold. Never liked the cold. I spent the first 18 years of my life in it, so I think I definitely have an educated opinion on it. I don’t like the passionless white-skied coldness, or the stark freeze of the deep dark night where you can see your breath billowing out from you like a smokestack, and I especially don’t like when the sky is a deceptive bright blue and all sunny, the rippled clouds all golden and hazy purple, and you go outside thinking it’ll be warm and it’s still fucking…