So, I am starting to write in the space we have made in the day. This has become difficult. I have made it so.

My morning routine had evolved – with good reason over time as with all evolutions – into a series of slick and economic movements; a kind of bedroom, garden, kitchen and bathroom ballet – sometimes to music, breakfast television or the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme – that delivers food for tropical fish and cats as well as – for humans – emptied bladders, emptied dishwasher, breakfast, teas and coffees, supplements, medications, news reading, email filtering, French language learning through an app, a “strong senior” fitness workout guided by an app, a cold plunge in the pool, a clean body from a hot bath, audiobook, clean teeth, wood stove emptied of ash and refilled with paper and kindling, a wheelbarrow-load of firewood brought from the wood store and stacked beside the stove, yesterday’s recycling hidden in the car’s boot, last night’s laundry hung on the washing line by the fish pond, in the right order, using two pegs per item. The pegs must match: wooden with wooden, light blue plastic with light blue plastic.

This modern ballet for one aged dancer with back and other aches progresses around the property: upstairs, downstairs, outside, inside, upstairs, outside, upstairs, in and out of particular cupboards, using the appropriate, chosen tools – including particular teaspoons, particular dessert spoons, particular cereal bowls, a particular tea tray – without inelegant, sudden halts or extraneous doubling back for an overlooked detail because everything is in its place on the path through this first 90 minutes or two hours.

Then there is the drive to take the recycling to the recycling point and buy bread and beer from my friendly shops in town.

And then it is almost lunchtime.

Tickets are available now at reasonable rates for early-rising performance art enthusiasts who promise not to speak, to get in my way or draw wise conclusions about my psychological and/or physical condition. Preparation for the show begins the night before with a tidying, a loading of timed wash cycles in machines that use cheaper electricity after midnight and the cat’s evening meal. So for the full experience – including the rare but very special screaming nightmares at no extra charge – you might like to book the overnight stay.

Within these intense performance hours unexpected breakages, moved or missing utensils and people that might wander innocently across the stage with their own perfectly reasonable but – for me – unscripted interventions and destinations cause sudden irritation and frustration that is destructive if expressed.

This would appear strange and unwarranted unless a person that wasn’t simply struggling with anxiety and obsession to get everything precisely right so that everything is “done” but also – and very significantly – to get what he defends as necessary over and the space/time to write opened up even briefly. So, I must be that person.

I have never properly confronted or dealt with the pathological, chronic anxiety, the overthinking, the fear and the obsessive behaviour that has developed over the years. I have actually colluded with it and defended it as a necessary, reasonable, rational strategy to live in an insecure world ripe with the unexpected and potentially disastrous: a lesson I learned at the age of 9.

I feel a deep and frightening pain for all those children under the age of 10 in Gaza that have learnt that same lesson. Celebrate peace but thousands and thousands will never have peace.

Producing and publishing a written piece can provide a deep satisfaction. Today has been different. I am back on the journey to a personal and political confrontation. The road leads backwards and forwards. I might explore it here.