Once again, Donald Trump has negotiated a dramatic peace deal between warring factions in the sparsely populated region that is the inside of his own tiny mind.

That takes me back. Happier, more innocent times.

Where other people have a moral compass, Trump has a calculator.

Keep your spirits up. “There is in the worst misfortune the best of chances for a happy change.” (Euripides)

If I had a bitcoin for every time someone tried to explain bitcoins to me I’d have a whole lot of bitcoins, whatever the fuck they are.

I guess it’s all down to the inscrutable algorithms. But please do read the book.

It’s World Mental Health Day and if you’re fortunate enough to be in good mental health today please show your gratitude by refusing to stigmatise those who happen not to be.

We regret to inform you that the Nobel Peace Prize is antifa.

A shadowy network of hedgehogs and owls, operating at the highest levels of the British establishment.

Time travel is possible. America has just returned to the seventeenth century. Enjoy your public executions, and say hello to Goody Proctor.

The woke brigade are going to put pictures of hedgehogs on our banknotes! I remember when our currency was made of human teeth, each one engraved with the likeness of a hero such as Alfred the Great, Dick Whittington, Barbara Windsor or Jack the Ripper. This country is finished.

Happy birthday to Brian Blessed. Not many people know that Brian Blessed is a highly skilled horse whisperer, but he has to stand in the next field.

Time travel is possible. America has just returned to the seventeenth century. Enjoy your public executions, and keep an eye on Goody Proctor.

On World Octopus Day remember that an octopus feels pain. Its heart can be broken. All three of them. When an octopus is attacked, and squirts out ink, it writes a poem in the water, and escapes while its attacker is enraptured by the poem’s poignant cry of yearning for lost love.

Another year older, another year apter.

Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in 1849. Doom. Plague. Despair. Madness. Creeping existential horror. He would have loved 2026.

Delighted to have made it onto this shortlist. Many congratulations to my fellow writers and to the winner.

Hurrah

I must confess that when I was younger I expected the future to have more robot butlers and jetpacks, and less fascism and plague, but life is full of surprises.