‘Things are getting curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice, and I can relate. The world around me contrives each day to be a more confounding place; or perhaps I am becoming more confounding to it, and I find myself so often standing in that gap I have been told my whole life to mind.

As but a singular example, someone this morning asked me if I wanted chilli sauce in my coffee. Yes, you read that correctly. Now it is likely just me, but I cannot imagine a more foul flavour combination than chilli-coffee-latté, but apparently the horrified recoil I gave the barista took him by surprise. ‘But everybody loves it,’ he said, protesting. And he might have a point. A few weeks ago, I was offered chilli vodka. And Sainsbury’s sells chilli flavoured chocolate. Chocolate.

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

Twitter is no better. Having followed various literary types and as many of my readers as I can keep up with, Twitter attempts here and there to suggest new ‘tweeps’ I might wish to follow. Amongst the recent have been, surprisingly, ‘Erotic Desires Massage’ and the fairly ominously monickered ‘Thrustworthy.’ I suppose it is only in a generation where 50 Shades of Grey could outsell Proust that a social media engine could presume ‘Thrustworthy’ is a natural follow-on to ‘Dante’ and ‘Neil Gaimon.’

But it’s not just the social media that’s gone odd: real social interactions have got stranger, too. Firstly, to set the scene here, I should point out that I succumb to a certain stereotype: I do enjoy taking my computer with me to a little pub garden or tea room patio and writing there, watching the people go by, enjoying the background noises, all whilst plotting the downfall of the Library of Alexandria or tormenting the modern world with ancient Gnostics. And this habit occasionally sparks up the odd conversation, such as this one, which I had only a week ago:

Me: (Mumbles to self whilst typing.)

Strange Person: What are you doing, there?

Me: Just a bit of writing.

Strange Person: Writing? You write books?

Me: Yes, by chance. I do.

Strange Person: What sort of ‘books’? (Placing a strangely conspiratorial emphasis on the last word, as if to suggest we might be recorded.)

Me: Historical conspiracy thrillers, mostly.

Strange Person: (Pauses) Are you Dan Brown?

Me: No. I am not. I am not Dan Brown. (Drinks heavily from pint.)

Strange Person: Are you sure? Cause he writes that sort of thing.

Me: Does he?

Strange Person: Yeah. I think his books have even sold like a thousand copies. You sure you’re not Dan Brown?

The thing that makes this conversation so absolutely absurd is that it actually took place, almost word-for-word as I have recollected it.

Perhaps the world is just getting odder and odder. And now that I’ve had my custom-made ‘I’m not Dan Brown and I don’t want chilli with that’ t-shirts done up, it’s time I contribute to the phenomenon.