I have been a dreamer for forty-two years. Sometimes I dream at night, more often during the day. But one particular morning I woke up in a sweat, having slept heavily and sluggishly. All that night, as I did so often, I had been trying to escape into my dream, but this time it was hopeless. My poor body, heavy with the residue of so many rich and delectable sauces, was so well covered that it weighed me to the ground, where dreams cannot take flight. Round my waist, the centimetres had covered a considerable distance since I was that young first communicant in the old photograph, with the knobbly knees, hollow cheeks, sticking-out ears — So this was what my occupation had brought me to.