2. Peace, love and I hope you enjoy the book

Preludes to Nothing 

“Because our books ... rise or fall depending on how good we can be at escaping our own contexts."

―Chapter 1

Some seagulls live on Hamilton Island and some live at the Epping tip. Barry's characters get to score a touch up from Sir Thomas Sean and ours get to write books.

***

I would like to now introduce ourselves starting with Richard.

Richard was never a success. Because it's hard to keep a straight face when you are describing yourself as "omnivorous". But we got a book out of him, so he wasn't a total write-off.

Next came Charlie. Charlie Thredbo.

From Charlie I learned one interesting thing. I don't know much about how the brain works, but perhaps analogous to learning a new language and then one day realising that you've started thinking in it as well, at some point while I was doing Charlie I found myself thinking like him.

But, Charlie had a social conscience, so he was unsustainable in the long term. I'm amazed he lasted a whole year.

***

And then along came Giddy. Gideon Sporty Monk aka the Mufti. Giddy came along over lunch with my goddaughter as a joke. The details of that joke and a certain bet that went with it are outside our scope, but for the purposes of this book let me just say that with Giddy we got there. Which explains why I look so fine these days. Caprice, leather.

But then, the curve ball. Giddy turned out to be no good at writing books. He was too busy stealing glimpses of himself in shop windows and dropping into cafés ordering almond lattes and chatting up the waiters.

And yet I can't kill Giddy off, either. Because he's the only thing stopping me jumping back on the cheap casks of wine and sitting outside Coles with a few coins in the bottom of a coffee cup. And people bringing me food and bugging me with love talk instead of dropping a dollar in my cup.

And so, I've decided to write this one myself. My name is Danny Raime. Peace, love and I hope you enjoy the book.