THE RELUCTANT DICTATOR

Dear Readers,

We have been live for ten months. As we approach the year mark, we ask that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, get value out of it, and believe in paying for good writing, you consider becoming a paid subscriber.

We are so close to our goal - if you sign up today, we might just reach it.

Monthly memberships are now priced at £5.00

And yearly memberships are £50.00

My dispatches will always be free and open to everyone. I am unable to use my hands and I am writing, via dictation, with the help of my family.

Please, if you have any QUESTIONS for me, post them in the comment box.

Mornings are the worst, if it could be said that there is indeed a worst in all this. The whole thing is terrible, though there are some pleasures, mostly to do with other people. But it is in the morning, when I wake up and begin to become conscious of myself, a bit like Gregor Samsa at the beginning of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, that I realise that what happened to me is real.

Waking up, my body, after a night spent in one position, begins to shift. My first movement may well be a shudder, during which my whole body, briefly, goes into spasm, as if I have received an electric shock. I realise that my hands and feet are not really my own, that they seem to be injured, unfamiliar objects. I can’t move them as I expect to; it is like, what we call in common parlance, your body going to sleep.