You Have Wasted Your Life

On spending some time in prison for fraud

What excuse can we afford a man who, taking monthly payments from some thirty-something patrons, produces no product for their dégustation?

It is said that the greater part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, and that he may turn over a whole library in order to produce a single article; that his patron, while he receives nothing, pays instead for that period of gestation.

All this is true, but so long an absence from The Pedestrian has a more substantial excuse, and it is that I was for almost two months imprisoned for state benefit fraud.

I detailed some months ago how I went about this, and in doing so sealed my own fate. The article was not long after discovered by my Employment Coach who, morally outraged by my crime, and offended by the unflattering portrait which I had made her, swiftly reported me to the authorities.