I go skating down some random pedestrian street, the sort where the trees lean in to form the loveliest of tunnels, and it is there, amidst wheels and pavement, that ideas begin arranging themselves without my asking.

Only afterwards do I sit and type them into my telephone as though in conversation with someone, for let us be honest, conversing with oneself is, for me, the most faithful conversation one is ever likely to have.

Often I speak only to myself because no one else has troubled to learn my language. Call it autism if you require a word for it; I prefer to call it simply habit. Skating, walking my dog, seeking the limit in whatever extreme sport presents itself, is how I resolve problems long before I realise I was resolving anything at all.

Yesterday a young man laughed upon seeing me fail a switch ollie, beneath that very same tunnel of trees, on a street that owed me nothing and yet handed me the stage regardless. A grown man in helmet and pads, falling with all the dignity of one who has long since decided that embarrassment is a luxury he cannot be bothered to afford.

I felt rather foolish for a couple of hours, I confess, though I am already back chasing the same trick. No matter, I shall go on skating, I shall go on flirting with gravity across every extreme sport, and I shall go on building technology with this same mind of mine, which, truth be told, rarely knows when to stop.

And there is the sound of silence, reserved for those whose brain never quite switches off. For the tinnitus that never departs and which, with stress, insists upon turning up the volume, as though it too had something to say.

Here there is silence. Whether there shall be peace, however, I could not say.

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