As A Kid, I Didn't Read A

All The Other Children At My School Are Stupid. Except I'm Not Meant To Call Them Stupid, Even Though This Is What They Are.

Indeed, I Am Repeatedly Astonished By The Number Of Really Good Writers Who Understand Human Beings So Well On Paper But Don't Know How To Deal With Them In Real Life.

I Went To Boarding School And Then I Went To Oxford, And I Know How Easy It Is For Certain Groups Of People To Become Wholly Insulated From Ordinary Life.

One Person Looks Around And Sees A Universe Created By A God Who Watches Over Its Long Unfurling, Marking The Fall Of Sparrows And Listening To The Prayers Of His Finest Creation. Another Person Believes That Life, In All Its Baroque Complexity, Is A Chemical Aberration That Will Briefly Decorate The Surface Of A Ball Of Rock Spinning Somewhere Among A Billion Galaxies. And The Two Of Them Could Talk For Hours And Find No Great Difference Between One Another, For Neither Set Of Beliefs Make Us Kinder Or Wiser.

Then He Asked If I Didn’t Like Things Changing. And I Said I Wouldn’t Mind Things Changing If I Became An Astronaut, For Example, Which Is One Of The Biggest Changes You Can Imagine, Apart From Becoming A Girl Or Dying.