Horrible bloody taste in my mouth. It kept me awake all night, and there’s no point staying put in bed like that, is there? I nipped downstairs round about three, made myself a jam sandwich and a cup of tea. Mind you, I got up again at a quarter to six as usual, so I had a touch of breakfast. Then slept in the chair till eleven. My mind is all over the shop now. And I swear I ate that bacon raw.

I was half way up the mountain when I thought – only then mind you – I never cooked that bacon. I’m almost sure of it.

It still tastes bad, my tongue. Like it’s black. A black tongue means you’re a liar doesn’t it? It did when I was at school anyway. You had to stick your tongue out for teacher to see, one way or the other. A healthy red tongue meant you were a good boy. A black one – and you were telling porkies. Simple as that. Although I could never see our own tongues to check. I got all cross-eyed trying. I never trusted what teacher said he saw. How could your tongue be saying you had lied when you knew you hadn’t?

Anyway, that’s the sort of thing I talk about when the doctors call by. Raw bacon. Black tongues. Just to keep them on their toes. Then they say, ‘But Mr Owens, surely you could taste the difference?’ As if it’s the end of the world.

They come here to look for proof that I’m losing my grip. They ask, ‘What do you know about the River Dee on such-and-such date.’ That sort of thing. Only trying to trick me. And they poke about. They ask to see my ‘faeces’, of all things. That’s what they say. ‘Your faeces, George. How are they?’ It was my tongue they wanted when I was a boy – now faeces. A step down in the world, don’t you think? But they want evidence and they never let off. Like bloody ferrets.

So I give them evidence. I’m a swimmer, I tell them. I go to the Dee in my swimming trunks to give this body of mine a once over; an MOT type of thing.

‘When?’ they ask.

‘When nobody’s looking,’ I say. I tell you, one of these days, some fool will accuse me of making the world a more dangerous place.

They tell me I shouldn’t play with fire. That I should just keep to myself. Do without love, that’s what they say, if I’m hell-bent on living like this. Plenty of men have lived without love but none without water. I’ve had that on my mind recently. But what did I ever do, other than swim a bit and fight for what’s right?