Just another load of dragon balls.

2018. Me: *completes - in humble opinion - best book written so far, sits back self-indulgently and presses print on manuscript to send out to beta-readers.*

Ex-cop beta reader, two weeks later: “Well, it’s very nice and all that but…um…nothing happens.”

Nothing happens?!!

Two lost souls, bruised and broken by the disappointments of life, thrown together by chance in middle-age, discovering sanctuary when they believed all hope was lost: nothing?

It’s a beacon in the darkness; proof positive that it’s possible to fall in love with a life you can attain if you’re prepared to take a chance, rather than simply wishing you occupied an alternate reality and were someone else entirely.

I take issue with those who contend an everyday life is boring. How can what 99% of us experience every minute of every day have somehow lost its ability to entertain and uplift? It can’t be nothing; surely, it’s everything? It’s to be recognised, recorded, celebrated - because why else are we all breaking our necks to get through every day?

The delicious potential of something utterly realistic, completely possible, not at all difficult to imagine for yourself, or your neighbour, or that chap you see at the bus stop every day, has to be infinitely more satisfying than yet another poxy wizard.

I grant you, fantasy is the very definition of escapism, and it has its place - but let it not be the only place. Please leave a little room on our bookshelves, our movie streams, our TV schedules for the heartwarmingly plausible. Personally, I’ll take that any day over yet another CGI orc being pummelled with the wet end of a dragon’s severed testicle by a rippling elf with plaits that’d make Heidi jealous.

If you’ve had your corners knocked off by a few of life’s trials; if you’re struggling beneath the weight of unremitting cheerlessness; if you need your faith in the healing power of one human’s selfless care for another restored, give this a go: www.annieholder.com/First-Sight/

However, if you don’t feel truly complete unless you’re watching a serial killer skin his latest victim whilst devouring your Deliveroo, or voyeuristically revelling in the torment of an ITV mother whose child has been abducted by the estate’s resident weirdo in grubby cagoule (why do they always wear a cagoule?), or savouring the slaughter of random nymph in floaty nightie by a disgruntled dwarf in chain mail, don’t bother. Nothing happens.