Belt. Braces.

I'll admit, it was quite novel when he turned up in the village.

It wasn't the London thing. We get folk coming up from down that way all the time. It wasn't the writer thing either, as after all, he was just a wannabe back then. It wasn't the craziness; we're quite used to that, (this is Norfolk after all). It was the blackness that did it.

I mean, young black guy playing bowls with octogenarian Tory voters. There's a certain humour there. Young black guy keeping chickens and perving over vegetable delivery ladies. It's funny. I would read about it, for a while, and maybe you'd hear about it on the radio. Like in that slot before six o'clock on Radio Five with that grumpy old bastard Peter Allen. No, second thoughts, that's too popular. It would probably turn up on Radio 4, after Farming Today, at 5.45 AM.

But the point is that "black guy in white world doing strange things" is inherently funnier than "just another white guy playing bowls for a bit". Call it a commentary on modern society, if you wish.

But, over the years, people around here have come to accept him. He is now a part of the scenery. Accepted, if not loved.

Which is why I was surprised to see Jonny B at the village pub, wearing a pair of braces he claimed were from the Black and White Minstrel Show. When it was pointed out to him that this show was a bastion of the kind of racism he has fought all of his life to overcome, he just smiled, and muttered something about it being post-ironic.

Perhaps, we will never truely understand him.

Deja vu. Again.

Close-contact observation can be a risky and often dangerous business. It can be tiring, it can be laborious, and, as I have just discovered, it can be demeaning.

I have donned a new costume in my pursuit of the nefarious Jonny B. Thanks to the boffins at MI5, and in no small part to the action blockbuster Face/Off, (Cage, Travolta, et al), I have managed to swap both my face and my body with that of a small child. I have kidnapped the second spawn of the target, and am now deep undercover in the lion's den.

The surgery was not without its failings. The drugs they have given me do not even scratch the surface of the pain. In addition, I appear to have lost many of my fine motor skills. I am screaming for most of the night, and pooing my diaper in the day. Mine is not a comfortable existence, although the poo does go squish when I sit down, which can be comforting. I am forced to play with a multitude of children's toys. There are trucks and swords and guns, but I am keen to play with the dollys, just to annoy Jonny.

There is endless Peppa Pig. I am George. My sister is Peppa. My daddy is Daddy Pig. There is an uncanny resemblance, both phsyical and mental.

I am afraid I am losing my ability to think like a grown-up. It is a bit like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, (Pitt, et al). The more I poo and eat and poo and play and eat and poo and play and scream and eat and poo and poo and scream, the more I forget how to form those things that you use to talk with, you know, the things that come out of that thing that is in the middle of your face. I will count to ten to get my bearings.

One, two, three, four, three, four, two, three.

I must get out, make a break for that thing over there that leads to the outside world. The thing that is made of the same stuff as my train. It is hard. I banged my head on it the other day. It hurt. I screamed.

I have pooed again.

I am me, I am not George. Am I George?

I am George.

Oink. Dinosaur.