As he sat on his Persian rug gorging on chocolate cake at half past seven in the morning, a thought occurred to him. It was a simple thought, but an intense one:

Why did he have to go to work?

He took another forkful and delivered it to his gob in one seamless movement. What a cake. He was having a great morning. Clearly, this was why people were always raving about mornings. He could see it now.

He picked up his phone and dialled his boss. She was an average boss, but her indifference to quality work made things less stressful than they needed to be. Even so, having to leave the house at all was inconvenient, especially not being in the mood and all that. In truth, he was sick of moods. They never really aligned with his way of seeing the world and they never seemed to get him anywhere. For this, he blamed his German Shepherd and the teachings of the Old Testament.

“Fräulein Selina Jones,” he said into the phone suddenly. “No work for me today. And maybe not even tomorrow. I’m having too fine a time doing as I please.” Then he hung up and made for the fridge. He retrieved another slice of choccy sponge and headed for the garden. The sun was out in force and the birds were chirping and there he sat gorging on more chocolate cake. A peaceful indifference was moving through his entire being. It was both physical and spiritual. This is meditation, he thought. Finally, I’m doing it right, he told himself as he chewed. Some would say he looked like an animal in the wild, in its natural habitat, feasting on its latest prey. Perhaps he was. It was irrelevant that this prey had been manufactured en masse in a factory somewhere near Sheffield. He was satiated, and that meant he was succeeding.

He reached into the top pocket of his pyjama shirt and pulled out a pen and leather-bound notebook. Opening it to a random page, Friedrich began to scribble:

The purpose of life: to get from one moment to the next with as little inconvenience as possible.

He snapped the notebook shut and smiled as the sun radiated onto his skin. He pictured himself with a tan. A tan couldn’t do any harm to his hopes of successfully reproducing, he thought. Indeed, he was getting somewhere. It was all falling into place. He licked his fingers clean of the choccy sponge, wiped some crumbs from his big moustache, and let out a sigh of deep satisfaction. That’s when he knew for sure that he was seeing with absolute clarity for the very first time and that he, Friedrich Nietzsche, would one day be taken more seriously than his neighbour, Todd.