You feel the spiral, the tension, the beast grabbing your guts and your upper arms, your shoulders and neck. You are coiled, taut, adrenal-ready for nothing.

It has sprung itself on you from nowhere again, the nasty cunt, this freak, vice-like sucker of surety that squeezes your spine and holds your thoughts to ransom. Logic is sequestered behind some opaque scrim, shadowy and inaccessible. Doubt is a descending fog: anxiety’s sneakiest henchman.