Such words are prone to make me lift my laptop and smash it to the ground.  I don’t care what qualities you are looking for. I don’t know what your views are and I’m unlikely to find out.

I still get these aberrant moods when I think I might like to write another book. Or publish a few more irreverent articles in worthy trading magazines. Or write a column or two for the Financial Times.

I still get these deviant days when I believe that “society” and “people” and “engagement” are where it is at.

Yesterday was one such day. I cursorily looked up a few editors at dull periodicals and almost convinced myself to send them one of my usual off beat and ranting diatribes.

For that is what I have become. A “ranter”.  A dealer in diatribe.  A voice of vociferation. Harold Harangue, me.  Tommy Tirade, Ronald Rhetoric.

Which is why I will stick to my silly little blog. It may be that no one reads the outpourings of an outraged soul but at least they are mine.

You see, the time has come for me to give up. To admit that this is a world into which I do not fit, nor ever have.

I wish the world well, and all its peoples. May they prosper and survive. May their happiness increase.

Lest these words sound the outpourings of a deluded and depressed mind, let me say urgently that they are not.

I am disillusioned not delusional.  And while it is true that the Noonday Demon never truly lets me rest in peace, accedie has not been too much in evidence for some years.

Nothing I have to say would be of any interest to the Financial Times, since I am no longer a believer in the economic model to which they still subscribe.  I believe in Gross National Happiness and don’t give a stuff about Gross National Product.

The Investors Chronicle (for whom I wrote the occasional article) and their readers are believers in the fundamental analysis of financial markets. They give credit even to charting and technical analytical hogwash. Not so me, I fear. And no one wants to be told they are peddling nonsense.

There is always the possibility that I am just plain wrong of course. That I, not them, am the madman. That they are the keeper; the arbiter of truth and financial goodness.  And I, the inmate.

But I think not.

I am sitting in absolute silence, bar the cooing of a pigeon on a bright and dry and achingly beautiful summer’s morning. I am looking out on Tudor gables and fruit trees, grass and wild flowers.

I am going Down Deal for coffee and a haircut.  And then to lie on the beach at Sandwich and imagine the generations of merchants coming and going down the long gone Wantsum Channel.

I have become a dreamer; a seeker of truth perhaps.  A soul who yearns to fly above mere mortality to some more pleasant land. To Narnia perhaps; or Middle Earth. To see nyads and dryads and the spirits of streams; to parley with wizards and goblins, elves and pixies.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate but not by very much.  The world is too beautiful for the Financial Times. The universe has more to offer.

So back to where we began. My prospective publishers can seek whatever qualities they choose. I am seeking rather different ones and so I think, alas, our paths are unlikely to cross.