Born a very young child, I quickly grew in mind and body to become a lad of tender years and, sometime later, a man. Many years after these episodes it slowly dawned on me where I had gone wrong, but by then it was much too late to go back and make amends.

I have a name to be proud of. When each part – the ‘laurence’ and the ‘timms’ – are used in conjunction they elicit Google results that are nearly, very nearly, all about me. Go on, try it now. I share the name with my father. I have it during the week, he has it at weekends.

There are lots of other things I could share with you, dear reader, about myself. The duties of fatherhood. The memories associated with the smell of exhaust fumes in a pit garage. The plasticky click-clack of a computer keyboard in 1979. The yellowed pages of broken-spined story books handed down from a relation. A phone call from a dull hotel room in Melbourne, Australia.

But…none of this really matters to anyone but me. How could I know what it is you want to know? What do you expect when you click on ‘About’? A treasure trove of stories or some PR fluff? A word from the heart or a sentence from the head.

Perhaps anything is better than nothing, so here’s something that equates to anything: I’m just this guy.

Should you harbour a desire to communicate with me, you need know only this: you may commune with me via the electrical post. My nom de mail may be constructed this: my forename (this you know) followed by a period (also known in English as a full stop, dot or decimal point depending on context) followed immediately (no spaces or gaps, mind) by my surname (which you also know). After this conjunction of characters, place an ‘at sign’ (colour and size irrelevant; any will do). Beyond the ‘at sign’ – again I issue the warning not to indulge your artistic nature by spacing out the words or letters in any direction – arrange the following letters of the alphabet: the 7th (g), the 13th (m), the 1st (a), the 9th (i) and the 12th (l). Thereafter place a second period, full stop, dot, call it what you will. You will find that your keyboard has a never-ending supply of such characters, so be not concerned with the profligate use of punctuation. Contrary to the normal rules of grammar, this second period does not denote the end of the address. No, there is yet more to come. Don’t worry; we’re almost there. The final fragment consists of the 3rd (c), the 15th (o) and the 13th (m) (again) letters of the alphabet, in the order here described.

There, you have it. If you read back your work you should find it looks like this:

laurence.timms@gmail.com

If that is the case, well done. If not then pray try again, do.

There is an alternative way of contacting me, but this involves drawing a sigil in blood-red ink on finest vellum whilst reciting an Enochian phrase I dare not repeat here, then burning the diagram in the gritty grey moments before a cold winter dawn in a fire fuelled by the shorn hair of a thrice-spurned virgin. Your call.