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It took Jeremy Crawford a good chunk of the twentieth century and almost two decades of the twenty-first to get sane. At least that’s how he thought of it. Others—his wannabe actress wife, Sophie, his ageing parents, Gloria and Ron, his colleagues at the bank, fellow members of the squash club, assorted relatives and acquaintances—didn’t. They all thought he’d lost his mind. Why else, on the spur of the moment, would a person quit his lucrative position as HAA (Head Assets Analyst) in the City and on the evening of the very same day, decamp from the sumptuous interior of his multi-million-pound mansion to a disused barn at the foot of the thousand-square-metre “garden” to sleep on a palliasse with a pig called Pete and “consider matters”? To do that a person had to have lost his marbles, reckoned Jeremy’s relatives and friends.

Okay, a minor aberration for a day or two due to stress at work they might have understood. Such was frequently the outcome of high-pressure jobs these days. But once Jeremy had been in his barn for two whole weeks and refused to come out, they were pretty sure he’d lost the plot altogether. Food—he insisted on nuts and berries only—and water had to be left outside by Barry, the gardener, and were gathered in only when Barry was safely off talking to his trees and flowers. Jeremy trusted Barry. Apart from him, nobody was allowed within range, physically, telephonically, or cyber-technologically. It was Sophie who reported watching from their bedroom window as he tossed his three beloved smartphones, the ones he’d once termed his “lifesavers,” into the stream bordering the estate and waving at them as they sank out of sight. “Bye, bye. Glug, glug, gluggity and fuck you forever,” Sophie reported him having screamed as a full moon rose.

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