I was sat writing something in a book at the time, with all my work associates. Furtively, I started glancing around at all the other people around me. I silently closed the book and without even saying a word to anyone, not even the guy I was working with, got up, walked out and never went back. They're probably still wondering where I am.

Thoughts stormed my mind. Strange system we have, I reflected, that educates us so well, but pays such scant regard to what we do with all that education. Eleven years of intense enlightenment but complete indifference as to purpose! Everywhere in normality we find madness, of course. But to treat something as important as a human life so flippantly, beggars belief. So I would pause to ponder. And ponder I did for many months, much to the protestations of all and sundry. I would sit and think. Walk and think. Lie down in the park and stare at the sky, and think.

By sheer coincidence, six months later, I started going out with the girl who had walked by the window that day. She was a local glamour queen and drop dead gorgeous. Inspiration if ever there was. So of course I would take tons of snaps of her. One day she said to me "A girlfriend of mine wants you to take some photographs of her, for a model agency." I was astonished. "Don't be absurd!" I laughed "My camera only cost a fiver!" Suddenly I noticed she had a face as serious as stone and she countered "But your pictures are great and they are different!" I nonchalantly dismissed this. I had heard it before from my friends and thought they were just being nice. However, I would come to realise that my girlfriend was being sincere.