"…And not a shred of sentiment anywhere."  'Banjo' Nick, Kludge Bridge.

Recently diagnosed by a digital application from the Polytechnic of Kludge Bridge, the previously deceased and resurrected Josef K. has been placed firmly on a spectrum somewhere North of the Watford Gap, but south of all normative patterns of conduct.

Nobody knows anything. It's true. Truer still is that everybody knows the nothings add up to something eventually. And yet, it is the unusual that stands out from the crowded centre, as per. Standard.Appeased as a punch-drunk fighter, who this late in the day--nearly twenty-five past eight in the post meridian, or 2024 in the Common Era--Kludge never expected to be entered in the off-the-wall sports day event at all, let alone medal. His shorn sentiments are akin to a Paralympian awaiting his never much vaunted bronze for shadow boxing.

K. now intuits how the first person to climb Everest in jeans and flip flops must have felt. Relieved in the extreme temperatures to have finally ascended the summit, but at a loss vis-à-vis the impending descent without the aid of a safety network, suitably warm clothing and a Thermos of hot toddies.

Last seen mouthing off sweary invectives to Randoms outside the M&S Food Hall, his caddy and co-pilot, in the form of the mentalist elf, is self-evidently no longer fit for purpose. The last thing K. needs momentarily is the impulsive imp toppling the whole Himalayan Jenga over the floor of Costa's in Tesco's where Kludge daily erects his makeshift corner office.

The superego, as always, can go and un-fuck itself without any assistance from the diagnosed, but the sheer drop-off has left K. with a disturbing clarity of vision, unfettered access to emotional rawness and a sense that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as the English think the French say.

Diagnostics have been compounded by the essential absence of self-medicaments, cannabinoid clouds, comfortable cognacs and a total climbdown from off of the Russian Mountain of glucose roller-coasterisation and mood swinging. All excellent omissions in their own way, but leaving much in the way of re-adjustments.

Out goes the Detached Retina Theory of Aloneness, whereby - as in the shape of an elongated eye - the first dozen years of social life on Earth are characterised by the detachment of solitude; a detachment thrown up against the wall of the gymnasium for an unsatisfying, but urgent knee trembler, once puberty kicks you in the cojones and calls your mother a whore; and the last decade and a half of existence being once again reduced to de-toxified aloneness, now that everyone you ever knew has fucked off and died, or worked out what an unbearable twat you really really are.

The low background hubber bubber of the stranded bag lady is no longer the unbewitching banter he once took it for. Now that he knows. K. can no longer claim exemption from the calm of the silent floor of Kludge Bridge's Central Library - where no food or drink is permitted and where all mobile devices are to be extinguished, but where nutter mutter within care-in-the-community (sic) guidelines is acceptable. Perversely, his mental elf has suffered as a result of the boundary changes to Kludge's internal but public monologue. In short, like a bagless bag lady, he's really not sure what he's supposed to do now.

The Keto helps, with its obsessive dietary requirements, its stiff regimen of order, and its timed and tracked consumption. But there's no release any more, no jumping off the deep end when the fancy takes. No rolling in the mud, downwards, ever downwards, flip flops flying, headless over heels till the mental elf shows up to provide context, containment and someone or something else to blame.

Neither can the Horoscope Theory of Mental Elf Diagnosis help him much anymore. While you might think you act like a typical bloody Scorpion, you can clearly also self-identify as a Sagittarian on the cusp, or else a classic Cancerian crab, or even your average Libran, for God's sake, making the whole Who do you think you are? game an utter joke - like the Boggle you played on that caravan holiday, using a broken egg timer and half the letter dice tippexed out by the hyper-active kids from the big blue tent by the camp shop.

It is the detail, the information overload, the lure of the lexicography, the constant white noise of consent, the compliance and control by the uninformed, unguarded and uncontained that freaks K. the fuck out. The problem with the diagnosis in a word is: finality. It is the end. That's it. Nowhere else for the fiction to go. The fact of the matter is he has nothing to say.

A previous Kludge loved to speak English for its own sake. He talked in Spanish with gusto, and always parlez-vous'ed in under-pronounced French just to piss them off. All could be passed off as down to his mental elf. Whether it was histrionically disordered, neurotically schizoid or borderline Radio Rentals, there was always an arrow pointed away from him towards the door of altered perception over which he didn't have a fixed sign.

At the present moment in time, as the soccer punditry puts it, knowing what he knows now with as much probable certainty as anyone can know anything, puts the lad under pressure, Gary. No more can the suppressed sentiment escape like steam from a loco locomotive locked in a tiny circle circumscribed by the fat controller for Kludge simply to point at his harmful, naughty but playful imp and say:

- Sorry folks. It's my mental elf. What can I say?

Now he can say. Now he must say: it's not the anarchy that is to blame, it's my bloody diagnosis. And so it is that, as he enters the seventh decade this Hallowed Evening, the Kludge has been un-kludged, the impish mischief bagged & binned, the bag lady pacified and the way forward clarified. Anarchy is Order. But then, again so is Autism.