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i'm starting to write this at 6.30 on monday 27th september. it's raining outside, but i'm safe in my room - the room where, during the day, i work as a software engineer. through the wall to my right, from the chapel hall next door, i can dimly hear thumping that might be an aerobics session. through the door behind me come sounds from the street - out house is a terrace with no garden, facing directly onto a small, but not deathly quiet, street - cars swishing through the water, doors slamming, the occasional shout.

it's getting dark, but i can type in the glow from my screen. besides, i don't want the lights on - i don't want the house to show that i am here.

when there's a particularly loud bang i can go through to the other room, upstairs, that faces the street. we're decorating, so there's no curtain, and i can see down to outside our front door.

across the street is a - there are children shouting outside, so maybe the rain has stopped - a skip full of clods of heavy, sticky, red earth. the children are still outside, shouting. someone is working on a building across the road, converting it into flats.

in about an hour's time it will have been a week since i started to go slightly mad. mad is a strong word, and i must emphasise the slightly - i am aware, now, of what is happening, so i am surely getting better. and i am writing this to get the whole thing out of my system. i am dumping all this shit out of my head, out through my fingers, out into the internet. when i've finished typing i'll load this up to my web pages and, as people make connections and read it, it will leak way, dissipating down wires across the world, leaving me alone.

although i am getting better, i have not put the light on. and i hope it will rain. no-one likes to be in the rain.

a week ago today, at about this time, someone banged on the door just as i was going downstairs. i opened the door, annoyed at the noisy banging, and frowned at a fat boy, half way across the street. i asked him what he wanted. he didn't want anything. he looked at his friends - had he knocked on the door? no.

i'm a loner. which beck song is that in? it's never bothered me, and other people seem to understand. i don't have any good, close friends - except my partner, and maybe the people i work with (although these days, working from home, i don't see them that much). of course, i meet people. pauli invites people round. i can make conversation, make people laugh - i have a good line in self mockery.

anyway, so i'm a loner. i've never been in a group of boys, on the street, laughing at the foolish, angry adult who doesn't know what to do. i've never been in that world. groups of men scare me - surrendering to a group mind disgusts me.

i don't think i'm so far out of society i'm odd. although i've started to notice that there aren't many people like me - in fact we form a little group and can recognise each other in the street. thin men, often unshaved, with a cycle, old clothes. hair severely short or in a pony tail. thin faces. trainers or boots. but i exaggerate - i'm only on the border, where i've always been, hanging around the edge, accepted but not enveloped.

i closed the door. a few minutes later there was a hard crack as something hit the window.

i wasn't wearing shoes.

i looked for some shoes.

i pulled on an old pair of trainers and tied the laces. my mind was in a little hard knot.

there was no-one in the street, except at the corner, where a couple of youths were looking back at me.

i knocked one down as i reached them and tried to kick another.

he got up and came back. a mess of pushing, shouting bodies. a wild lunge of a fist that went past me to the left and, finally, some kind of stand-off, with me moving slowly back down the street, backwards.

i turned round and walked back, a stone skittered past.

i'm starting to recognise the bang of a car door. filtered through the house it loses its clunk, sounds like an impact. but a real impact would be harder. that was just a car door and i haven't gone to the window to check.

what had i done? as i came back inside i started to realise what had happened. the window was ok. i had just attacked - ineffectually, but with obvious intent - a group of school children half my age. and they had been angry with me because - as they had been shouting - they hadn't done it. and i believed them. the fat boy wasn't there with his smug face. they were angry at the injustice and it felt real. i was shaking and i felt, more than anything else, foolish.

i found them down the same street, maybe ten minutes later. they said they were coming to get me - they'd found a few small sticks - and when i apologised one asked for money but another, the one i pushed to the ground, accepted my hand.

back in the house, i found i'd walked dog shit into the carpet. i cleaned it up.

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that he shook my hand makes me smile. we were playing at being men. it's so silly and so important.

writing this is helping. i am still listening, but there's a slight peace. not as much as saturday, but it's there. saturday was when i realised i had been slightly mad for five days.

i'm obsessive. it's partly why i am good at what i do. there are some very clever people out there - at college i met many much cleverer than me - but i've met very few who aren't messed up in one way or another. they - and me too - are not extreme, but there's normally something there, something that's pushing, something that can't be quite switched off.

and something runs in the family - an inky dark thread in our dna. my mother was depressed as i went through my teens. my dad has a bad temper. my grandad attacked my grandma with a knife.

i'm not a violent man. i could offer reasons why i attacked those children, but they're not good excuses. i am ashamed. i am glad i did no harm - that i know of - and relieved they did not hurt me.

but through most of the last week i thought i was hunted.

i thought i was being hunted down and persecuted. they were outside my house. they were talking about me. they were making plans. they were planning to break me, to make me scream, taunt me, humiliate me. they were going to get me.

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it's 7.20 - my witching hour - they'll come soon if they're coming tonight.

when pauli came in - we're back at last monday, after the fight, the scuffle - she came in late, after her pottery class, i told her what had happened. i think i cried. i told her how stupid i had felt, that i had rung home - the first time in years i have turned to them for help - hoping to speak to my dad, hoping he could explain the anger and the violence and the stupidity of it all. and how he wasn't in. and how i had sat there, waiting for another stone to be thrown, waiting for her.

how did i become the victim? was it guilt that made me so scared?

each night i sit waiting for a stone to hit.

i am going to get up and turn on the light. it's difficult to see the keys. how can i write that i am getting better if i dare not show a light?

ok, the light's on.

the window here, that faces out to the back, has no curtains. we've just finished painting this room and anyway, from where i sit, all i can see is the wall of the chapel hall. so now the room is full of light and then, to my right, there is the black space of the window and then outside and it is all cut off and remote.

each night i waited for another stone. either sitting downstairs, watching the tv with pauli, or up here, working on my silly programs.

each time there was a noise i would go to the steps and look down, call pauli, ask here whether she knew what the noise was.

the front door has a peep-hole. one of those lenses at the end of a tube that pierces the door and lets you see out, sideways, into the street. i used it. i used it again and again.

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thursday evening pauli found a lump in her breast and i was more worried about the noises in the street.

tuesday and wednesday i had sat and listened and there had been nothing.

a lot happened thursday.

i decided to go out in the evening. there was a talk at the local museum - someone who had written a book on mapping the mind. she described how, when you see someone, there are two parallel processes in the brain. on the outside, where the conscious processing is done, bits of the brain responsible for faces, names, images all switch on. on the inside, where the subconscious processing takes place, the emotions associated with that person are kicked around. everything comes together in your frontal lobes and clunk - you know that person and you know that you know that person. how do you know? you just know.

if the subconscious route screws up you see the same face, but something feels wrong. you'll do anything to rationalize it. you'll claim that aliens have abducted the person and are occupying their mind. that person is not who they look like and you just know it.

when i came home they'd thrown clumps of dirt against the door.

as i'd come in i'd noticed that the key hole cover was twisted. had they been spying too?

i tried to comfort pauli. the lump was small. i knew they would come back, and now they had. she would make an appointment to see the doctor tomorrow. bits of earth were still stuck to the door.

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friday, the same.

hadn't there been something in the newspaper about jack straw passing legislation to ban "neighbours from hell"? some reasons i should object - a liberal, intelligent, rational, educated person like me? i wanted that legislation. i wanted it to protect me from the children that were planning to throw stones and mud and dirt and pain.

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saturday, some time in the afternoon, something suddenly relaxed. it's a cheesy image, but it felt as though the sun had broken through heavy clouds: i was being silly.

it was such a relief.

now, i'm getting better. ok, there are noises in the street - as i write this i can hear a group of people laughing, and i am not comfortable. but i am no longer feeling sick with fear. it's almost 8, almost exactly a week since this started. they are still outside. they will either pass, or they won't. if they throw something i will ignore it. they will get bored. they are only kids.

i've tried to be brutally honest - the timings and dates are correct and i am indeed ashamed of what i did. i have never had an experience quite like this before, and while it scares me a little, i also find it interesting that someone i know quite well - me - and who i've always considered pretty level headed, can become significantly paranoid.

please don't think i am either asking for sympathy or making light of other people's much more serious problems. as i said, this was written to help clear my head, and it has, i think, helped. i hope it is also an interesting read - apart from a little editing to sort out the occasional typo and accidental repetition (so yes, all the rest are on purpose and no, i'm not the world's greatest stylist) it's just as it came out.

finally, if anyone locally should read this, put two and two together, and think me a complete nutter - my apologies. as i hope is clear, i'm finally realising it was just a bunch of kids messing around...