Don't be so

Here, Damien Hirst and Paul Fryer have concocted an acute distillation of manners, cultures and prejudices, a polemic even, that reflects a light suffused with a powerful disinterest, a disturbing "sine qua non".

Drinking, fooling with toxic substances, loving and losing and loving again, railing against authority, sinking ones's head in one's hands at the ordinariness of life's decisions, these are but part of "Don't Be So..." The text is also a book of love and curious humility.

Paul Fryer deconstructs accepted commonplace sensibilities that make you wonder how you ever got dressed in the morning, let alone go out in the world. "I've had other dilemmas, but I do find it a bit embarrassing to talk about the writing of poems.

I remember my first effort at primary school; I was nine.

It was a cheerful composition entitled "The End of the World".

Funnily enough I still know it by heart".