About the Author

Why the title Into Slumber, I hear you ask? Apart from its being the sort of question an intelligent person would naturally want the answer to, I mean. Because I am vain, and Into Slumber is an anagram of my name, Simon Butler. I did consider Noble Truism, but it sounded too arrogant, even for someone as arrogant as I am. Mint Roubles seemed too mercenary; Nubile Storm was too suggestive of an intemperate adolescent. Bromine Lust implied possibilities pertaining to sexual chemistry I preferred to avoid, as did Molest Bruin, with its hint of bestiality. Sternum Boil was tempting, but rather medical, as was Bile Nostrum. Numbers Toil made me wince, as I am loath to exert physical effort. It was this sentiment that led me to Into Slumber, for I am both indolent and somnolent. So now you know. So much for the title; what about the contents?

It all started back in the bitterly cold winter of December ’03. I was at home, huddled over my computer for warmth, when I was contacted by a woman whom I’d met online a few weeks previously. Being a gentleman I shall refer to her simply as ‘Madame X’. She invited me to try something she called ‘blogging’ at a website operating under the dubious name of Journalspace. I am not a fool. I had heard of what could happen to naïve elderly men on the internet. I had no wish to be robbed of what little remained of my dignity. I approached the site with caution, and created a blog – or ‘journal’ as they called it – using the nom de plume ‘Simon’ to preserve my anonymity. Though I had led a sheltered life, I felt I was ready for any perversion human beings were capable of.

But I was in for a shock. I had been expecting ‘blogging’ to be something reminiscent of what I had experienced at Caning, the prestigious English public school I had attended as a boy. But this took such practices to a whole new level. It was a place where people could write whatever they liked and be exposed to public humiliation when it was published online. And it was free!

Excited, I named my new blog Dreams, Reflections and Tales – for reasons that now escape me – and began to write. Several years of shameless blogging followed, in which I wrote many of the stories you will find here, and made many friends, until Journalspace met its sudden and unexpected demise on the last day of 2008.

My initial thought as I passed out through those huge iron doors for the last time, carrying what little goods I owned in a shabby suitcase, was that I had become too old and feeble-witted to remain living in a blog on my own. But it was to prove otherwise. I was offered accommodation at Blogger, a name that I found curiously stimulating – despite feeling that ‘Flogger’ had greater appeal – and erected another blog there from crude blocks of HTML cemented together by layers of CSS. I wrote more, I made further friends, then finally, as apathy caught up with me, I quit my simple dwelling and found my way to Facebook, a process that enabled me to keep in touch with at least some of my fellow inmates from Journalspace.

But Blogger called to me, and though now alone, I put up yet another blog; this one. For many years I did very little other than to commute between it and Facebook, and to upload the occasional entry – or post, as I had learned was the preferred term on Blogger for both the verb and the noun, perhaps because of its masculine connotations. Firmness, rigidity. Something that stood proudly erect. On Journalspace we had used to post for the verb, and entry for the noun. Thus Journalspace members would speak of posting an entry, a form that seemed to have rather vulgar implications to me.

But finally restlessness demanded I do something with it. Create something. Something that would immortalise me (in the figurative sense, I should stress). So it was that I slowly began to assemble a collection of those earlier entries and posts. And even to write new ones! And this is the result.

I now invite you to dip your toes into the deep, dark, and extremely murky pool that is my imagination. I hope you will not be too disturbed by what you find.