Danny, an amateur, cheese fancier, has bought a suspiciously ripe and sumptuous cheese. It has been hinted that there might be something murky in the provenance of said portion [outright lie]. Subsequently, Danny may have been engaged in a telepathic contest of wills with the cheese.
We have also heard the tale of how Danny transformed a slight acquaintance of his into a mortal enemy, by mistake. His nemesis, shifty Mark, the beverage-trafficker, will dog us for a while yet, if only in our collective imaginations.
Of the various attributes that could be said to influence Danny’s daily moods, his time of rising was perhaps one of the simplest to chart. Full motion before eight tended to induce a waking dreamlike state, triggering strange and intense emotions from within his obfuscated depths. These traced their way through his entire day, like veins, slowly dissipating from their initial sharpness into a muddy, foggy soup. The soup was in his head and arms, and tended to impact on his ability to get on with the important things in life, such as enjoying a morning coffee or afternoon flapjack. The likelihood of regressing into a quivering meat jelly, with a computer screen and dead lines where his eyes and thoughts should normally be, would increase, usually far in advance of acceptable levels.
All of which helps to explain why it was a slightly shaky and vulnerable Danny making his hapless way to work, for an early meeting, on the morning when we rejoin the story of the cheese. His natural defences, which in other circumstances were quite well equipped to fend off the cruelties of a pessimistic imagination, were having an off day. The drear, soulless air of Netherwood Industrial Estate was stripping them with steady efficiency, just as bleach would attack the ordinary moisture of the skin. He took increasing refuge in a fantastical contingency of earthquakes and freak floods, in which a sane benevolent Creator featured large, washing the surface layer of Surrey clean of the detritus of trite and cogging businesses.
It was lucky he had the cheese with him, for otherwise he might never have made it to the office with his mind in human shape. The cheese kept his spirits up by singing 80s Pop Hits and old Country standards. It listened to his interminable whining about having to get out of bed at seven o’clock, and probed gently at his conscience, by nodding or smiling in exactly the right places. It sparked the more acceptable threads of Danny’s character into life. By the time he entered the office, registered official presence with his swipe-card, climbed the stairs, and strolled along the final stretch of corridor towards his appointed cubicle, he was actually winning. And it was all thanks to the cheese.