“A worrying picture of readership began to form”

A PUBLISHED author — I forget who — once said that in order to write as honestly and naturally as he could he rinsed any thoughts of his readers out of his head by imagining them as a bunch of “orangutans, turning the pages with their feet”.

Personally, I’m unhampered by images of you when I write; I’ve never had to banish thoughts of you by imagining you as orang-utans. But I do have a growing sense of you, part of which I’ve drawn from your e-mails.

The first e-mail to land in my inbox arrived the week after the first of these columns ran. “Good column,” it said, “I’ve attached a link you might like.” I clicked open the link in a spirit of calm curiosity. When images best described as “images I’d never show my mum” suddenly filled the screen, a worrying picture of readership began to form.