Hello. It is July 2026. The birds are chirping, the lawn is in an absolute state, I’m doing my quadrennial thing where I enjoy football for a fortnight, and I dropped a jar of chilli sauce on the kitchen floor the other day so my whole house smells marinated. This is the forty-third monthly issue of Interesting Skull, a newsletter which is getting dangerously close to “more issues than subscribers”, which is absolutely tragic and I can’t pretend it isn’t. Hello. I’m Mike Rampton. Hello.

Why wasn’t the badger at school? It was an in-sett day.

I might win a fun award this weekend. There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question was shortlisted for the UK Literary Association awards a while ago, and the winner will be named on Saturday. It’s in Glasgow, which is a long way from my house, so I sadly won’t be there to get in a massive huff when another great book wins.

I have been to several things for authors because that’s what my job is. Both Nosy Crow and HarperCollins had parties this month, which I went along to without losing my trousers on the way or anything. I’m not great at them - I tend to get a bit too into the free Becks and talk absolute toot, while failing to recognise people I should absolutely recognise (I have never been able to work out whether I have prosopagnosia or am just rude). It’s also really weird being somewhere where everyone understands what your job is, because in day-to-day life, nobody does. But I’m now bezzie mates (i.e. I bellowed about myself in the vague directions of) a Masterchef winner, the wine bloke off the telly, the Storm Whale man and Axel flipping Scheffler, so I’m absolutely a professional author and nobody can tell me otherwise.

What do you call an actor, orator and after-dinner speaker who is sufficient and no more?

Sir Peter Justenov

“A pharaoh bought me dinner where Home & Away is set.”
“Rameses’ treat?”
“No, you are thinking of Neighbours. Home & Away is set in Summer Bay, and that is where Cleopatra paid for my meal.”

“As requested, I’ve invited your two favourite singers to the embassy: Sky of late-2000s synth-pop fame, and Zach from Rage Against The Machine.”
“Ferreira? Rocha?”
“Oh Ambassador, you are spoiling me!”

I’m at an age where friends are going through stuff and I don’t know about it until it’s over. I’ll sometimes see an old pal for the first time in a few years and find out that their marriage is over, or they’ve lost a parent, or they’ve had to quit drinking because it got to be a problem, or they’ve been struggling with fertility issues, or lost their job, or had a breakdown, or something else tough has been going on and I’ve known nothing about it.

Well, part of it’s an age thing, and part of it is the shift away from the mid-2000s trend of people diarising their every feeling online, and part of it is that I lost jobs, moved away and am not in regular touch with anywhere near as many people as once I was. But, whatever it is, there’s a sadness that comes when you learn someone’s life has changed without you knowing. You’re sad for them because they’ve had a bad time, but also slightly selfishly sad for yourself for not being close enough or important enough or useful enough to have been confided in or asked for help. It’s not intended that way, of course, but it’s something I’m aware enough of that I feel I should share something: my life changed a while ago, and I didn’t tell many people, and it’s time I came clean.

Last year, the toenail on my left big toe went black, and it’s only just grown out.

I can’t describe how hideous my foot got. Nobody is a good enough writer to fully convey the nastiness of that thing, the most “Oof, no thanks” foot on earth. I’m not sure what happened. It’s possible I just, like, wore a shoe so badly part of my body haemorrhaged. I’ve got gross feet anyway, but the blackened toe sent them into uncharted levels of mankiness. My toe looked like something you’d dig up by accident, unleashing a gory curse that killed everyone you loved. It could have got in the Guinness Book of Records for “most messed-up, Ernest Shackleton-ass foot”, but they wouldn’t have put a picture in because if they did it could only be bought by people over 25. You know when they find 1,000-year-old bodies preserved in bogs? My toe looked like a poo one of them would do. Like a profiterole made by Satan. Like the bruised fist of a violent gibbon.

It’s been quite the emotional burden, knowing there’s a digit in my socks that could make a lifeguard vomit. I didn’t seek medical help because I didn’t want to be officially diagnosed as disgusting: I worried it might affect my mortgageability. But it’s grown out now, and my foot is back to its usual level of below-average. I still shouldn’t be allowed to wear flip-flops in public, but I’m going to.

Thank you for letting me share my story. I feel free.

“I’m fondly remembering the time the rat from Ratatouille designed a car for a Japanese auto company.”
“Remy Nissan?”
“Yes I am.”

What historical warlord is toasty and delicious? Attila the Bun.

"This area is low enough in coniferous trees that it’s really helped me come to a realisation.”
“Cedar-light?”
“That’s what it’s helped me do, yes, this pineless region.”

I’m currently working on two really fun books, so have read absurd, ridiculous amounts of information. And yet I’ve not been able to attend my regular pub quiz in two months to use this ridiculous well of knowledge. Nobody understands the agony of my beautiful existence. Also I can’t remember any of it.

My car failed its MOT. I bought all the parts that needed replacing rather than getting them through the garage, to save a bit of dosh, but it turns out no local garages will fit parts they didn’t supply, so that’s completely awful and I have the most difficult life in the world.

Interviewed Javier Bardem about metal for Kerrang!. A famously handsome, internationally beloved, critically renowned superstar… interviewing Javier Bardem about metal for Kerrang!.

If I don’t mow my lawn soon I might go to prison.

Went punting twice, helping out with a school trip and the Woodcraft Folk. And I worked at a stall for the pump track charity I’m a trustee of. Plus I baked brownies to be sold at the school fair this afternoon. I suppose what I’m saying is, it’s disgusting I don’t at least have an OBE by now. Oh, what’s that? Working closely with the literacy charity BookTrust to help foster a lifelong love of reading in young people? Yes, I am incredible, but try telling that to those fat-fisted nitwits at Buckingham Palace.

“We can win a journey on a starship if we come up with some words to do with competitions.”
“Enter? Prize?”
“No, a different one.”

“I spilled a load of unground coffee and Rowan Atkinson, of all people, helped me tidy it up.”
“Mr Bean?”
“No, I think we got all of it.”

All of my beliefs are shaped by the fundamental idea that we are all equally good at aikido and blues guitar. I guess you could call it a seagalitarian outlook.