"It's all bullshit."

She turned and looked at me. "What is?"

"This. This house. This life. My job." I looked around the room. At the bland prints on the wall, the cheap flock wallpaper, the TV spitting out its usual fare of Reality TV.

"What do you mean?"

"I wasn't meant to be here. I'm not an office worker, I'm a writer."

"But you never actually write anything."

"That's because my imagination has slowly been eroded by this pointless, meandering existence I have allowed myself to fall into."

"Why not write something then?" Her tone seemed patronising to me.

"Do you really think that it's that easy? That I can just spew out stories?"

"But you never write anything. All you have is excuses. And now you are trying to blame everything else but yourself? Only you can actually do anything about it."

"My life is too ordinary to write about. I need some tragedy. I need misery. I need impetus." I lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, but as usual, did not enjoy its stale taste. I always told myself I smoke because I enjoyed it, not because I was addicted. Another lie.

"There has to be something you can write about. Just look at what's going on in the world. War, famine, betrayal." She flicked the TV over to the news channel. "Are you trying to tell me that there is nothing there you could write about?"

"But that’s the misery of others. I have no understanding, no grasp of what they are going through. How could I, with this life."

"The reason you think like this is that you are afraid to do something about your life. You are happy to plod along in the middle lane. You're so comfortable, you don't see the point in trying to change anything." She was of course right. "You are so firmly entrenched in the now and the past that you have no vision for the future. You make constant excuses, rather than trying to do anything."

I stared at the images on the screen. A mound of rubble being searched by men and children in charity donated jumpers, while a woman in a black headscarf wept and screamed at the camera, as if accusing those people sitting and watching.

"Doesn't this make you upset? Couldn't you write about this? You used to be so passionate about these things." The fact that I no longer seemed to care about the what was going on around me seemed to anger her.

"Of course it upsets me. But how can I write about something I know so little about? How can I even pretend to understand their emotions? I've never suffered like they have. As I've said, my life is entirely lacking in tragedy or excitement. There's nothing to draw upon."

"You really are beyond help. I'm going to bed." I turned and watched as she swung the door slightly too hard, rattling the photograph of the kittens sleeping in a straw hat.

Then it occurred to me and I started to laugh. There was tragedy in my life. The tragedy of an average man.