Before succumbing to a combination of malnutrition and acute hypothermia, Hamish the Hermit lived a solitary existence in his grotto in the hills. He dwelt in this barren environment because he loved the tranquillity of nature and being away from people. It’s an odd thing, that whenever you think of a hermit you almost inevitably imagine him (for it’s nearly always a ‘him’) as old. Hamish the Hermit, however, chose as but a youth to escape the pressures of modern life, an act induced by his convictions that it was humans who had brought evil into the world and that the only path to salvation lay in emulating animals, which, innocent as they were, were not susceptible to such emotions as jealousy, hatred and mistrust. True, he never managed to work out which animals to emulate, and there were aspects of animal behaviour that he found himself unable to copy, such as, much to his chagrin, hibernating, but no one could accuse him of not trying.

To ensure the area around him remained free of any other members of the human species, he set about deliberately to gain for himself the unsavoury reputation of being the most obnoxious and anti-social person in all the land. To this end he used to daub insulting slogans on people’s houses and from time to time would slaughter livestock, which he would carry down to the village in the middle of the night and dump on the green. Hamish the Hermit also made it clear that even if people did not hate him he unreservedly hated them. He broadcast his intense dislike of every other human being far and wide.

Thus did he hope to dissuade people not only from settling in other caverns in the area, but also from annoying him by pestering him with philosophical questions under the erroneous assumption that, just because he had walked away from civilisation and preferred an ascetic lifestyle, he was extraordinarily intelligent and blest with exceptional savoir-faire. Only at the very beginning of his hillside reign did he permit a handful of individuals per week to consult him. Exactly as he had expected, they all treated him as if he were a combination of an encyclopædia, an almanac, a prophet and a cunning man.