When I was a young boy, I used to wake up in the early hours of the morning and watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Rising without need for an alarm, I’d get up a few hours before my parents and sit downstairs before the electric fire. Popping the VHS tape into place, the film would play with me sat there along with Polo the cat and Monty the dog resting somewhere nearby. The hours didn’t exist, and neither did the world, it was just me and the film cocooned from harm. In that bubble of fantasy, a part of me was moulded into the man I am today. In some ways, I’ve always seen Roger Rabbit as my idol. His desire to make people laugh. His love of a beautiful woman. Those themes of madness and fear mixed with an undercurrent of drinking as he flitted between euphoria and despair within seconds of one another. I remember those mornings as if they were dreams. I remember being safe. Being lost in a world with no rules where magic was as real as oxygen. The other side is where I’ve always wanted to be because this place has never quite lived up to those bubbles that tasted so damn fine all those years ago. Mornings now consist of waking up before 5 am considering whether or not to go back to sleep so I can skip work for the day. I never do, but it’s always a dilemma. To an extent, I can be proud that I haven’t failed my younger self because the dream still lives. The kid has grown, but his heart and passions are still right here. And yet the disappointment of life is forever mocking and true. Magic doesn’t exist out there. It exists only within. It always has done, it’s just that it’s taken a while not only for me to figure this out, but to also accept such sorrow. That boy, he had no need of reality, because fantasy held all the answers. And so it remains.