I am walking down the road which runs alongside my house. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a side street. Oddly, I cannot recall seeing it before. As I wait for a gap in the rush-hour traffic, I wonder whether my eyes are deceiving me or whether the council has attempted to atone for years of lethargy with a mad frenzy of nocturnal road-laying. The shabby houses along its flanks, typical of those that infest Manchester like some virulent miasma, convince me otherwise. In any case, the stream of cars slows to a trickle and I zigzag gingerly across the lanes.

The other side of the road is perfectly pristine, except for an aerosolled scrawl beside the street’s nameplate. The sign itself reads "Sun shin Av nu ", a silent tribute to an anonymous kleptomaniac who specialised in six-inch high letter Es. I wonder whether the workmen have indulged in some graffiti to lend new streets that elusive, authentic, inner-city character. Intrigued, I turn left and enter another world.

The screaming, inane chords of a million advertising jingles assault my senses, and reverberate around my totally confused head. Everywhere I turn, the transient glare of neon burns into my retina. All around me, the clarion calls of commerce ring in my ears. Ditties from my childhood, forgotten fragments of irritating rhymes and surreal cigarette posters that I do not understand jostle for supremacy in my tortured mind. Each one is vivid and fresh, straight from the copywriter’s fevered imagination.

This is all too much for my brain. It instructs my optic nerve to display an image of the rose bush in my garden, together with the caption: "We apologise for the interference. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible." Unfortunately, my ears, being inured to the thunder of jet engines, have no such qualms; the soft pink curves and gently thrusting stamens are met by a searing cacophony. Shock numbs my heart and my legs give way. The flower dissolves into a tiny white dot and disappears. I can hear the fragile, gossamer wings of static beating against the screen. Silence.

"And now, we pass you on to Bill Giles in the weather studio."

Gradually, I emerge into wakefulness, to find the figure of a portly, middle-aged weatherman telling me in practised, suave tones how nice the weather is going to be. I close my eyes to find the blood-red silhouettes of roses dancing before me, but the nightmare quickly retreats back into my subconscious. Blinking, I realise that I must have left my television set on all night.

“. . . most areas of Britain will enjoy fine weather today . . ."

Blearily, I rise and draw back the curtains. Sheets of rain are pounding onto the turbid water, if you can call it that, of a swollen Birmingham and Manchester Ship Canal. Slowly, it oozes past me. Its algal green surface is pockmarked by the downpour.

". . . however, a localised centre of low pressure is centred on Manchester . . ."

I reach for the remote and jab the off button. The weather map contracts to a thin, white line and is gone. An aeroplane crashes through the sky, sending a shudder down my flimsy bedroom walls. Not for the first time I think that only a fool or a masochist would live for any length of time directly beneath a major international flight route.

"Convenient for transport. Close to amenities. Don't worry, sir, you will soon get used to the noise." I could still hear the estate agent's chirpy voice insulting, taunting and jeering at me. I could see him boasting about his triumph to fellow conspirators: "The gullible idiot actually believed me!"

A rumble from my stomach disturbs my reverie. Sighing, I plod downstairs to the kitchen. Cupboard. Cornflakes. Fridge. Milk. Cupboard. Sugar. Drawer. Spoon. Cupboard. Bowl. Pour. As I am about to start munching my cereal, a squeaking noise informs me that a letter has arrived. On closer inspection, I see that the sadistic origami expert who habitually masquerades as my postman has been at work again. The package in question is contorted into the letterbox in a manner that defies description.

The Manchester County Council anodised aluminium letterbox bears about as much resemblance to a small metal flap through which bills precipitate as a bulldozer does to one of those flimsy, plastic spades children clamour for at the seaside. It was painstakingly designed by Dublin University’s Faculty of Applied Engineering to inform the occupant of visits by the Royal Mail. For blind people, a buzzer buzzes. For the deaf, little red lights flash in their living room. At the moment, however, none of these facilities, or the many other ingenious features outlined in the sixty-four page manual entitled "How to get the best from your letterbox", are operative. The thing merely squeaks.

The letterbox complains once again as I wrench out the envelope and batter it into submission on the kitchen table. On breaking the seal, I find a viscous, yellow liquid spurting out over my hands, along with a torn sachet and a message full of false bonhomie.

"Please accept this free sample of the finest rapeseed oil with our compliments. It is naturally low in cholesterol and high in monounsaturates. Use it to fry your bacon in this morning, and marvel at the delicious taste of new Crispo oil."

I curse the postman under my breath as I squirt a dollop of Fairy Liquid onto my fingers, and dump the offending package in the bin. My hands cleansed, I turn my attention once more to the breakfast cereal. By now, the cornflakes have long ago lost any remnants of the "golden, crunchy, just-baked taste" that they may once have had, and are now little yellow islands floating soggily in a sea of milk. Undaunted, I raise the spoon to my mouth, driven on by countless cries of "If you don't eat that up you won't get any pudding!" during my most formative years. Somehow I manage to force down the tasteless goo.

Due, perhaps, to some hitherto undiscovered quality inherent in the molecular structure of cornflakes, I feel an irrational urge to do something about my squeaking letterbox. Normally, my natural apathy could overcome such a temptation, but I soon find myself spending ten minutes rummaging around beneath the sink. Finally, an ancient and rusty can of "3-in-1" reveals itself to me. I remove it from where it was furtively hiding behind an unidentifiable and equally ancient kitchen implement and a bottle of Domestos, its faded label quietly flaking away. Proceeding once more to the letterbox, I diligently apply the lubricant to every hinge, sprocket and spring on the infernal contraption but it persists in producing plaintive cries. Predictably, the manual is of no help at all. Finally, I attempt to vent my frustration by hitting the door.

As I am frantically rubbing my hands together to alleviate the pain, a voice gradually barges its way into my consciousness like a badly tuned radio station. It quickly gathers volume. If it is a radio broadcast, they must be playing the record at the wrong speed because the voice is talking in a comically high-pitched Mancunian accent. ". . . go around thumping other people’s homes. What’s more, don't squirt that oily stuff at me again, either. It is going to take me ages to get it off my fur." The voice goes on to explain that it belongs to Fringle, the mouse who lives in my letterbox. "I was just settling down to watch Breakfast TV when some idiot starts poking around. It's enough to put anyone off their cheese."

My fragile willpower succumbs to the stresses of deciphering letterbox manuals and the unequal struggle to come to terms with the idea of a talking mouse. In spite of it being only two o' clock in the afternoon, I put on a pair of old slip-on shoes, and set off in search of a swift drink.

An irate and oil-sodden mouse is watching television. ". . . rain is expected today over the Midlands, but most areas will enjoy pleasant sunshine . . ." Michael Fish dissolves into a line and fades away. A bewildered paperboy watches a bedraggled figure scowl at a tiny television set in annoyance, cross a carpeted room and open a cheese cupboard. Some words of explanation may be required at this point. It is a little known fact that the common dormouse is not a small, furry, brown rodent that is related to the shrew and vole. This is in spite of this belief being held by nearly everyone on the planet, except a few eccentric Creationists, members of the Flat Earth Society and, as I am about to discover, myself. In fact, dormice are descendants of a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, who colonised the Earth during the last interglacial period and went on to develop a highly civilised society. The downfall of this ancient race was due to their addiction to television and solidified milk curd, so that the sole remaining vestiges of the dormouse's once-glorious ancestry are an uncanny ability to construct cathode ray tubes from almost any material and a penchant for cheese.

I wander down the road to the Slug ‘n’ Lettuce, an achingly trendy "Olde English" pub that I would not normally think twice about venturing into, but this, I feel, is an exceptional circumstance. Besides, it is only about a hundred yards from my front door. My entrance is not the most agile. I don’t see the notice telling me to "Mind thy noggin" and as a result, I crack my head on a fake oak beam, much to the amusement of the clientele. I recover my senses sufficiently to go to the bar, wave some money in the air and eventually I manage to command the barmaid's attention."A pint of Best, and a packet of peanuts please."

"Erm . . . £2.50," she replies, displaying about as much enthusiasm as Mary Whitehouse's review of "Evil Dead III". After some incompetent fiddling with the till, she completes her quest for the mystical packet of ready salted peanuts and the legendary pint of bitter. These are plonked on the bar in front of me, along with my change, which sits soggily in a puddle of beer.

My natural reflex is to say "Cheers!" with as much bonhomie as I can muster. However, as I address my fellow inebriates, I gradually get the impression that I have suddenly sprouted an extra head, or have begun talking in Serbo-Croat. I seem to be the focus of attention and amusement for the whole bar. Spraying the contents of the packet of peanuts across the floor whilst wrestling with the fiddly plastic flap only adds further to my discomfort.

As I look down to check if my flies are undone, I realise that in my distracted hurry to escape Fringle's inane complaints along with all the other stresses of the morning, I had donned some unlikely footwear. I am horrified to discover that instead of looking at my old brown brogues, I am staring bemusedly at a pair of green slippers. I decide to front the situation out, and approach a couple of smirking, sharp-suited office workers on their lunch break. "Armani, you know . . . slippers are the latest thing," I bluff desperately.