'Surely that's cheating!' It wasn't a question; it was a statement. It was said with the certainty and the confidence of an adolescent; it was said with conviction. Sometimes - just sometimes, though - he found it very easy to believe that people who put forth with conviction, confidence and certainty were often the very people who knew the least. It wasn't that they necessarily shouted the loudest; more often than not they would speak slowly and softly. Often they would pause and look upwards, as if they were trying to see into a filing cabinet in their brain, then they would speak with their habitual conviction. The rest of us, those of us who have doubts, those of us who lack the confidence, we sit quietly and accept what we are told. I don't mean that we accept it as the truth: not at all - well, at least not all of the time, and perhaps not even most of the time. No, it's not that. It's more that we don't really care, at least not enough to get into a debate with the browbeating blowhards who speak slowly and softly with certainty, confidence and conviction. Life's too short and there's too much music to hear and beauty to see. 'Some people might call it cheating,' he replied, 'I call it artistic licence'.