Up until I was about fifteen years old I thought that I was sometimes invisible. I couldn’t turn it on and off at will, but sometimes my mum and dad couldn’t see or hear me. I would say something at the dinner table and they would completely ignore me and carry on talking to each other. Only when I said or did something that they didn’t like did they notice, then they could see me well enough to give me a clip around the ear.

And to this day, people often see right through me as if I were a ghost. I can go into a bar and the barmaid will continue to file her nails or polish the glasses until someone else comes in, then she will serve him without seeing me at all.

Of course I’m not really invisible, just transparent. If I actively try to bump into someone they soon jump out of the way and tell me to watch where I’m going, and I’m sure if I was to run naked across the centre court at Wimbledon while the final was being played someone would notice me. Of course I’d never have the nerve to do it, imagine the psychological damage that would be caused if nobody noticed and everyone carried on watching the tennis.

Have you ever wondered why glass is transparent and steel isn’t? Glass is as hard as steel, sometimes strong enough to stop a speeding bullet, and just as solid. Well, it’s obvious really, you can see through glass and you can’t see through steel.

But why? I’ll tell you. Glass is amorphous, it is actually neither solid nor liquid, but that is nothing to do with why you can see through it. The reason you can see through it is that the structure of glass allows light to pass through without reflecting much and without scattering it. Big dollops of light of all colours can pass straight through glass whereas steel won’t allow this to happen and will reflect it and scatter it all over the place.

So what? I hear you ask. Well, I was just making the point that I am more like glass than steel, light passes straight through me without stopping or even changing direction. I have to carry an artificial shadow around with me glued to my feet.

As I grew older I began taking advantage of this phenomenon. I would sit quietly in the bar or among any group of people and listen to them talking, in the knowledge that they never knew I was there. I heard a lot of things that were said in confidence.

At one time my job was to sit in front a computer and capture data. I never caught any, I never even found out what data looks like, but I digress. There were a number of young girls who also worked there and often I could sit quietly pretending to capture data and listen to them talking to each other while they were totally oblivious of my presence.

Angela, a pretty young blonde girl, who actually did look quite angelic, was telling Joanna about the sex she and her boyfriend had shared the previous night. It was a shock to me on a number of levels. Until then I had believed that all the angelic looking young girls were virgins. A number of them had told me as much and explained that they wanted to be virgins when they got married, and were saving themselves for their future husbands, but would be happy to go out with me if I paid for the evening.

Now I suddenly found that this little angel knew more about sex than I did and was infinitely more experienced and even enjoyed passing her expertise on to her boyfriend. I didn’t know her boyfriend, but I hated him anyway. I’d always imagined him as a spotty little brat who, unlike me, was completely inexperienced and green when it came to the opposite sex. Now I found myself hoping that he was older than me and was taking advantage of Angela and soon she would realise this fact and go back to being a little angel.

The next shock to come into my head was when I realised that these young girls were openly discussing what I had always believed was their most intimate and personal secrets, and not only that but they were laughing about the boys involved.

It had been my belief that the girl who had slept with me would never discuss my prowess with anyone other than her closest and dearest friend, and probably not even her. She hadn’t even told me much about her only previous lover except to explain that he had taken advantage of her when she hadn't been well and had been taking some drugs prescribed by her doctor that had made her unable to fend him off although she tried as hard as she possibly could. Until now I had had no reason to disbelieve her.

Never would I have talked about my relationship with her except, perhaps, a discreet wink to some of my friends. The same wink I had used when talking about all the girls I’d been out with. And even some that I hadn’t.

So, by sitting quietly and not making any sudden movements, I collected quite a number of little bits of gossip that I would never have otherwise heard, it became a sort of hobby.

Being invisible could be very helpful in certain careers. It would be great if I had been a spy. Spies don’t want to be noticeable which is why James Bond would have been a terrible spy if he’d been real.

But, on the other hand being invisible would be a major set back for an entertainer, no one would know that the show had started.

The obvious career was in crime, an invisible criminal could get away with anything. The main problem I found was that it couldn’t be turned on and off at will and it often seemed that I was invisible when I wanted to be seen and totally conspicuous when I didn’t.

It’s the cellophane people who get on TV shows like “The world’s stupidest criminals”. They think they can’t be seen robbing the bank while, in fact, no one misses them, not even the CCTV cameras.

So this affliction/talent is a double-edged sword, it can be frustrating at times but it has its advantages at other times.

Why shouldn’t it be though? Everything in life is like that. Yin and Yang and all that, there is a positive and a negative side to everything, and the bigger the positive the bigger the negative.

Take drugs as an example. Without heroin there would be unthinkable suffering among accident victims and the ill, but abuse it and it can bring its own kind of hell. Alcohol too, in small doses, can be wonderfully relaxing and assist in communication between people who might never otherwise talk to each other. But too much can cause aggression, accidents and untold misery.

Even the concept of heaven cannot exist without hell. Nirvana can’t be reached without suffering life.

The trick is to enjoy the positive while accepting the inevitability of the negative.

I wish it was easier though.