I WANT to confess something to you. I have turned to crime.

After years of leading an ordinary and law-abiding life, I have discovered the pleasures of wrong-doing.

It all started when I found myself popping into the supermarket late of an afternoon without enough change for the public car park. I looked at the time, calculated the odds of there being a parking attendant around at that time of the day, and dashed into the shop anyway.

And guess what? The whole shopping experience became a lot more exciting, now that it was a race against time, with the constant possibility that my offence would be uncovered. I enjoyed it to an almost worrying extent.

Yes, it might have been a tiny transgression, but it could be the start of a life outside the law. And it’s not too late to change from respectable citizen to rebel.

Many people spend their young lives doing reckless and dangerous things, only to become reformed characters in middle age; others do it the other way round.

Take George W Bush. Until he was 40, he led a nomadic existence as a heavy-drinking slacker. Then he turned bad and became president of the United States.

Now, my offence in the car park was not, strictly speaking, my first experience of rebellion. In fact, I used to record some of my albums so I could play them in the car, in contravention of the Copyright Act. But I’ve never before got quite the same kick from flouting authority.

So, now that I’ve discovered the thrill of being bad, I’m accumulating a whole list of rules and conventions that I’m going to break. Just you watch me: I am going to defy the copyright notice at the beginning of DVDs by showing them on an oil rig.

I am going to lend or re-sell a book without its original binding.

When riding on a bus, I might stand forward of the sign you shouldn’t stand forward of. (If I can find an older bus where the notices still forbid the playing of transistor radios, I might even do that.) When installing computer software, I’m going to click the button that says I’ve read the 20,000-word user agreement, even if I skipped some of it.

When an official form tells me “Do not write in this space”, I’m going to write “OK then”. When it tells me to fill things out in black ink, I’ll use blue.

And when a form tells me not to fold, spindle or mutilate, I’m going to spindle.

And that’s just for starters. After that, I may go so far as to defy Biblical rules, by wearing a coat made from more than one cloth, or ploughing with both an ox and an ass.

I know what you’re thinking. I may be getting a thrill from all this wanton wrong-doing, but if we don’t obey these rules, society will break down entirely.

You may be right. And if you don’t hear from me again, it may be because I’m holed up somewhere, under siege from the forces of law and order. They’ll be saying: “Come out, Slade. We’ve got you on a charge of throwing away boxes that say ‘Retain packaging for reference’. “Don’t make it any worse for yourself.”

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only and nothing above constitutes a confession to any offence, criminal or civil. Especially if you’re from my local authority’s parking enforcement department.