Have you read the third policeman? A book by the Irish writer Flann O’Brien.

It’s very surreal, with a cash box full of some sort of power, a nameless narrator who gets involved in trying to claim the box. Other characters are embroiled in a very complicated situation. I can’t remember all the plot because it’s long and entangled. I read it 40 years ago, and I know it’s somewhere in our house, but where?

There are three policemen in a barracks that are guarding machinery that change sound into light? And something about the atoms of men migrating into their bicycles and vice versa. You get so far through the book and then realise it is repeating itself. A bit like a sci-fi story of a repeating time line.

Flann O’Brien was the pseudonym for Brian O’Nolan who wrote the book between 1939 and 1940 but it wasn’t published until the 1960’s. I wish I could explain it better, but if you want a peculiar and though provoking book maybe look it up?