Morris Gleitzman: ‘In the last couple of years, I’ve found it is getting a lot harder to be optimistic’

Morris Gleitzman, the author of Tweet, Misery Guts, Two Weeks with the Queen, the Once series and – along with Paul Jennings – Wicked! Photograph: David Kelly/The Guardian

Morris Gleitzman will walk the quiet 135-metre stretch of footpath and bitumen on the appropriately named Abbott Street back and forth, back and forth some days, for hours on end.

“The locals must think I’m mad,” he says.