I am petrified. A particular kind of throbbing fear has been building inside me since last Saturday. Like the froth that rises to the top as someone badly pours beer into a glass, and you wait for it to magma all over. This is not the jump-scare that makes you suffer a stroke, or makes you scream out loud like Janet Leigh under the shower. This is the slow-burn variety where you are aware - far too aware - of the utter ruination on its way.

My fear is not of the single world-puncturing kind as depicted by Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. It is perfectly depicted by Barry Godber's 'Schizoid Man,' artwork that adorns the cover of King Crimson's 1969 album, In the Court of the King Crimson. The uvula in that picture - that boxing speed-bag-looking hanging tissue inside the man's mouth - holds all the fear and trembling a person can hold awaiting obliteration of dignity, never mind glory.

One protection from the all-consuming feeling of dread is pragmatic pessimism. It has, in the past, served me well. To reduce the agony over a disaster approaching on its daddy long-legs, take the cataclysm for granted. You mentally jump the cue, and imagine - as much in detail as possible - disaster already having crushed you. The way you fill your head with imagined pain from decapitations in Game of Thrones episodes as you wait for your root canal. This way you're prepared for the worst if it comes, and your joy becomes doubled - quadrupled, in cases like this one - if it's averted.

Or so goes the theory.

On Saturday, when Arsenal lost to Bournemouth 1-2, I didn't watch the match. I learnt about the crunching defeat later with muffled grief and humiliation. But I could not escape being reminded by cosmic forces - who surely must be Manchester United fans - that what I have been fearing since mid-January is back on track: Arsenal losing out on the Premier League title yet again, with the scorpion sting of 'after coming so close'.

Now, I'm not the kind of ardent fan who can reel off stats like I'm setting off Sudarshan chakras. My fealty to Arsenal FC is reflected in more sophisticated skills like shouting my head off, diarrheaing expletives (mostly of joy), with my gut replacing my brain for some 100 minutes.

I have had fights at home when I've shouted with Symphony No. 9 decibel-level joy when we've scored at around 2 in the morning. I have gone totally bonkers when we have trounced against all odds. I have also crumpled into my smashed cockroach avatar when into half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death, rode the Gunners eleven.

I have been very careful not to raise my hopes, despite what Zeno of Citium, founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, would have described as a 'rather decent season': 32 games played, 21 wins, 7 draws, 4 losses. Mikel Arteta's best year with a young, creative team that has gelled like firm Weikfield jelly. Until the last few games with the holy ghost abandoning Emirates Stadium last weekend. Now, Arsenal is sitting on top of the pole - 6 points ahead of Man City with one less game to play - and I feel like an Ottoman Turk looking at a stake in the custody of Vlad Tepes the Impaler.

And yet, I have maintained an inner hush throughout. When people have come up to me and told me, 'Congratulations, you guys are getting it this year,' I have politely told them to shut the fuck up. This is not out of superstition. When Gyokeres surges ahead into the goal mouth, or Saka feigns along the right flank, or Declan finds Zubimendi like a 3M22 Zircon finds its target, I remain a devotee of the laws of physics, human physiology, and psycho-telemetry.

I have maintained relative zen quietude this season because I wish to protect myself from the cataclysm that awaits when we play Manchester City at 9 pm tonight. This, too, shall pass, after having secretly stockpiled hope that Arsenal will be Premier League champions again after 22 long years when I was 33, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM, and Arsene Wenger was vishwaguru.