Flash Fiction - Two alternatives - which is better?

Bullseye   (Flash Fiction 250 words) 

 In 1987 I donated sperm for cash. They gave you a magazine and you aimed into a plastic jar. Ten quid a shot. I used a cassette cover of Carly Simon, in a cheesecloth with a bow tied at her navel. Three dud samples and they told me not to come again.

We would have split up anyway, after Mum died last year. I lost my confidence. Then Dad fell down the stairs, and while I was away Jane invited the new PE teacher back to our place. It’s now my place. Before I moved schools, I saw them every day at staff meetings, holding hands like a vitamin advert. I’ve come to stay with Dad for half-term, to recuperate. He was in bed when I arrived so I played on his PC  until the small hours.

My phone’s just beeped. A text, from Jane, fantastic. She hasn’t been in touch since 2009:  Don’t ever contact me again. That’s from last night. There’s a new photo on her Facebook, she looks pretty far gone. I left a witty comment, something like “Who’s the daddy?”

It’s her fortieth today, and she’s pregnant, which is brilliant. I wouldn’t be surprised if she conceived in our bed. A year of firing blanks, a new donor, then “bullseye” first go. I’m really happy for her, I know how much she wanted it. I’ll text her, ask her to wet the baby’s head for me. Maybe she’ll let me be there at the birth?

Bulls Eye  – Flash Fiction 250 words

In 1987 I tried sperm doning for cash. They gave you a magazine and you aimed into a plastic jar. I used a cassette cover of Carly Simon, in a cheesecloth with a bow tied at her navel. Three dud samples and they told me not to come back.

We would have split up anyway, after Mum died. I lost my confidence. Then Dad fell down the stairs, and while I was away Jane invited the new PE teacher back to our place. It’s now my place. Before I moved schools, I saw them every day at staff meetings, holding hands like a vitamin advert. I’ve come to stay with Dad for half-term, to recuperate. He was asleep when I arrived so I fiddled on my Mac into the small hours.

My phone’s just beeped. A text, from Jane, fantastic. She hasn’t contacted me since 2009: I’ve blocked you from my friends. Don’t ever contact me again.

That’s a bit harsh. It’ll be from last night. There’s a new photo on her Facebook, she looks pretty far gone. I left a witty comment, something like “Whose the daddy?”

It’s her fortieth today, and she’s pregnant, which is brilliant. I wouldn’t be surprised if she conceived in our bed. A year of firing blanks, a new donor, then “bulls-eye” first shot. I’m really happy for her, I know how much she wanted it. I’ll text her, ask her to wet the baby’s head for me, or is that a tad premature? 

SHORT STORY- NEW (GRANITE)

Granite 

“We need to stop now,” I said. Dad’s leg was playing up.

“It’s a twelve mile hike,” he said.

 “You’re not seriously going to limp across the Lake District in the dark?”

“Shut up, Tom,” he said. So I did.

An hour later we stopped. Dad was breathing heavily. He ran the Combined Services Cross Country in 1953, but the days when he could do a four-minute mile were long gone. He had difficulty climbing stairs now.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” I said.

“Give us the bloody rucksack, Tom.”

“Aren’t we, Dad?”

“Just pass it here.”

He put down his metal walking stick. I passed the rucksack containing the tent, the sleeping bags, the Primus stove, the cooking tins, the baked beans, the Kendal Mint Cake.  He took out a torch from a side compartment.

“Give me the compass,” he said.

“What compass?”

“The one in your pocket.”

“You mean the one in my pocket that isn’t in my pocket?”

“The one I gave you.”

“You didn’t give me a sodding compass.”

“Well I meant to.”

Alzheimer’s as well as a dodgy leg.

“So no compass, no natural light, no idea - what’s the plan Stan?”

Dad wasn’t called Stan; he was called Peter. I was winding him up.

“Don’t be facetious,” he said.

 “I’m not,” I said.  It was starting to rain.

 “I suggest we keep going,” he said.

He put up his hood, tied the string so his glasses poked through like a periscope, and shone the torch.

 “You carry the rucksack then,” I said.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t, we agreed. ”

He dug his stick into the terrain, and forged ahead. I overtook, turned to face him.

“If we’re going on you’re carrying it, my back’s knackered,” I said.

“Don’t swear,” he said, stepping up the hill to pass me.

“And your leg’s buggered,” I said, sidestepping to block him.

He stopped, waited for me to give way, and when I didn’t, shone the torch in my face and said: “Give it here.”

Two grown men squaring up in a national park: If I thought we’d see other hikers I’d have let it go, but no one in their right mind would have been halfway up a mountain, after dark, on a wet Saturday in June. They were all tucked up in bed, probably, or wrapped in their summer jumpers, legs entwined on the sofa.

Dad struggled with the rucksack. I was certain he’d give up so we could pitch the tent, but he tightened the straps and set off. About two steps. Maybe one and a half.  He fell hard on the granite. Cracked his head. Adrenalin leaked through my body.  There was blood on his face. Was it a nosebleed, a cut head, where was the blood coming from? I cradled him. His glasses were skewed. I was frightened he’d fall apart if I let go. “There’s first aid in the left compartment,” he whispered. I fumbled with the green tin. “This from your National Service?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I untied the hood, dabbed at his forehead with cotton wool, and found a one-inch gash. It needed stitches. For now I applied antiseptic and a plaster, while his body shivered in my arms. I sat him next to his stick, put the tent up, and rolled out the sleeping bags. He insisted on setting up the Primus to boil water for tea, said he felt better. We drank it inside the tent, the torch resting on ‘My Father the Hero,’ a birthday book I’d bought him from Amazon. Rain spotted the canvas.

 ‘Nice tea,’ I said. It tasted like wet sugar.

‘It ‘s not bad, is it?’ He sat on a groundsheet, nursing the enamel mug, dried blood stuck to stray bits of werewolf hair above his beard line, the pock-marked, bulbous nose belying his teetotal disposition. After tea the rain stopped and we climbed into our sleeping bags. Dad started to snore. I dreamt of shoving my sleeping bag right down his throat, dumping his body in Coniston Water, running away to a life of luxury.

The next morning I woke to the smell of gas, unzipped the tent, and there he was minding the Primus like a war invalid, green anorak, khaki trousers, bandaged head. He handed me a mug of baked beans.

“I made a tourniquet, should do the trick, and I’ve checked the Map. I reckon we’re nine miles short of the summit,” he said.

“We’re not going Dad, we need to get you to hospital.”

“Don’t be dramatic Tom, it’s just a scratch”

“Seriously Dad, it could be infected”

“This hike is my treat and I intend to honour it,” he said.

“And you need to test for concussion,” I persisted.

“Rubbish”, he said, packing the Primus. I put down the beans and unpegged the guy ropes. “I’ll finish those if you’re done with them,” he said, pulling a spoon from his three-in-one cutlery set. I passed him the cold beans.

“Remember when I took you to Grasmere? You were ten I think,” he said.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“You wet the bed at the youth hostel, couldn’t find the toilet, climbed into the wrong bunk and pissed in it.”

“I can’t have done, “ I said. “I stopped wetting the bed when I was eight.”

“ ‘This bed isn’t even made,’ you shouted, at the top of your voice, woke the whole hostel. I picked you up, wiped you down with a towel, and put you back in the right bunk.”

He must have taken me on at least a dozen hikes before I hit big school. I don’t know why I forgot. All I remember was my heart thumping when he came home from work. The footsteps on the stairs, the cuff when he caught me watching telly instead of doing homework, the night he threw my A-level geography file against the wall and broke the spine because I said he couldn’t cook. That’s when I hit him. His cheek burst like a ripe peach. He told the office he walked into a tree.

Sunday was milder, with a light breeze to take the edge off. The nerves in his leg were better for the rest and, jabbing his stick hard into the ground like a cross-country skier, he kept up a brisk pace. After six miles we sat by a stream. He took off his anorak to sit on, rolled up his shirtsleeves. He’d undone the top button and there were droplets of sweat on his loose neck skin. I handed out the mint cake while he sang ‘Donna Nobis Pacem’ in a shaky baritone. He’d learnt it at the ‘Cambridge University Congregational Society,’ where Mum and he first met, before ‘The Female Eunuch’ took her on a different path. We sang it during car journeys, Mum and Dad sharing the driving, me lying on the back seat.

Mum died at Easter. She was seventy-eight so she’d had a good innings. I didn’t see her die, I saw her dead, mouth open like a Goya painting. I didn’t cope well afterwards, which put a strain on my marriage. When Jane moved in with the head of department, I left my English teaching post and went to stay with Dad, to recuperate.

Cloud drifted over the sun. I wrapped the mint cake and tucked it in the pocket with the first aid. Dad zipped his anorak, put on his leather gloves.

“Give me the rucksack,” he said.

“What for?” I said.

“I want to take it on the last leg,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I won’t allow it,” I said, grabbing the rucksack.

He hooked a stray strap with his stick.

 “Let go, Tom,” he said, grabbing the strap with his free hand.

“No, you let go,” I shouted, pulling my strap in the opposite direction. The rucksack swayed between us while we fought a clumsy ‘tug of war.’ Dad was thrown from side to side, feet barely scraping the ground, like a child arm-swung by mummy.

“Let go or you’ll pull the straps off,” he shouted. I dragged him down the hill. He stabbed his stick into the grass to stop the momentum. I held on, determined not to give in, until he let go, propelling me into the stream, rucksack and all.

“That’ll serve you right,” he said.

I pulled out a sweater to dry myself, and helped him on with the damp rucksack. For the next couple of miles we walked in silence. As the sun set behind the valley, we could see the summit in the distance. I began to talk about Mum’s funeral, about fetching extra chairs from the scout hut, about the Mayor in his gold chain, about Dad singing “Let it Be” when they carried the coffin. A little further on he started whistling the tune to himself. I joined in with the words while he harmonized a third above. We finished the chorus on top of Scafell Pike.

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

“I can,” he said.

“You can’t, Dad, you’ve got cataracts,” I said.

“I’m glad we kept going,” he said.

 I was trying to see our car in the car park.

“Let’s have a hug, son,” he said, and opened his arms, stick dangling from the wrist strap. He looked awkward, with the Army Surplus rucksack dwarfing his frame. I moved towards him, more out of filial duty than anything else. At that moment his leg buckled, like one of those foldaway bikes commuters bring on the tube. The rucksack pulled his weight forwards, so he fell on me and we ended up scrabbling on the granite.

“We’re like a pair of hippies, having sex on a mountain,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said. I wrapped my arms around him, they met at the elbows. I was surprised how narrow he was inside the anorak. Tears dripped on my face. He wiped them with his leather hands, like a Daddy bear. The glove smell reminded me of Cortina holidays to Wales with Mum and the Greenwoods. We used to play football on top of hay bales until our legs prickled red raw. I lifted him off and we put the tent up together. Too tired, we fell asleep.

I was the first to wake. In silence, apart from the birds. The sun warmed the tent. I didn’t want to turn my head towards his sleeping bag. He should have been outside making tea, or beans, on the Primus. That’s how I knew. I switched on my phone and walked to the valley until I got a reception. They took him away in a helicopter, still in his sleeping bag, hooking him on a stretcher, and lifting him into the sky. 

Comfort Zone - The Not Quite True Confessions of a Sex Addict

Chapter One

I’m trying to pick up my pint without shaking, trying not to bang the tiny table with the knee that’s attached to my tapping foot. I still spill a bit, and bang the table, but I’ve got excess adrenalin, I can’t help it.

I hate Sundays. I know it’s Mondays you're not supposed to like. If you're old enough to know Bob Geldoff, pre-Peaches, when he sang in pajamas with the Boomtown Rats. That was in 1979, so you'd have to be at least forty to know that, and now you know how old I am. I come across much younger, which is why I knock a few years off when I write my profile on dating sites. That’s how I met Julie. She’s thirty. There were a few teething problems at the beginning. The “when shall I confess to being forty four” one, but after three bottles of wine I got away with minor bruising. Then I had to clear up the debris of the “scatter gun” approach to online dating. I had ten days left on my subscription, so I saw the last fifteen dates in hourly shifts at a Starbucks on the Southbank. None came close to Julie in sex appeal, 'gsoh', or clear skin, so all's well that ends well.

Actually it didn't end well. After three practice break-ups, Julie left me for good two months ago, but we’re still friends. Sometimes we meet for a drink, sometimes a bite to eat, and once even a shag. Perhaps this is my lucky day.

'I'm pregnant'

Julie walks in the pub, sits down, and says it, straight out, no frills, no lead up. She does the taking her jacket off bit during the equally pregnant pause that follows.

'How do you know?'

'Because I did a test, two in fact, and my body already feels different, and I have a metallic taste in my mouth'

'But I took it out'

'What?'

I’ve lowered my voice for the sake of privacy

 'I took it out and came on your back'

'Is that all you can say?'

'Are you shagging someone else?'

'Of course I'm not shagging someone else, I wasn't even shagging you, at least I shouldn't have'

She looks beaten for a moment, and it occurs to me that the age difference might work after all. When we started dating we looked like father and daughter but three break-ups and one pregnancy later she's catching up.

'If you'd used a condom like normal people, we'd be having a normal Sunday, not doing a scene from "East Enders"' 

'I hate East Enders - I was in it once - I played a pair of eyes looking through a letter box'

‘Why are we talking about your acting career Tom?'

There's a space for me to apologise but I’m cooler than that. Julie asks another question.

'What are we going to do?' 

'We're going to have a child, that's what we're going to do. This is wonderful. We need to celebrate. I'll get some champagne.' 

I fumble in my G-Star jacket for my wallet, open the back where the notes are kept, close it, put it back in the pocket

'Maybe we could share a glass I'm a bit strapped at the moment'

'This is why we can't have it Tom, you have no money, you have no job, you're depressed most of the time, you can be lovely sometimes, but mostly you're a mess'

'There was one positive in there - that's a start'

Julie stands up, takes her jacket, sits down again: 'Maybe I will have a drink, but a white wine, no bubbles, not even cheap ones'

I’m a man with a mission now, I order the drinks, fish about for some coins, I’ve got about thirteen pounds in loose change so I order some chips as well - splash out, why not? It's not often you get handed a baby on a plate. Back at the table Julie starts the grown up conversation and I follow. She explains how she isn't ready yet, she's still finding her feet in London, she was thinking more five years down the line with a man a little more solvent, a little more secure, not necessarily younger, just better. She didn't say better, actually, she said ‘more happy in his own skin’. I say it's been a difficult time and I've taken it out on you. Maybe this is the cement we need to build the relationship. She says she still loves me, cares about me, but doesn't trust me.

 'What do you mean?'

'Where were you last night?'

'What do you mean?'

'You said you'd meet me. I waited, I texted, I called, I emailed, I was really worried about you, I rang your landline, I rang your mobile, you hung up, you switched your phone off - were you sleeping with someone?'  

 ‘Of course not, I went to a drinks party, got hammered. I'm really sorry, it's unforgivable and I won't do anything like that again. Especially now we're having a baby’

There is a natural pause, while we consider the enormous responsibility of bringing up a family. Julie speaks first: ‘You see I don't believe you. I know you were sleeping with someone, and the fact that you can sit there denying it means I can't trust you and I never will, which is why I can't have this baby. When I’m ready I want my child to have a stable father, when I'm ready. Goodbye Tom, I hope she was worth it’

Julie puts her jacket on and walks out of the pub, bumping into the bloke carrying my chips.  She doesn't look back. If she did she would see me looking at her sexy leather back, willing her to turn round, to smile at me, to wave at me, which is what she’s done every single time she's said goodbye, until today. It's how I know she still loves me, and that's all that matters. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she has too many things on her mind.

I’m mixing the grape and the grain now. She’s left me holding the baby while London Lite’s gastro pub of the year heaves with twenty-something lawyers and bankers. I’m between a ponytail in a pink pashmina and a relic from a boy band. The boy band is chatting up the ponytail. My chips are cold but I’m coating them in mayo and washing them down with Pinot Grigio. It's the first week of December and there's a Christmas selection playing. George Michael is singing about giving it to someone special.

I should text Julie, we didn't finish our discussion, I'll cycle over. I'll finish this one and pop round, we need to talk properly, and it'll be easier once we've had sex, we'll be more relaxed. I take out my mobile, send a message –‘Sory bout earlier. Comin round in 15. Don’t wory lovly everythin wil b OK X.’ There’s message already waiting in my inbox: ‘How r u this mornin BIG boy? Saffron’ (then there's a smiley face).

I can't deal with this now. I need to stay focused. I need to sort out me and Julie and the baby thing, and I need to forget about Saffron, so I need Saffron not to text me any more. I need to be firm about that. I send a message - ‘Hi Safron, sory not to be in touch, wil ring latr’ - That'll nip it in the bud - ‘ps I had a lot of fun.’ A text comes straight back:‘Fancy a repeat later? Come round about 9, bring some alcohol, and your sexy bod. 17a Primrose Hill Xx’

I pick up my blue charity shop rucksack, take out a mini A to Z, find the right page and turn the corner over, popping it into my back pocket. I park my bike a hundred yards up the road on Clapham High Street, take out a credit card, and walk into Threshers. There’s a beep in my top jacket pocket, a rush of adrenalin. It’s a message from Julie. I don’t open it. Lifting my arse off the seat for more pedal power, I set off on a three mile cycle ride.

                                                           * * *

“Tie me up”

I’m standing over her, with my Paul Smith silk scarf, the one I found draped over a railing after a night in King’s Cross. There are three pairs of coloured pop socks lying on the bed, next to Saffron’s pink white body. The bed is wrought iron, the kind you get from Camden Market. The sheets are crisp cotton, the kind you get from The White Company. She’s skin naked apart from a pair of socks.

“Tie me up and fuck me hard, really really hard”

“No pressure then”

“Yes lots of pressure, tie me as tight as you can, so my arms go red and you stop the circulation”

I’m tying her hands to the iron bars at the bed head. It’s really hard to do this, the pop socks are tiny and I can’t get much purchase, they keep popping back into my eye, and one of them rips at the heel. She’s shaved her armpits and her pubic hair, she’s very pale, her nipples are pink and her full breasts don’t fit with her boy hips. There’s a small scar on her stomach near her pierced belly button.

“Keep my socks on, my feet are cold." I’m not surprised, I’ve stopped the blood supply at her ankles. I’m tying her feet now. Her legs are thin, her feet are small, like her hands.

“Tighter Tommy baby, tighter. Flick me with your scarf.”

If Paul Smith could see me now.

“Now fuck me”

I climb on top of her like an elephant mounting an ant.

“Yes, like that. Fuck me like that”

She’s screaming now, I think it’s pleasure not pain. I hope so.

There’s a sound behind me, then a squeaky noise. Is Saffron having an orgasm? Her pupils have gone up into her eyeballs, she looks like a baby alien. Something’s pulling my arm. There’s a toddler in pajamas clutching an alopecia teddy.

“Go back to bed darling”, Saffron’s eyes are back to normal. I stumble off the bed, stubbing my toe on the iron post, banging my knee on the metal base.

“Cuddle mummy, cuddle.”

“Of course darling. Tom can you untie me please?”

Darling is trying to get on the bed. Mummy is trying to wriggle free. My jeans are one leg in, one leg out. The bow is now a knot. I’m using my teeth. This would be really sexy if there wasn’t a three year old watching. I have to get out of here. My girlfriend’s pregnant. Julie’s right. I’m not fit to be a father. I’m not fit to lick Julie’s leather boots.

“You don’t have to go Tommy. We can read Molly a story and then get back to what we were doing”

“Yes a story. Let’s have Fantastic Mr Fox”

“I’d love to Molly. Another time. I’ve got a sore throat and I left my glasses at home”

“Silly Tommy”

Yes silly Tommy. Silly silly silly Tommy. I’m saying this out loud freewheeling down Primrose Hill, dodging the taxis.

“Get some bloody lights you wanker”

He’s right, Mister Taxi man. I am a wanker. When I get home I’m going to give myself a massive talking to, and then I’m going to look at that text from Julie, and then I’m going to have a cup of tea.

Chapter Two

I just swapped numbers with someone I met at a commercial casting a year ago but the number’s useless without the name and I didn’t listen when she told me, I was too nervous. I can't go back and ask again, that's not impressive, so I'm standing outside Virgin Trains’ curvy toilet racking my brains – ‘Kate. That's it. Kate Nicholson, heart on her sleeve, passion for life, Kate. Or is it Susie?’

The man in the disabled seat is eavesdropping. He isn't disabled but the seat has more leg room. The previous occupant makes a fragrant exit so I slip inside as the door closes. It’s like a Woody Allen set for Sleeper, all white plastic and flashing lights. Over by the sink are two buttons with neon lights dotted around them. I press the “closed” button, the door opens. I press again, the door closes.  I press the locked button, the lights go off. I pull my pants down, and settle into Year of the American Cock, making sure my english cock is pointing into the bowl. That’s when the door opens. A lady in red, appalled at what she has brought into public view, paws the outside wall for a button to kill her frankenstein. The man in the disabled seat wears a deadpan expression matching his pin-stripe. There's a lot going on for him, at arm’s length from a bare arse, but he doesn't flinch. The door closes. I consider a royal wave, press the 'locked' button and return to my reading.

“Nottingham, this is Nottingham. Please make sure you have all your belongings with you on alighting from the train. Nottingham is your next stop.” I'm still reading when the station announcement comes on so I leave without washing my hands. Into my ‘Muji’ briefcase I pack an ipod, a wallet, a glasses case. The glasses aren't in the case, but that's okay because I'm wearing them. “Where's my rucksack?” I have to push through three corridors to get it. I know I'm pissing people off but I don't have time to think about that, and anyway it isn't my fault. I was moved to an unreserved seat. 

“Sorry can I just? Thanks. Sorry. Bit of an emergency.” I pull at the dangling strap of the huge Karrimor, which couldn't carry more, and it hits the freshly permed head of a lady in my original seat. I check my belongings again. Computer - check - must get a cover for it, Ipod - check, glasses case, glasses on nose - check, wallet, oyster card, keys - check, where's my train ticket? Where's my train ticket? Back pocket, panic over, calm down Tommy, calm down - shit, there's a man in the way - “I need to get off the train, this is my stop, sorry, can you? Thanks, sorry, thanks.”

I slam the door and the train is off, without any of me left on it. I take the oyster card out of my top pocket, remember I'm not in London, replace it with a train ticket, and walk up the stairs through the unguarded exit. My father waits like a lopsided grandpa. Like the man in the disabled seat, he’s pushing eighty, gives nothing away in his pinkish, deadpan expression, but has a bulbous nose afflicted with a skin condition, and looks scruffier, in a patterned jumper and brown slip-ons. I try to hug him but a combination of bags and filial awkwardness turn it into a pat on the back and a nose rub. Apart from the nerve jangling lane crossings, I'm chauffeured home in relative peace.

“Just taking these bags up won't be long”. Upstairs at the back of the house is my old room. I push the door past the ruck in the carpet Dad fitted thirty years ago. The room is filled with the memorabilia of adolescence: a snare drum, a bass guitar, an amp, two silver cups, three bronze medals, a hockey stick, a life-size african head, table football and a globe. It's like a shrine to a prematurely lost son and has stayed just so ever since I officially left home, though in truth I never have, not really. I flake out on the bed, and as I look up at the peeling ceiling, my face starts to crumple. It goes like this when I listen to stuff on my iPod that reminds me of break-ups. Or when I think of Mum.

I can't work out what it is this time. An unspecific 'what am I doing with my life?' crumple. I've been getting a lot of those lately. Something has to be done about it, I don't know what, but I'm definitely going to make some changes. This will be my last acting job, I’ll try teaching, see if I like it, stay here for six months, rent my flat, live off the left-overs. That's a plan. That’s what I’ll do. 

It’s three and a half years since mum’s funeral. It’s three years and five months since I split up with Siobhan and I’ve been single ever since. Except for Julie, and that was only three months not counting the mercy shag.  Julie blames me for the break up. She says I’m still fixated on Siobhan, that I can’t be on my own, says she could be anyone. That’s not true. She says I can’t make a decision to save my life. That is true. I haven’t made a proper decision about anything for three and a half years, and now she’s pregnant, and pissed off. I’m going to ring her. Surely she can wait a week for me to grow up? I key in the number. My hand's shaking, so I touch a digit twice and have to start again.

“What are we doing for tea?” I hadn’t noticed Dad open the door. There's a trauma brewing, about what to do for tea. I can read the signs. Dad’s tea traumas are almost as bad as my Julie traumas. “I was thinking cheese on toast - but I made some for lunch and that was the last of the cheese.”  For a man with a first class honours degree, He’s remarkably inarticulate. At times like this it's important to remember we can't have a normal conversation. When I’ve worked out the translation, what Dad really said was this  -

Can you go to the chip shop and bring back one portion of fish and chips and although I have said I don’t want any I will eat most of that portion off your plate and I know it’s unbearably frustrating that the simple things in life like having tea are rendered impossibly complicated but I find communicating on a level that involves engagement with another point of view really difficult, and I can’t help it, is that okay?”

By the time I walk through the door with a fish supper for one I've eaten a steak and kidney pie, a battered sausage, a fish cake and a spring roll. I'm still on my last swallow as I enter the kitchen, where my dinner guest is listening to ‘The Archers’, the paper evidence having been deposited in next door’s privet.

After a silent supper, accompanied by an old tape of Humphrey Lyttleton’s jazz requests and half a glass of water, I say ‘that was lovely, thanks for tea’, go upstairs and shut the door. Safe in my cocoon I scroll Julie’s number. This conversation won't need a translation, Julie is the type who calls a spade a spade. She's from York.

“Hi Julie, it’s Tom, look I’m really sorry, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I know it was an accident, well not an accident as such, although I could have sworn I took it out in time, but that’s not why I’m ringing, I’m ringing to say I know I said it before, but I’m willing to give us a proper go this time and I want it to work, I really do, I love you and I want us to have our baby”

I can't be sure at what point in the call she hung up, whether it was the ‘give it a proper go’ bit in the middle or the ‘our baby’ bit at the end or the ‘took it out in time’ bit at the beginning. I know I shouldn’t have said that but I was genuinely shocked when she told me. I've followed the withdrawal method all my life, my one concession to Catholicism, and never been unlucky. In fact, even when I deliberately kept it in, with Siobhan, I was shooting blanks.

Siobhan would have died and gone to heaven if she'd become pregnant. Okay, whether we'd have stayed together is a moot point, but there would have been no question about having it. And now Julie's refusing to speak to me, hanging up the phone. I want a chat, that's all. I'm desperate for a chat. Maybe my biological clock is speaking, maybe the battered sausage is making me queasy, whatever it is, it feels like my last chance. I've run away from two potential marriages and four live-in relationships. I'm the 'could have, should have, would have' man. It's painful to admit, but like the Madness song, I'm an embarrassment.  And now even Suggs has a family.

                                                       

                                                    ****

It’s 9 am, I’ve been lying in bed for about an hour. It’s too cold to get up, the heating isn’t on. I can hear a wood pigeon like the one I heard on school mornings. Once it called all afternoon. I was laid up in bed with flu and mum’s Joy of Sex book. I nicked it while she was at work. It was a toss up with The Female Eunoch, but that didn’t have any pictures, only a sculpture on the front, a pair of nippleless breasts with no arms. They were electing Sports Captains at school that day. I got a phone call from the form tutor when mum got home to say they’d voted me Head of Kestrel House. I’d orgasmed for the eighth time over a line drawing of a hairy brunette, so when Mum came to tell me the news she saw the book and slapped me. She said “don’t you ever go into our bedroom again, ” then she gave me another slap, which was a bit harsh, I thought.

I tended to forgo visual stimulation after that and developed an imagination instead. Like now, for instance, I’m imagining that bit in Gregory’s Girl when he’s on his first date with Clare Grogan and they're lying on the grass looking at the stars and he’s doing a funky chicken dance with his arms and she joins in and it's brilliant. Now I’m at the Hacienda with the Happy Mondays in 1989. I've never been there, I was into Genesis at the time, but Bez won Celebrity Big Brother and I’ve seen 24 Hour party People. Now I’m at a nineties nightclub making shapes, shirt off, to Fat Boy Slim, with five Goths and a rubber freak. I'm a great dancer, I could conquer the world, I could do anything, I could shag Winona Rider, right here, right now, under the covers at 52 Adbolton Grove.

I’m showing off for Winona now, stepping at one hundred and eight beats a minute, slapping her hands in a pattacake styley. I’m doing the pelvic floor exercises I learnt in pilates, only standing up, with a few Tai Chi moves to vary the pace. Now I’m behind her and we’re moving as one in a snakey conga. I’m getting hard, pressing against the small of her back so she lifts her lithe frame upwards, bumping and grinding right where it hurts.

Something is wrong. Winona has morphed into Siobhan, and Siobhan is being shagged from behind by a twenty two year old organic gardener from Cork. I lift my hands out of the covers and take off my Sennheiser’s. This happens all too often these days, this 'wankus interruptus'.

Sometimes I can remember having great sex with Siobhan, like the time we made love on the white sofa, then on the green chaise long, then on the pink poof, then on the Turkish rug, for the whole of Guilty Pleasures II. This memory means the wankus isn’t 'interruptus' at all and quite fantastic, but also tinged with guilt. I'm kind of with Julie now and shouldn’t I be recalling sofa gymnastics with her? Except her sofa is from IKEA and designed more for sitting than wild sex. Perhaps that's a symbol of  our whole relationship. Functional, reliable, safe (well, almost), designed by morally upright Swedes for sitting  morally upright.

Me and Siobhan, on the other hand, crazy Siobhan more like, we would have had sex in an IKEA display wardrobe if I hadn’t broken the door trying to shut us in. Of course I'm making that up, but why not? I love fantasising about Siobhan, and it wasn't as if we hadn't done it in public, like that time in the badminton store at Brixton Rec after a knock up.

Other times my fantasies get corrupted by the pain of her meeting someone else, and not just any someone else, one half her age, living across the border, right by her roots. This new guy is more fertile, probably, has more hair, probably, speaks gaelic, probably, is better in bed, probably. I have no grounds which to base these observations but I can't help feeding my masochism, the more I can twist the knife in, the better. I've been replaying the "I'm sorry I've met someone else" scene every day since Siobhan came back from Ireland a year ago with this gardener boy and left me treading water at Brixton lido.

I'm about to press play again when there's a double beep on my mobile. Shit, it's probably Julie. It'll say 'Please don't contact me,' or 'Please stop hassling me' or  'Please respect my need for space'. I know I'm pushing Julie away with my demands for a second chance, or a third, or however many I've had, but I can't stop himself. I scroll the message - “What you up to later? Meet in Playhouse Bar for a drink?”

I'm looking for the name at the top. It doesn't say Julie but then it wouldn't. She has a new phone and I haven't saved the number in my contacts yet - “From Kate”

Kate? Kate who? Oh that Kate. Kate I bumped into on the  train. Kate I swapped numbers with just in case. I text back - 

“Be great to meet later. I don't get back until midnight is that too late? X”

A text comes back - “We can always go back to my digs if the bar's closed. Text when you get in X”. I reply -  “Cool. See you later. Looking forward”. Looking forward? I sound like a German Banker.  

I’m thinking of that speech from Merchant of Venice where Lancelot Gobbo hears two voices. “Budge' says the fiend. 'Budge not' says my conscience.” I auditioned for Gobbo at the RSC but I’m not that good at accents and I couldn’t separate the voices. I still can’t. Normally with grown-ups, the conscience controls the ‘fiend’ but with me, and Gobbo, it’s the other way round, the fiend, or in my case the groin, controls the conscience. But I can't help it. I want my cake and I want to eat it and now Dad is shouting to come down for breakfast. Cake for breakfast, that's decadent. Like chocolate for breakfast, or champagne, or champagne for any occasion, in a hotel room, with an actress, for a midnight feast. I'm scatting on a theme of casual sex, jumping the stairs four steps at a time. I push open the door to the dining room.

Dad is hunched over the table. It has one flap up, one flap down, and a table cloth on, which I recognise as one my mum used for when both flaps were up. The cloth is far too big and looks ridiculous draped over the spare dining chairs, but Dad doesn't seem to notice. He's reading the Guardian and doing the crossword in G2 at the same time.

“There's milk in the jug I've just made it up.” Dad's eyes focus on the crossword. Has he converted the shed into a micro dairy and grazed a friesian in the back garden?  “I found some Marvel in the larder and thought I'd try it. It's not bad actually.”  I pour the grey, watery stuff on the Co-op muesli and wonder why I always feel like a wartime evacuee with Dad.

“Is there any cake?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” He thinks I’m being facetious. I’m not.

“Is there any proper milk?”

 “Don't you like Marvel?”

“I'm going down the road to get some twenty-first century foodstuffs.”

 “No you are not, you're the guest, I'm going”. He leaves the table. I’m looking for my Timberlands and trying to win the argument at the same time.  “I'm not the guest, I'm the son, and it'll take me five minutes, it'll take you three days, you can barely walk.” Dad lets out one of his snorts which means that my point of view is the most inaccurate statement of facts he is ever likely to hear - “Of course I can walk, I can walk for miles, I was hiking in Derbyshire with Donald last weekend, I'm going for the milk, what's more I'm going on my bike, I'll be back before you have time to make the coffee, and the Nescafe is in the terracotta ceramic marked coffee, and only half a cup please, I won't manage any more, my bladder's not what it used to be.”

He’s in the cloakroom looking for his anorak. I know I won't be able to change his mind and anyway I can't be bothered. It 's better to let him get on with things, the way he wants, it's easier for everybody that way. So I watch the scene unfold as if through a camera lens, like one of those ‘kitchen sink’ dramas from the sixties that gets repeated on Channel Four and segmented on You Tube: ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning', or ‘Kathy Come Home, or ‘Kes’. That's it. I'm watching Kes, the first film he took me to see, only this time he's in it.

I must have been ten but I can still remember how I felt, especially when the boy finds the dead kestrel. I can't work out why I'm reminded of it now, with Dad fumbling about in the shed. It's the boy’s brother who fumbles about in the shed, to kill the kestrel, and he's twenty, Dad's an old man. My brain often works like this, jumbling paradoxical images with a meaning just out of reach.

The manouverings in the shed have taken long enough for me to disappear into my head for several minutes, but the bike has been rescued now. Dad locks the shed, wheels the bike to the front of the house and opens the gate. This is when it happens. He gets tangled trying to climb on and keep the gate open at the same time, loses his balance and falls on his left hip, which is his good leg. It isn't dramatic just awkward, but Dad is in pain and suddenly much, much older.

 Chapter Three

You know when something shocking happens and you press pause, or that button that makes the frames go slowly, so you can remember every detail? It's like you're watching a DVD of your own life and you're the camera, or the director, and you're pointing it wherever you want. I do this when Dad falls of the bike. My movie is set in the Midlands, not Barnsley, in 2009 not 1969, but the pace is more in keeping with Kes, than say The Bourne Ultimatum –

EXTERIOR: The middle of a  quiet suburban road. Close up on father tangled in bike as if animate and inanimate have been cloned into BIKEMAN

Pan out to street. Door opens in the semi opposite. A TALL MAN, sixty, runs to BIKEMAN.

TALL MAN: “This might hurt a little Peter”

TALL MAN takes BIKEMAN apart as he would a washing machine that isn't spinning properly, or an old radio. BIKEMAN winces

BIKEMAN: “Just a little sore, grazed I think. Rain's made the road slippery”

TALLMAN lifts UNBIKEDMAN, (formerly known as BIKEMAN), and carries him back to the house

TALL MAN: “Get the bike Tom”

I’ve detached myself from the situation at the moment Dad needs me most, but I can’t help it. I‘m paralysed by the fear that I might not deliver the goods. I vaguely remember doing first aid at cub scouts but I can't remember getting the badge and having mum sew it on my arm. I was one of those cubs who always looked like they'd just joined because their arms were still jersey green instead of badge coloured.

Most cubs had tons of badges: Knot proficiency, Camping proficiency, Orienteering proficiency, Swimming proficiency, Soccer proficiency. I had the soccer badge. I can remember mum sewing that one on. I would have had Soccer ‘the second best in the team' too, if they'd had a badge for it. They didn’t, nor does soccer proficiency, minus all the "useful in a crisis” proficiencies, cut much ice now Dad's in the middle of the road under a bicycle .

Tall Man has stepped in where I left a space. We'd better call him Brian from now on, since his part's developing. This is typical of Brian, to sieze an opportunity and make the most of it. Mentally younger than sixty, he's retired and is easily bored, despite running the volleyball club, over fifties squash and circus skills for pensioners. In his forties he spent two years working in the States on and off, returning with Chicago Bulls caps for the kids and an evangelical passion for all things stateside for the rest of us. 

This pro-America stance normally annoys me, at least it did when my brother's family came back from Disneyland all wearing 'I Love America' sweatshirts, but with Brian I let it go. He’s easy to be around and easy to like. I want to be like that. For now, I content myself with learning by example, so when Brian pulls Dad's trousers down, I run off in search of dettol and cotton wool.

It's nothing to do with being sqeamish or not wanting to see Dad's pants. I'm finally taking control, so I put the metaphorical camera down and stare at a pair of bloodied y-fronts. For the next few minutes I hand over the medical supplies while Brian cleans the thigh wound and does the bedside manner thing. I make a mental note to ask my agent to put me up for the nurse parts in 'Casualty' and 'Holby', not the doctors.

I wish I could do the first-aid but I can't, it doesn't feel right. It 's safer for the one who isn't family to be doing it. A pep talk with my agent last month pops into my head -

“Have you got kids Tom?”

“Not yet (pause) Thinking about it (pause) Just need to find the right girl (pause) first (pause) and the rest'll sort of follow (pause) on (pause) from that (pause) kind of thing”

“Have 'em Tom, best thing you can do, best thing ever happened to me, even better than working for Westlife”

“Really?”

“Look, if my son was drowning in dangerous water, I'd dive in and save him, even if it meant dying myself. That's how much I love my son, more than I love myself, and you know that's not easy Tom. Think of your income, now go to the other extreme, that's how much I love him”

“Right”

“I never wanted kids, I was too busy enjoying myself, invites to Premieres, backstage at the Oscars, meeting Jack Nicholson, you know the sort of thing”

“Yeah, I sort of know the sort of thing”

“Then little Michael comes along and you can't get me out of the house, changing nappies changed my life, don't regret a single moment. Do it Tommy, do it, you'll never look back”

Truth is I always thought my agent was a bit of a knob but out of the mouths of knobs, and babes, come pearls. If that ego-the-size-of-China can put family before self then so can I. I have to learn to be like Mr Big Shot Agent, and I have to do it now. It's the only way I can stop the shame which is starting to consume me. I can see Brian losing respect for me as a human being, I can see it in his eyes, I'm slipping down the food chain, I have to stop the rot, I can't stand it any more, this self-loathing, so I drop the dettol, and run to the toilet.

Brilliant Tommy. Absolutely brilliant. And for my next trick I'll go AWOL. I'm just going out of the lounge Captain Brian. I may be some time.  Do you think Captain Oats bottled it? If he did he had an excuse, he was dying of frost bite. What's you're excuse mate? Weak bladder? Yes actually it’s hereditary, Dad’s got it as well - where's the toilet paper?

You know the phrase, never leave a sinking ship. It 's the bedrock of Brian's moral code. He can't stand anyone letting the team down. Before they flew the nest, he came down hard on his kids if they didn't set the table, or do the washing up, and he's about to come down harder on me, who has never been one of those kids. I have shagged one of those kids, last christmas eve, but that's another story, for which I am only half to blame. Technically she was an adult, twenty seven to be precise, and it was a blow job not a shag, and consensuaI, and bloody brilliant actually. It's better I keep these details to myself, having been Brian's babysitter back in the day, before life got complicated by hormones. Whenever I see Brian, post blow-job, I am gripped with a 'tourettes'-like desire to confess all, but now is not the time.

'GET BACK HERE.' Brian is shouting through several walls. I always react like a frightened rabbit to a shouted command. It's something I learned when I was younger. Dad struck an imposing figure back then, and it was do what you’re told or get a smack. So here I am back in the room.

 “You've spilt dettol all over the carpet, and I've got to go juggling. Can you take over?” I mop the carpet with a hanky.

“Peter needs to go to A and E for an x-ray. I'm pretty sure he's just bruised, but better to be safe than sorry, can you drive him?” 

 I put the hanky over the stain. “I'd take him myself but they've got nothing to juggle. Can I trust you to sort it?”

Can you? Can you Brian? Can you 'trust' the babysitter who carnally abused your daughter? I don't say this out loud. I stand mute, the 't' word having thrown me into all kinds of panic. I'm not sure I can' trust' myself, so why would anyone else? Besides, I don't have a car here, or at home for that matter, my bike gets me everywhere, and I can't drive Dad's, even if I was insured, I haven't driven for years, not since I wrote off Kirsty's "Fiat".  So whichever way you look at it getting Dad's hip x-ray is not as straightforward as Brian thinks.

“And do him a sandwich for lunch in case he has to wait” As usual, Brian’s thinking outside the box. I'm about to phone my brother but Dad butts in when the sandwich is mentioned, despite the shock and the pain. He has a thing about food - “I don't need lunch, and I don't need an x-ray either, you can both get off now, thank you Brian you've done more than enough, and Tom, you've got a train to catch.”

You think I can't get you to hospital, You think I can't fix you a sandwich, You think I can't do anything, well, that's just where you're wrong Dad. That’s what I want to say. "You're right dad, I've got to go, sure you'll be okay?" is what I do say.

 “He has to have that x-ray Tom. Ring them at work, I'm sure they'll understand.” Brian doesn't understand that 'work' wouldn't understand, and that you turn up for the show unless someone's dying.

“It’s not normal 'work' Brian, it's acting, the show must go on and all that, you can't just not turn up, there are no understudies, at least not for the small parts, just for the big ones, and the small parts are understudying those, so I'm an understudy as well as a small part, which is a double reason why I have to be there, but it's okay Brian I'll get my brother to drive him.”

That's when Dad loses his temper: “Who's 'him', the cat's father? You can both bloody well buzz off, 'scuse my french, and leave me in peace, you're like a pair of old women.”

Brian leaves me and Dad to get on with it. The parental role resumed, I fit back into the parented one and watch from the window as Brian climbs into his Mazda with three boxes of juggling balls. I collect my bags and, with a quick "Bye Dad", run out of the house. I see the bus leaving the terminus a hundred yards away. I break into a sprint. I have to catch it if I'm going to make the next train, and I have to make the next train if I'm not going to be late, which is letting everybody down. The Karrimor is on my back, full of books and skin care products I don't need.  The Muji bag is in my hand, with the computer I do need, to check messages from the dating site. I'm Tom Courtney running from the police in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I'm the Indian Chief running for freedom in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. I'm Dad running for glory in the Combined Services Cross Country Championships. I'm knackered. None of these runners carried a rucksack, let alone a Japanese briefcase.  I'm like a squaddie from an Andy McNab bestseller, except for the briefcase, with a ton of nonsense on my back. Or maybe I'm a jobbing actor late for my train to Birmingham Rep. I catch the bus by running in front of it all the way to the stop. I thank the driver for slowing down, even though he had no choice, pay the eighty pence fare with a twenty pound note, swing off my rucksack, causing a mexican wave of ducking heads, and check my mobile for any new texts.

The first is from Julie:   “Okay we need to talk, ring me at 2.” My heartbeat increases. The second is from Kate - “See you later, text me when you get here X.” My heartbeat increases. The third is from my brother -“Pop round if you can - how's Dad?”  I notice the screen shaking in my hand. Okay, one thing at a time, prioritise. I have difficulty multi-tasking so my therapist has taught me to deal with each problem separately. I answer the most important text first. I touch "open" next to Julie's number. What shall I say? I can't ring her at two. It's the first day back after the month off and we're all called for a meet and greet. I can't be late. Not again. I've been late for every meet and greet so far, and I'm on a warning. I can't ring her now, I'll start rambling on her answer machine about wanting "our baby", and "sorry for my behaviour on Saturday", "unforgivable", and I'll probably give it away that I was shagging Saffron, or Walden, or whoever.  I press “close”. I’ll listen to some tunes while I have a think and text on the train.  Plenty of time before Birmingham, time for a chill out, I didn’t sleep that well, kept expecting to hear mum and dad shagging next door. It used to be quite comforting back in the day.   

The Tour Blogs (Inspiration for the The "Confessions" Novel)

Tom Marshall’s Blog October/ November 2009  (A part fictional blog that inspired novel)

Blog 1: The day I kissed my agent goodbye (October 1st)

This is it. The new start. Write a blog - make something positive out of my daily pursuit of the insignificant. I'm an actor. I'm not embarrassingly unsuccessful nor assertively a-list (or b-list or c-list). I'm in the middle. In about an hour I'll be walking into dressing room J at the King's Theatre Edinburgh to play five characters with three lines each and a five minute cameo with four laughs and a fight. No-one in the audience really remembers me. Occasionally an agent or an actor or a casting director who has seen me in a larger role a few years ago will introduce me to their friends as "a brilliant actor" or toss up glibly "Tom should be a star" which for a week I believe I am in all but income. Then reality bites and I find myself peering through the cracks in the scenery at white hair and blankets and imagine what it would be like to be Chris Martin singing Viva la Vida in Tokyo.

I'm not bitter and twisted - I'm still hopeful - but ever since my mother died three years ago I've felt I was in a race against time to break through the glass ceiling. People say I should be grateful in these recessive times - I'm working, I've got my own flat - but I'm forty four , single and earning peanuts net a year. And last January my agent dropped me-

You might make it in the next few years but not with me - I have to look after Emily Blunt and Helen Mirren now and that means being in LA....sorry Tommy mate, we think you're an excellent actor - if you got the breaks you'd win an oscar.

Sometimes I  believe that will happen, then I meet my public in the brasserie -

Were you in the cast?

I was the mechanic bloke with the grimy face in the blue overalls 

Well, could you sign here anyway you never know you might be famous one day

Yeah, one day Tommy mate, one day. You'll wake up and smell the coffee and sign up with that supply teaching agent. I forgot, I didn't tell you I'm the teacher type did I? Well, I am, I've got a PGCE,  got it through the Open University when I was unemployed for most of 1996 and 1997....and 1998.....and....don't go there Tommy, you'll only get depressed. Try and find a new acting agent instead - glass half full and all that.

Good idea, just as soon as I've done my tax return.

Blog 2: I’m Not a Sex Addict – not today (October 5th)

Right. I'm not a sex addict. And this post has no sex in it. But stick with me because there will be sex. Lots of it. As soon as I get some. Which will be very soon. I promise. It might even be today. Who knows? Each new second is a new opportunity. "The power of NOW". Eckhart Tolle. Apparently "The New Earth" is even better, though I'm still trying to get through the first one. My pain body keeps distracting me while I wallow in the comfort of my suffering - but I digress and I'm losing you - back to SEX. If I don't get any sex today or next week or any time in the future I'll write some flashbacks about when I did get some because let's face it what's the point of putting all this work in if no-one reads it. And I'm not carrying on if I don't get at least 30,000 hits. And a book deal.

Secondly I'm not called Tom Marshall. You know this because you've clicked the link on Tony Bell's Facebook. And no-one will read this who doesn't know me unless they trawl the archives in a few months time. When I will have one or two random followers. But until then I know I am talking to Tony Bell's facebook friends. Exclusively. So my name is Tony Bell. And everything I write is absolutely true. But for the purposes of libel and common courtesy I am Tom Marshall and all that I write is fiction. But dressed up as truth. When infact it is truth dressed up as fiction. Look the bottom line is if I am offending anyone but myself let me know and I'll weigh up personal gain with conscience and get back to you.

Right. I have to go and do a matinee now and I really mustn't be late but I WILL BE (I knocked the caps lock) because I always am much as I always try not to be. I will write about sex either during or after the matinee.....

Blog 3: Fear and Loathing in Plymouth (October 7th)

Tom is in his B and B in Plymouth post petit mort. He hears a man shouting in the street outside:  “Suki you fuckin little twat”

Tom looks out of his window at Suki. She is dressed in a pink jumper, frozen in post-pee position, hind legs taking the strain, droplets of urine mixing with the rain. Suki is, he guesses, a Yorkshire terrier cross-breed, though he’s not that well up on dogs. He’s more of a cat person.  

Half an hour later Tom is in the breakfast room, talking to the landlady -

“I’ll have the full English please”

“I bet you will”, that’s the landlady

“And coffee – is it fresh?”

“It’s over there in the tube packets – hot water’s on the table - did you see that programme last night?”

“I was doing the play”

“Course you was – well, it was brilliant. He made love to ‘er round the back then ‘e murdered ‘er”

“Could I have a new fork?”

“And if you think that sort of thing doesn’t ‘appen you’re wrong, 'appens all the time round ‘ere – one egg or two?”

On Saturday during the matinee there is a disturbance outside the bank. I can hear a girl with a buggy and a toddler shouting at a boy. A small crowd is watching.

“Are you deaf Shane? Are you? Then watch my bleedin’ lips. I don’t love you ANYMORE.”  

The boy turns to the crowd – “’Ave you got kids mate? Then you know what it’s like.”        

This is Jeremy Kyle only without Jeremy Kyle.

Three days later I’m in Scotland. There is a smell of yeast. I walk into a café near the theatre. A man in his thirties is playing jazz on an upright – “I’ll have a skinny latte please. To take out.”

I leave the jazz and sipping my latte walk up the hill to Edinburgh castle. Where were we last week?

Blog 4: Shower or Bath?  (October 9^th)

I was wondering where the bath plug is? I tried the one in the sink but it doesn’t fit. Then I worked out a way of fixing the shower mat over the plughole using the suction of the rubber but it would probably be more efficient to use the plug

It would be more efficient to use the shower. We don’t allow baths. It’s on a timer you see and the water runs out.

This is Edinburgh, Mrs. This is the civilised week.There was a communal shower at the Citadel B and B in Plymouth last week, but the head was so lime-scaley it could only manage a tiny trickle. And much as I’m sure this is a super deluxe one with jet force hot water…I HATE SHOWERS.

Okay all you eco-warriors I know a bath is an extravagance but it’s my only vice. And an absolutely necessary vice. I need a bath like a fish needs a water. It keeps me sane. And more to the point, it stops me from going insane.When I wake up every morning I’m sweating and stiff - and not where I’d like to be – but in my neck and shoulders. I’m tense and anxious and I’m going to die and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for and unlike Bono that still means something to me because I’m not a multi-millionaire-family-man-rock-star-musician-still-touring-stadiums-middle-aged-and-happy-person. I’m a credit-card-interest-paying-childless-boy-in-a-man’s-body-jobbing-actor-still-touring-plymouth-middle-aged-and-pass-on-that-one-person.

And I want a bath. To soak in. Not a Shower. Thank you. And goodnight.

…maybe when she goes out I can do the rubber mat trick again…

Blog 5: Meltdown in Musselbrough (October 10th)

I'm having a meltdown. In Edinburgh. I know I said Musselbrough but I need a catchy title and I'm absessed with alliteration. It's all going wrong. No-one is reading my blog. I've posted twelve consecutive status updates advertising the link on facebook and my comment wall is  empty. When I asked for advice about buying this computer I got twenty-five comments. Since the blog I've had one. It said -

It's a mistake to limit yourself to sex 

I should explain when I first started the blog it was called sex addict seeks love because I thought I'd get more hits that way - oh, and because I used to be a sex addict.....when there was sex out there to be addicted to.....back in the day. Well, blog-follower number one is right, it's a mistake to limit yourself to sex, especially if that has limited itself to the limit of not actually existing. So I've changed the title - it's now A Midlife Crisis in Reverse.

Let's see what happens now. Something's got to give. That's the title of a Jack Nicholson film about mid-life crisis isn't it? Bugger. It's all been done before hasn't it? I'm sorry.  I'm in a bad mood. My glass is half empty. Actually my coffee cup is completely empty. I'm in The Elephant. The girl in Cornerstones (which doesn't have Wifi in case you're a bit part actor/wannabe writer and you find yourself on tour in Edinburgh), told me this was where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter. Actually I'm not in The Elephant, that doesn't have Wifi either -

Hi I heard this is where Harry Potter was written and I'm writing a novel too, actually a blog, but it's going to be a novel, it's not the normal throwaway blog, yesterday's news tomorrow's fish supper type blog, it's a kind of nick hornby meets bridget jones concept blog with a plot and everything, this guy writes a blog and he's a failed actor and it gets published and his whole life turns around but hey you're busy you don't need to hear the whole pitch what I wanted to ask was.....how does your Wifi work?

What is Wifi?

I kid you not. I must have picked the only barista in England, sorry England AND Scotland that hasn't heard of Wifi. He was obviously Italian or Spanish or French or something but that doesn't excuse him from being a NUMBSKULL.  JK Rowling my arse - bugger, that's Ricky Tomlinson's catch phrase from The Royle Family.  Do I ever have an original thought? Please don't answer that, my needy narcissistic ego (alliteration again, see) can't handle it just now.

So I'm in Black Medicine. Which does have Wifi. It nearly didn't happen here either. I put my computer bag on a free table, asked the nice transatlantic year abroad student to keep an eye out, went to the toilet, took a little longer than usual as the toilet paper (post wipe) had blood on it (piles I think, nothing serious) and by the time I got back my latte had been thrown away and a happy couple had carefully moved my bags and sat in my seat, so never trust a transatlantic year abroad student is the moral of that little story I think.....am I over-writing....get a grip Thomas.

I found another seat but the screen was reflecting the sunlight. I found another seat. I ordered another latte. I changed my blog title. I wrote this post. I wrote a lot of sentences starting with I. I needed the toilet again.

Blog 6: Clearing Up My Arse  (October 11th)

I don't want you to worry about me. So I thought I'd better clear up the "blood on the toilet paper " reference in the "Meltdown in Musselbrough" blog last week. There's a history behind my arse. Which I covered in my aborted "actor in a midlife crisis" blog written before the tour. But I've read that real writers never waste material. So here's a great opportunity to cover some old ground. Firstly, I have a habit of checking my toilet paper every time I wipe my arse. It dates back to when I visited a private doctor in 2006 because three antibiotic courses hadn't shaken my bronchial cough and we had no understudies. He asked for my medical history. When I told him what mum had died of he suggested I go for a bowel check. That's when I started the habit. In The Madness of King George they call it stool inspection.

The first time I noticed something irregular was in Tokyo.  During my pre-show preparation I found a red worm. My hands started shaking. It jumped off the toilet paper onto the pristine floor and vanished forever. I was sweating now as well as shaking. The worm had done its job. And so had I.  After flushing and washing I knocked on the star dressing room and spoke to Hideki Noda, the most famous actor in Japan. I told him the whole story about mum dying of bowel cancer and how I now had parasites in my bowel and could I have an appointment to see his doctor in the morning. Back in my hotel room  I sat on the electronically heated toilet seat and examined my arse a second time. I found hundreds of these red worms, on the used paper, in the bowl, everywhere. I wiped three of them clean wrapped them up and put them in my wallet for safekeeping.

The doctor had one of those white mouth masks on that surgeons wear in Casualty when they're saving lives. I gave him the worms to look at.  He started to speak to Hideki in Japanese. I thought I heard the word for "cancer",  I was shaking again. I thought I might faint. The doctor removed his mask and  explained in broken english that as far as he could tell and without forensic examination these were tiny pieces of tomato skin but he would test my blood for cancer anyway.

The next day the tests came back. No cancer, tomato skin in my fesces and above average cholestoral in my blood. I cut down on chips and left my arse alone for a while.

Until an irritable itch caused me to check again. There was blood on the paper so I went straight to the star dressing room. This time Toby Belch reassured me that it was probably piles, they were quite common, he was always getting them. One had probably burst and would heal quite naturally.

So when I noticed the same symptons this afternoon I didn't panic.

And nor should you.

Blog 7: The day I kissed my landlord goodbye (October 12th)

I was in a good mood this morning. It's Saturday. Last day in Edinburgh then home for the weekend. Just before I set off for a latte and a flaky custard tart I went to see Jim, the landlord. I might not see him before I go for good early tomorrow and I need to apologise for last night. Or this morning to be precise.  I couldn't find my keys when I got back from Espionage (no dark mystery there though, just sticky floors and sticky legs) so I rang the doorbell. I looked at my watch after a few rings, oops, 3am. After a few more rings Jim opened the door in a pair of boxers. He was remarkably sanguine as I bumbled a story about a hole in my 501's. I hadn't got as far as my box room at the top of the stairs before the keys fell out of my rucksack.

So here I am in the nice part of the house saying sorry. He doesn't seem quite so sanguine now.

What are you going to do about getting in tonight I don't want a repeat performance?

Actually I  found them in my room (safer option)

You're a proper actor you are. Proper actors forget their keys. And take things without asking. You used my wife's shampoo. Did you forget your wash bag as well?

I couldn't tell if he was being deadpan and Scottish.

Yes I did actually. But I couldn't find any toothpaste so I went without. Have to give those teeth a good scrub when I get back to London.

Have you got the rent?

I forgot. I'll go to the cash point on my way to the theatre and leave it on the table. Sorry.

You're an idiot.

I'm not really used to this deadpan delivery. I should be, my grandad was half-scottish. I have been unusually forgetful though. It's since I got this new laptop and started writing the blogs. I was on a roll yesterday, despite some technical hiccups. I hope Jim doesn't mind me changing the WEP password on his wireless router to make it Mac compatible. I found the ISP number on some paperwork in his office and got it sorted while he was teaching. They said it should work on all PC's so I'll leave the new password with the rent tonight after the last show.

Eighty quid would have been reasonable if they'd not been sniffy about only having showers. I managed a five out of six baths using the 'shower-mat-over-the-plughole' routine so it all worked out in the end. Much better than the B and B in Plymouth last week where you had to pee in the sink or risk the communal toilet. I've been more settled here but I still think they could have been friendlier. If this wasn't my final tour I'd consider putting a question mark in my "tom's good digs guide" pocketbook. As it is I'll let it go. Onwards and upwards.

Blog 8: Losing My Mind (November 2^nd)

When I said I'd been 'unusually forgetful' in the last post I forgot about being 'usually forgetful' usually and while this week's level of forgetfulness might be unusual for you it probably isn't unusual for me. I just wanted to clear that up.

Two weeks ago in Chichester  a package arrived for me. It contained my IPod. I didn't even know I'd lost it. I've got two so I never know where the one I'm not using is. I had three but I left one at Leicester Forest services I forget when. There was a covering letter with the package-

We found this on the train.  My grandson explored the contents. He found your name and a very large number of music downloads.

13,386 songs to be precise. I downloaded CD's from seventeen london libraries when I was unemployed for a month or twelve last year. It's illegal, I think, but I did it on the spot and  no-one stopped me. There were plenty of raised eyebrows flying around but I'm thick-skinned. Back to the letter -

Google suggested you could be an actor and my wife said you looked a bit like the Tom Marshall in the photo with Keith Allen so we phoned the Festival theatre and

you are indeed the same.

Some people can restore your faith in human nature can't they?

Ps We didn't reclaim the socks that were with it

What socks?

I left my wallet on the same train that week and spent the lunch hour on a trip to Havant where a nice inspector handed it over. I could have sworn I'd had cash out that morning but when it came back with just the cards I let it go. He had an honest face, and it wouldn't be the first time I remembered I'd done something I hadn't and forgotten I'd done something I had.

I dropped the same wallet on the Lothian Road the first day I got here. A nice lady in a Volvo rescued it after she'd run it over. On Tuesday I lost my flat cap but that was cheap so I'll write it off. Except it's the third one I've bought this month. The first two I left in the charity shop on Lordship Lane. Which would have been fine if I hadn't left my squash racket as well. I popped in to find a suit for the role-play jobs at St George's hospital after a match at Brixton Rec. I didn't know I'd lost that either, the racket not the match, until I passed the shop in the afternoon and saw a squash racket in the window. I tried to buy it (you can never have enough squash rackets) but the shop was closed. Then the penny dropped.

Next morning I waited outside the shop for an hour listening to my ipod before the volunteers let me in at ten past ten -

Can I have the squash racket by the window?  

Three pounds please

That's quite a bargain it cost me a hundred new and the re-string  was thirty - you didn't find a flat cap by any chance?

Blog 9: I forgot my medication (November 4^th)

I’ve run out of pills. I had one in my pocket. In Edinburgh. And three months supply in the bathroom cabinet. In London. Kitty bought that from the distressed pine shop eleven years ago. The cabinet, I mean. She bought everything eleven years ago – including the Home Base Powder Blue and Victorian Lilac paint combo that's gently peeling in the kitchen. If it wasn’t for the flat screen in the bedroom you’d guess at female occupancy. Infact, I’ve lived in the flat sans une femme for nine years (except for year six but let’s not go there). It’s a little tired now – I nicked that euphemism from the estate agent. I got her round to discuss a short-term let option while I was on tour. It was an option. If I made a quick decision….and organized storage…I might re-decorate when the tour finishes. 

If you miss a pill you can fuck up the cycle and lose the hair that’s stable. After a week you might as well forget it. So it’s a big deal. An Edinburgh to London return trip isn’t an option. Since we’re on the subject. I don’t have an understudy. I am one. I’m just going to have to watch my hair fall out.

I found two on the keyboard during the first paragraph. Hairs, I mean. I could see the round bit at the front of my head shining through when I put on my mud make-up and in the quick change when I bent down to tie my boots I saw the dresser looking at my crown. And I can’t take extra ones when I finally get home or my testosterone level will get dangerously low. As it is, normal dosage can affect libido and volume of sperm. But it’s been quite a celibate year (on and off) and making babies usually comes after making relationships.  So that’s good news.

The pills I’m talking about are little orange ones labelled “sunday, monday, tuesday’ and so on in weekly packets just like the iconic contraceptive. They’re called Propecia and the doctor prescribed them instead of Prozac when he discovered the root of my depression. Thinning hair means I’m not Peter Pan or Dorian Gray or Brian May. It means I’m going to die. But before that I’m going to get bald. And Propecia means I can put my finger in the dyke a little longer ‘til I get my act together and find a wife. And having slightly more petit petits morts is a small price to pay. If only I wasn’t so scatty.

Three more have landed on the keyboard. I'm destined to play King Kanute.

Blog 10: Sex in the City, well, East Dulwich, actually (November 11^th)

I actually had sex on sunday. You don't believe me do you? You think I'm making it up so I can have a sexy blog too.  Adventures of a Call Boy, Diary of a Call Girl, Sex in the City Girl, Confessions of an Office Girl, Tom Marshall's Year Book. Spot the odd one out. Not anymore...

She felt his oversized banana under the strain of his boot cut 501's, but this one wasn't going in the smoothie maker it was going in her mouth and, even without the crushed ice, it was going in right now.....

I'd better start at the beginning. You know I told you I went on Premier League dot com after I split up with my ex-girlfriend a few months ago. No, I didn't? Well, blog-followers, we've got some catching up to do haven't we? Maybe we should save that for later. I'm just dying to tell you what happened on Sunday when I got back from  my de-stress week in Scotland. I had a date planned with one of my 'fans' from the site (if you press on a photo you automatically become a 'fan' and link up profile pages). I have 354 fans so I'm top of the weekly popularity chart. "Pop goes your Cherry-Ade" is number one, folks, for the third week running. Grab him quick before he goes out of stock.  I'm not letting it go to my head  though (fnah, fnah), because I worked out if you press a girl's photo she sees yours first in the search pages. By pressing 2,563 photos I easily secured top spot. So what if I cheated a bit? If it increases your chances of meeting Ms Right - and quite a few Miss Wrongs - what's Miss Wrong with that?

Fast forward to Sunday and I'm meeting up with date number 326 (I haven't slept with all those, I wish, nor have I dated them, but I have emailed all 354 over a three month period). She doesn't look as young as her picture but that's okay she's still a good fifteen years younger than me. We've already struck up a good msn chat chemistry and we obviously share the same gsoh so it's looking good. Three leffe's in and I'm buzzing -

So she said I've met someone else and it's love at first sight so I said that's what you said about us and she said fuck off so I said people don't just fuck off so she fucked off and I followed her and she went back to the flat we used to share so I went to the florists and rang the buzzer and she said fuck off over the intercom and I said people don't just -

Can I stop you there? Is this about your ex, about Nikki, the girl from your first seventeen emails?

Yes, it's about Nikki, of course, who else would it be?

First rule of dating don't go on about your ex

But I need to talk about it, get it off my chest

I'm not your therapist

No your my rebound date

Did you want an early night?

What's your line of thinking exactly?

That you're a twat

Now you're probably wondering how we got from here to rampant rabbit aren't you? Well it took quite a lot of back tracking and another four leffe's to get to this -

Don't you want to go out with me?

No

Why not?

You've got desperate stamped on your forehead 

How about a shag?

I'm not into one night stands

You're on Premier dot com what are you talking about?

Ive been out of the country for seven years, it's a way to meet people

And I've been out of my head for three years why don't we get back to the garden together?

Get back to the garden?

It's a song lyric from Woodstock, which Joni Mitchell sang at Woodstock, iconically, written by Crosby Stills and Nash who also sang with Neil Young, also iconically 

You're too old for me

I know but hey it's sunday, we've had seven leffe's, why not come back to mine and I'll play you the track?

Now you're talking, Mr Pop your Cherry Cheesetastic, NOT 

I didn't hear the 'not' I was too horny

Great Miss 'Italian Job' - shouldn't there be a 'blow' in there somewhere? 

I'm calling a taxi 

We can walk

I'm not going to yours it'll be full of first world war break-up memorabilia we'll go to mine

Coolio Julio 

I really don't know why I'm doing this I don't do mercy shags 

Nor do I

That's cleared that up then - I'm in Clapham - and no funny stuff in the cab ok?

And that's how it happened. She told me she'd been teaching in Italy since she graduated and wanted to  settle back in England and I told her I was an actor and had always wanted to live abroad but for now Clapham was fine. And then we made a smoothie together.

What's up? You don't believe me?  Is it really so appallingly inauthentic that I pulled? I'm not as bald as I make out you know? Okay, just this once, I'll come clean. I didn't...come clean, or dirty. Nor did she. Not as far as I know. She went home to Clapham. I went home to Duckwich, where I whizzed up three black bananas and watched The Italian Job on re-mastered DVD. Now I've been honest with you, so I expect the same from you miss solo blog follower. Thanks for joining. You know who you are.

It's not a mercy click is it?

Blog 12: Meltdown in Brumingham (November 20^th)

I'm in Birmingham. I haven't a clue what it's like. It was dark when we finished the tech  - I shoved a tasteless chicken pie down me - credit crunch supper for 6.95 - more crunch than credit. The pastry was overcooked. It wouldn't matter if it was daylight and I had three hours to kill - I can't look outside my own head.  I'm going round and round in circles. It's five minutes to curtain up but I can't be bothered to change into generic dust bowl farm hand.

I've lost my Mojo. My Confidence, My Girlfriend, oh that was three years ago,  my Mother, oh that was three and a half years ago, my motivation, everything. And the boys are jabbering and yabbering and fucking this and fucking that and cunting this and bag of weed that. My head's about to explode.

I did some research yesterday to suss out the competition for my blog stroke book-waiting-to-happen. I looked at the non-fiction first. That's what this is (apart from the pseudonym - which I've changed to my real name - it didn't feel right). Dawn French's writing is very similar in style to mine. She  has written imaginary letters to real life people whereas I've written real life letters to imaginary people. Still no followers. The only difference between "Footloose" and "Dear Fatty" (apart from the fact that blogs are blogs and letters are letters) is that she's very famous. "Fatty" is at number three in the bestsellers so that's a good sign. I just need to get famous double quick.

Amongst the fiction books (which this could be if I pretended it was), some unknown actress has written about looking for a man and has clearly found one judging by the smug photo on the inside cover. Fifty lovers and a funeral, or whatever, cannot honestly be based on a true-life blog called spinstersquest,  a long unfruitful search for a half-decent bloke. She is stunning and funny and a bestselling novelist. What has she not got going for her? Why oh why would she not be able to find a lover for four hundred pages? I'd shag her on page one.

Then some unknown actor has written a novel about a failed actor (really???).  They should make it a dating website - Actorsnotdoingverywellwithlotsoftimetowrite.com. It's a bandwagon fit to bust and I've jumped on it. Anyway this guy's book is about understudying someone more famous and fancying the other guy's wife. It's outrageously well written. And it has a plot. I've just readHow not to write a novel and the first chapter is all about how not to write a first-person confessional where nothing happens. That's nota good sign

Should I give up now? And join the fabulously witty banter-smog of sweat and foul language clogging up this basement wardrobe-cum-substitute-dressing-room. I'm not bitter just stressed. My squash partner is having a baby, my best friend is  playing the lead in a new adaptation of 1984 and my on-off platonic-friend-cum-girlfriend is off. Every way you look at it. Still, I managed to write 500 words.

Blog 13:  Meltdown in Nottingham (November 16^th)

I should be in Birmingham. Instead I'm at my brother's house. It's like a show home without the show, a spotless Georgian conversion in The Park, the most exclusive part of Nottingham right next to the castle and home to all the 'wannabe' tennis professionals I played against when I scraped into the county squad during my Adrian Mole's Secret Diary days. Now Simon lives here in his Adrian Mole's Lost Diary days, a single parent sharing the parent bit with the not quite legally divorced other parent. That's why the show element has gone, along with most of the furniture. It kind of suits my 'starving in a garret' writer persona. I don't know yet how it'll fit Tom Marshall, we'll have to see.

I caught the cross-country train after the free drinks at the theatre. I was in one of those moods you get on tour when you can't stand the sight of each other. I'd forgotten the harmonica that night so the boys had to pitch the note bareback which they did admirably, but not before they'd had a go at me for being a  blog writing, navel gazing, non team playing selfish bastard. That won't stop me being a flaky actor, wannabe writer, selfish bastard.  So everyone's a winner.

Truth is, the boys are getting royally racked off with me. I actually missed my entrance for the barbershop quartet last week, which is when they learnt to pitch without stabilisers, and on thursday Bald Dave came in with my line because he thought "my head had gone".  Actually I was experimenting with a resonant pause but  how would he know? Ever since the Mac delivery I've been back to back blogging.  Pete reckons most actors are social animals with "a fifty fifty thinking to socialising ratio" and that 'I'm ninety five to five' - does that make me autistic or just driven? I'd like to think I'm taking steps to crawl out of this bargain basement dressing room and with my 'pen is your weapon' career change chipping away at that reinforced ceiling. Nigel thinks it'll all come to nothing and anyway he's read the bit about worms in my shit and thinks it's, well, shit. Bald Dave asks if I've still got them -

They were bits of tomato that's the whole point - there's a twist in the tale

There was a twist in my stomach I had to put it down when I read about them all red and pulsing. 

They don't understand me. They just want a bit of banter and relaxation, they've got kid worries and wife worries and money worries.  Except Pete, and he's with the community cast this week. He struck lucky in Edinburgh and wants to have a second go on the tombola.

I've just got 'art' worries. I''ve had a confidence crisis since I asked my writer friend if the blogs were ready for publishers. She emailed a response impressively promptly to say on no account must I commit professional suicide and that she was sick of my whiny voice and did I have to be quite so fixated on my excrement and was she being too honest? So it's back to the drawing board. And career worries -which is what I do have in common with the boys. That's why we spend too much time in the dressing room winding each other up. We're not on the stage winding John Steinbeck up. The stars are doing that. The Joad family. The top two wage levels. The chosen ones on the ground floor. The family. We're in the basement and we're the bits and bobs - the outsiders. That suits me fine.

Blog 14:  Sour Grapes (November 23^rd)

That's the headline of the Birmingham Metro review. It says our Grapes of Wrath is a "trudge through catastrophe".  Nigel and Dan and Bald Dave say my blog is like that. At least the Metro saw the show before they said it was shit. All Bald Dave has read of my blog is three lines about shit. That's not fair. And Dan is so negative about everything. Sex, women, Birmingham, acting, his life, my life, my blog, my acting, me, myself, I, Joan Armatrading, everything. It's been boiling up in me. So I let it out -

D-d-d-dan, it's so hard to hear you, it's just a c-c-c-constant barrage of cynicism, c-c-c-unt this, f-f-fuck that, he's shit, your shit, we're all shit etc etc etc

I'm winding you up I thought you could handle it

I can normally but not when it c-c-comes to my writing, I'm over-sensitive about that b-b-because I'm pinning a lot of h-h-h-hopes on it 

I'm sorry it's just that you're always putting it out there I feel obliged to put my oar in,  I'll try to be more encouraging in future

Not more encouraging just not discouraging,  just neutral 

Okay  now I know I'll back off.....I still think your writing's shit though - have you read  Irving Walsh?

Blog 15: My Mentor is Seven, no Eight (November 28th)

I've been listening to Alice's stories - Secret Seven, Puppy Patrol - and she's been watching Roman Mysteries on Cebeebies while I'm typing this post. She's my niece and she's eight.  She's giving me one-to-one tutorials on plot development. She started on life-skills  -

You used the posh plates to eat your quiche on they're not for eating off they're for display, and you used daddy's shower towel for your bath and did you take the toothpaste? And you woke the chinchilla when you came home, try to go to bed quietly

Sorry

Why are you writing that down

I'm writing a children's book (little white lie)

Do you want a few tips? I have good book knowledge

Err, if you like?

Most stories have a group of people  (in my case actors- tick), or children (see previous), and a hero (me - tick), and a villain (showbusiness - can it be a thing?) 

Can the villain be a thing like a shop or a school?

You can be frightened of people in school but not 'of' a school (the boys in the dressing room - tick)

And you need tension (she was banging her legs on the carpet quite violently now). Like here, someone's close to dying, they've been poisoned by snake venom on a hairpin (yesterday's chicken pie - tick) but make sure you add funny bits (things up my bum?) - what genre is your book?

I'm sorry?

Is it a single book or a series?

Well it's a series if the first one works (I'm looking for a two book deal minimum)

Well you need to leave things on a cliff hanger (will I get any blog-followers type of thing?)  cliff-hanger, happy ending, cliff hanger, happy ending, cliff-hanger and so on. This one's a happy ending there's a wedding at the end ( I get a wife?). A good tip is to have a conversation between two characters at the end of the book which tells you about the next one. So the father is telling Flavia he has chosen a suitor for her to marry (I might have to get my platonic ex-girlfriend to find mine) - what age are you aiming at?

How do you mean?

1-6, 7-14, 8+,6+, 5-12?

Is that the time?

Don't put any jokes like that in will you?

7-14?

Then it has to be understandable for seven but mature enough for 14 (I think I've got the first bit)

I read a book that was actually terrible (not mine) it had everything, it was really exciting, but the words were too tricky

Mine's the other way round

You mean it's boring with easy words - it sounds like a 1-6 age group (probably)

Actually it could be exciting if I work on it a bit

That's good because it won't sell otherwise (it won't get off the slush-pile let's face it - my glass is draining fast)

Just then my new agent phoned me (is that tension?) for the first time since I joined them three months ago. The tour finishes in four weeks so it's perfect timing. I listened to my ansaphone while Alice gave dad's celery, parsnip and ginger soup combo a verbal rejection slip -

Hi Tony, just to remind you the Spotlight renewal has been and gone but you still have time if you go on line and give them your bank details - sooner rather than later.....

Is that a cliff-hanger? It's not really is it. It's certainly not a happy ending.

Blog 16: Twenty nine year itch (November 30th 2009)

Last sunday a piece of glass came out of my arse cheek. It had been stuck in there for twenty nine years. I was sitting on the platform at Stockwell tube waiting for the Victoria line when I got an itch on my left buttock. I felt a lumpy bit and scratched at it. Like pulling a big splinter it was. Only it wasn't a splinter it was a tiny shard of glass. The years dropped away and I was back at Uni, fresher's week 1980 - I was living on campus, on the first floor, and locked myself out getting ready for bed. I was trying to get back in through the back window above the roof wearing polyester pyjamas and a pair of checked slippers from British Home Stores. Mum packed them to make sure I was warm at night while other more naked students were practising unsafe sex.

I went straight through the skylight and landed on the coke cans in the refectory kitchen. I was rushed into hospital as casualties from a pile-up on the M6 were being brought back to life, or not,  and released at three in the morning with a severed nipple, a stapled head, soiled pyjamas and an itchy arse.

Next day I paid fifty pounds for the new glass, chucked the jimjams in a bin bag and started sleeping bareback with a girl from Worksop. You could say that was the moment I cut the umbilical cord.

Blog 16:  This afternoon was about Mums (December 1^st)

Usually the boy's dressing room is about sex. Or the objectification of the female form. The new dresser is perfection. Beats Plymouth hands down. I'd leave my wife and kids for her, I'm serious.  I don't think he is serious.

This afternoon it was about mums. Or at least the "you can say anything to your mum and you know you'll be forgiven" school of mums. Bobby's mum had got a bit teary - not what you do to petticoats on barbed wire but what you do when someone says something hurtful. She wanted him to phone his brothers more often - but as Bobby pointed out -

I'm on tour it's hard enough staying in touch with Alice and the girls besides they're big boys now they can pick up a phone all by themselves

- he should've taken a breath there -

Look mum they're my half brothers, there's a twenty year age gap and we're not close.

That was when she got a bit teary. So he was calling her back this afternoon to smooth the waters. I don't know if it worked. I was sitting on a bench in the Oklahoma dust bowl watching a man with black eye make up talk about his kids' bellies stuck out like a pig's bladder. Then Dan pitched in -

My mum's stress levels are sky high. If I ask her to come to sunday lunch or take the kids swimming it's always "Where will I park?"

On the side of the road mum where do you think?

"Stop it Danny you know I'm on my own since your dad except for the Jack Russell."

Well, kill the bloody Jack Russell and get a new fella. I think he was playing to the gallery.

I haven't got any mum stories of my own any more. Like Patrick Swayze, Heath Ledger and Bob's step mum, she died.

Blog 17: Sex at Teatime (December 2^nd)

It was HUGE. And HOT – do you know what I mean? Pete is fresh out of Rada. Like a young Rob Lowe without the charisma. Bald Dave tightens his belt. Pricey though – lunchtime you pay half that.

The boys are back from the “Pubic Triangle”, Edinburgh’s lap-dancing district with the Job Centre sandwiched between three strip joints. It is five to seven, just before the half-hour call. A similar exchange may have taken place some hours earlier. I’d like to suggest. Then they’d have talked SEX. Now they’re talking FOOD. They found “Monster Mash” at two in the morning on their way back from “Sunset Strip”, the song reference nailing itself to their knackered brain cells despite the hormones. Three drama grads who volunteered to be extras tell us it’s won “best student café” this year. They serve five different types of mash apparently – champ, mustard, cheese, spinach and regular. The actress playing Grandma had fish and chips. Mine was curry and chips – I like a lot of sauce to balance the starch.

Healthy option again Stephen. That was Pete, who’d been abusing his body in five different ways until four in the morning.. Before you take the splinter out of my eye take the plank out of your own ingénue-face!

Friendly banter. I dabbed a brown powder marked “mud” onto my character-face and buttoned my check shirt. The opening song came over the tannoy - time for beginners.... When I saw daybreak bright as a beacon, Phoebe arising…

Only another three hours to go.