The Writers' Group
Everyone in this room is a stranger.
Everyone in this room knows one another.
And not just figuratively either. In the “I know your type. I have seen your type before and I will do again.” sense.
No. In this case we really have all seen each other before. Somewhere. Perhaps on a magazine cover. On a culture show. Maybe in a newspaper interview.
This is just how it works in the scene.
We do not know each other by name. But the British literary world is in fact a small one.
Everyone knows everyone inside it, even before they become known outside it.
The London of today, in spite of its cold, forbidding, modernisation, is – like many other large Western liberal capitalist capitals - a creature of cultural stratification and socio-economic division. When you can afford to frequent certain sorts of restaurants for long enough, you begin to become familiarised with more and more faces.
The British literary world operates along similar fault lines for similar reasons.
Like a New Thule igloo, virtually invisible from a bird’s eye view soaring above the icy architecture of the snow peaks below, the inside of one of these small hidden pockets is alive with familial activity.
The usual suspects are here. As well as some new blood. But even the new blood only pulses like clockwork in the veins of the set menu range of freaks, oddballs and outcasts who are single minded and strange enough to be involved in this business.
We convene on a regular basis. But although we come to read, do we really come to listen?
I spot one new-strange-but-familiar face whose eyes are fixed upon me as I creep into the room exaggeratedly quietly to gesture my apologies for making a late entry as the group leader handles the introductions.
Her face is a rotund one. Not unattractive – if a little chubby. She has dark hair and hooded brown eyes and she is wearing a brown dress under a denim jacket. She watches me closely as I take a seat at the foot of the table and mouth an apology to the group leader conscious that although I have attempted to be artfully inconspicuous, in reality the eyes of everyone present are on me.
In her case they are fixated.
She runs her fingers through her hair.
I think that was a little weird.
Then I survey the men sitting to the left and to the right of me.
They are men who most likely have not stepped into a gym once in their adult lives.
Men of ideas as opposed to men of action.
The bumbling, socially awkward and more threatened then threatening last stand of the indigenous white British upper middle class in London.
They have resigned themselves to their fate of going out not with a bang but with a whimper.
The sound of a dandelion seed head being dismembered by a showery April breeze.
“I am a loose lily drifting down an amber river”. Poetry in motion, dear boys.
If they would not mind my saying so, my first writing tip would be to step inside a gym and try to raise the testosterone levels slightly. Start off with some squats of the single leg variety and take it up to at least a 50kg bar.
That would almost certainly help with the procrastination.
There are furtive and fearful glances from my male counterparts. I am only wearing a blue blazer, blue shirt and black tie and some blue jeans. Smart but simple enough.
I sense that these guys simply do not know me well enough to realise that I am but one of their kind.
Admittedly I have bulked up again recently. I mean dude, like, seriously, my arms are literally like bigger than their thighs…LAUGH OUT LOUD.
But appearances can be deceptive.
Although I may well resemble the Jock at school whose brutish aggression had left them sobbing alone and wanking into a Yop in the changing rooms, my presence at the group has so far, if anything, been ghostly in its self-effacement.
Either way we are all essentially big walking chemical reactors. I am the honorary alpha male by default because of the peculiar energy of the male mind.
I think I know the girl who is staring. Her name is Roxanne. I think I know why she is staring too. And in fact I think she is married. Very recently. How very 21st Century!
I am certain I have seen Neha before too.
She has a memorably exotic Muslim sounding surname but she looks fully Scandinavian. I would hazard a guess that is her married name. I would hazard a further guess still that she is no longer married.
Neha seems to be – aside from myself – possibly the purest writer in the group. Her face is a theatrical mask of multi-coloured emotional ornament – an object of wonder and intrigue.
Although not conventionally attractive in any objective way, the layers of disgust that her face is able to project in response to whatever others are reading as she gets progressively drunk and drunker on her Gin and Tonics would seem to indicate that the thin line between insanity and genius is present at the group.
She is the only other member of the group who has never read apart from me – although I suspect that her writing may be the only creative output of the group worth listening to. Apart from my own of course. LAUGH OUT LOUD.
Fate will unite us again at some not too distant stage in our respective futures. She – like me – is a lifer. This is not a fashion statement for her.
The greatest robbery of the 20th Century was the calculated and cynical theft of our attention spans.
A short attention span is the biggest indicator there is of social conformity. Social conformity is very toxic to the creative process.
Today she is dressed rather strangely. Even by her own standards. She is wearing a very low cut cream coloured sweater dress and black jeans with an oversized black fluffy cropped cardigan draped over her shoulders. The effect is to make her seem both underdressed and overdressed at once. Doubtless this effect is a deliberate one. Some sort of bizarre post-modern comment on the distancing effect of the sexual subjugation of women by fashion.
Or perhaps she is just completely batshit crazy.
She also has a very peculiar habit of squashing her tits together and staring at me.
Sandra – the group leader – halts the flow of her own introduction to address me directly. “We were just doing the introductions. Now as YOU have just turned up I am not going to make you go first. That would be a bit mean. Maybe if you put your phone away and get comfortable whilst you listen, that would be a good start??”
Is she a writer or a school teacher?
In fact – to come to think of it - I am pretty sure someone told me that she is a school teacher by trade.
That would explain the user-friendly cocktail of inclusivity and condescension. And that in turns explains the decline of the British education system. ZING!
The obligatory introductions around the table are the worst. This is the only section of the session in which anyone hears my voice. It is also the section that I hate the most.
The room is a dark panelled and authoritarian relic of the British past with towering ceilings and masculine, neo-colonial innards.
Aside from the “having to participate” element of my participation there is always the same disapproving sneer on the faces of the week’s new additions to the group whenever I mention my profession to contend with.
I wonder whether it is time to package the truth slightly differently. Maybe I need to make a joke of it. Perhaps my legendary British public school wit would serve to shatter that pane of ice.
“Hey. I’m Elliot. I am a lawyer…….UNFORTUNATELY! Eh?! Eh?! Anyone?”
Well if nobody else here has a sense of humour…
“I’ve been writing since I was 6 years old. I’m working on a number of things at the moment - the most important thing being my play.”
“Oooh. What’s it about?” says Sandra quizzically, omitting the fact that I have already explained that twice in past meetings.
Was that omission negligent or deliberate I wonder? Perhaps this is revenge. Revenge for my being late. Every single meeting.
“It is a play about punctuality.” I reply. Take that bitch.
Roxanne looks at me and brushes her hair again. Really? Is it that easy? I came here for constructive criticism. Not for a fucking session for married fuckers who still want to fuck strangers, you dirty chubby faced fuck.
“Ok. And tell us, what have you been reading recently?” Sandra asks in an attempt to smooth over my own deliberate omission.
“I’ve been reading a lot of John Betjeman recently actually.”
Oh yes. That’s right. I am here for noble reasons. Tea and crumpets with the Queen. The preservation of the Victorian railway lines. I am here for John Betjeman. Not to fuck anyone. For John Betjeman.
“Ooh. How lovely? Poems or prose?” Roxanne asks. So you’ve progressed from brushing your hair every time my mouth opens to also opening yours, have you? What else would you open if I wanted you to? Whilst the husband is at work burning the midnight oil to pay for your denim jackets and your writer’s groups?
“Wouldn’t you like to know, you fuck....” I mumble to myself.
“Excuse me?”
“Studies in the History of Swindon, I said. Studies in the History of Swindon.”
“Well it sounds absolutely fascinating.” Roxanne replies with a brush of her hair.
Sure. I bet it does. Almost as fascinating as my dick, right?
The first writer-reader is a middle aged bald man with a funny little goatee beard called Martin. He looked very worried when I entered the room. Those were the eyes of the insecurity goblin. (With a funny little goatee).
I can understand that. It does take considerable courage to read your own work aloud to complete strangers.
Every member of the group has grabbed a drink in the bar before coming to sip on whilst the session is in progress. Perhaps some for Dutch Courage.
In my case I have grabbed two. I have a double Jack Daniels and Coke and a pint of Guinness. My dinner and my dessert.
Although neither young nor fashion literate enough to really be a “Hipster” Martin’s red woolly jumper and Kakhis suggest to me a career in the Third Sector. They suggest a dignified and intelligent man who has settled into the comfortable Mid-Life Crisis point of the frustrated poet who simply has nothing interesting or novel to say, despite the lifelong interest in David Icke’s conspiracy theories, fantasy fiction and surprising matters of the bizarrely esoteric.
Martin proceeds to read the first chapter from his already finished novel, The Boat, which would, perhaps not altogether unpredictably, appear to be about a man on a boat. The man has left urban British society behind for a reclusive life in an unknown destination.
The writing is at times technically dazzling and intricate but despite this it is uninteresting.
There is the seemingly stop start poetry of the sailing forecast. Precise descriptions of the weather and tidal systems. Below deck instructions from the captain to “the man on a journey” involving masts and depth readers.
But in spite of all the action taking place aboard, we are never really outside the mundane and - ultimately trivial - introspections of the main character.
Martin reads on.
“All of my life people had told me that I was boring. All of my life people had told me that I did not get to the point quickly enough. Sometimes I wondered whether I had missed the point of life completely. To me the purpose of life was a mere fragment of colour on the horizon – always remaining somehow out of focus – in the corner of my eye. Who was I? And where was I going? These thoughts scrambled my brain as another strong gust hit us and the Captain reefed the mainsail before reading the wind and retreating with me to the cockpit.”
And so it all continues. And continues. Martin reads in a strolling Hampshire burr – the calming and homely sound of the summer – which, although pleasant, is also having the effect of sending us all to sleep.
Neha too gazes longingly into the horizon. Her hands are full (no prizes for guessing with what exactly) but her expression is one of gaping mouthed disgust.
When Martin finishes there is an eerie silence amongst our number. We are all consciously trying to avoid eye contact – witnesses to the crime that has just occurred in the room.
To what extent are we also guilty as perpetrators?
Guilty of the crime that never was.
The plot that never happened.
In that elongated passage of a few seconds between Martin finishing and the “feedback” beginning, it is immediately and patently obvious that the only resounding thoughts of everyone else are: Who is the main character in the book? Where is he going? And what exactly is the fucking point of it all?
It would seem that in a chapter which was over 50 pages long, despite taking in stunning windswept vistas and a journey across thousands of miles, by placing us squarely within the little fleeting thoughts of a central character on a boat who is missing any raison d'etre, there is simply nowhere to escape from his lifelessness.
The contrast between the epic widescreen vastness of the oceans, the unpredictable savagery of the elements, and the somewhat drab monotony of the inner world of the protagonist unfortunately only serves to highlight that the man on a boat - much like his creator, is simply not interesting enough to stir the reader.
By setting The Boat on the boat, the resounding effect is to bring into sharp focus that in Martin’s book nothing really happens.
The Boat is sinking. Quickly. And the protagonist seems to be going down with his ship.
I can see Sarah take a deep breath as her eyes roll back into her skull harnessing years and years of experience of teaching pre-teens to measure her response as group leader as carefully and tactfully as possible.
Sarah, echoing the thoughts of everyone around the table, tentatively suggests that perhaps the plot of the first chapter of The Boat is rather too slow and asks whether we do find out where the protagonist is going and why in subsequent chapters of Martin’s book.
“Oh yes! Of course. We do find out…In Chapter 12.” Martin replies sweetly albeit seemingly experiencing a profound moment of self-realisation by the time his mouth has closed.
I initially let out a laugh, surprised by Martin’s own turn of pace and by his dry sense of humour before realising that he was not joking, and disguising it with a choke of my Jack Daniels.
Sarah’s facial expression tells a million words. Chapter 12.
Forever?
Forever ever?
Forever ever?
Sarah seemingly rallied by some form of existential epiphany that Martin’s “Chapter 12 bomb on a boat” admission has triggered plucks up the courage to do what our sole purpose in the writer’s group is to do.
“Ok, Martin. I am, going to be completely honest. If this goes on for another 12 chapters, as a reader, I am not sure that I would really wait that long to find out where he is going and why. But anyway. It really was excellent. I think we all enjoyed it and good luck trying to give it a bit more punch.”
Therein, I suspect, lies at least one half of the problem.
Martin looks like the sort of guy who could not punch his way out of a condom.
That has just been used.
By his best friend.
On his girlfriend. LAUGH OUT LOUD.
The crisis of collapsed Western world masculinity has devastated the sense of creative possibility for most aspirant writers within it – as they wilt in the burning glow of safe spaces, the need for self-censorship and White Guilt.
After all. Mr Betjeman may have spent a little too long playing with his choo choo trains. But even Betjeman, by all admission, had balls.
Martin’s book is not one that I could ever recommend with any degree of sincerity after hearing his first chapter – however meticulously well written it may have been.
His chapter is evidence of two things about literature which I discovered through personal experience a long time ago.
Technical brilliance is itself uninteresting.
A piece of art’s concern with thoughts alone does not necessarily mean that it is worth thinking about.
Martin, much like the central character of his imagination, appears to have taken the most ponderous and meandering of journeys but there simply is no great incentive to join him on it.
His writing suffers from the fatal error of attempting to work a thought or feeling into literature (as opposed to using literature to elucidate a thought).
He is perhaps more well suited to a career in broadsheet journalism than one involving writing fiction.
If I had been inclined to offer him my own constrictive criticism I would suggest that the emotional journey he had sought to convey so earnestly was not befitting of the circumstances.
After all, if anything, day after day on the waves would be more likely to set someone free from humdrum anxieties.
Everything becomes about the present on a boat.
The impossibility of worry about anything landlocked when tying knots and keeping everything shipshape steers the mind much closer towards a meditative state than it does towards a thought about whether your chin is too big.
Consider the following passage by Hilaire Belloc:
“There is in this aspect of land from the sea I know not what of continual discovery and adventure, and therefore of youth, or if you prefer a more mystical term, of resurrection. That which you thought you knew so well is quite transformed, and as you gaze you begin to think of the people inhabiting the firm earth beyond that line of sand as some unknown and happy people; or if you remember their arrangements of wealth and poverty and their ambitious follies, they seem not tragic but comic to you, thus isolated as you are on the waters and free from it all. You think of landsmen as on a stage.”
If art really has imitated life, my advice to the men of the imaginary world and the real one, would be to try to live in the moment a bit more.
Next up is Jakey.
Jakey has apparently been putting off reading a chapter from his own novel for a few weeks. This is purportedly owing to his “intellectual copyright” concerns as much as it is to his social anxiety.
Does Jake strike me as an anxious boy?
Well. My first impression of Jake is that he must be the sort of guy who would be very popular with women.
Until he meets them.
LAUGH OUT LOUD.
On a more serious and less laugh out loud note however, Jake does strike me as the sort of chap who would complete a rollicking riot of an evening putting the world to rights over Heineken, pizza and X-Box. As long as you remembered to bring a clothes peg for your nose.
LAUGH OUT LOUD.
But seriously – Jake does strike me as rather brilliant in his own way.
You want to know what really happened to Flight MH370? Jakey has the inside scoop.
You want the Top 50 scariest horror films of all time ranked best to worst? Jakey is your man.
I think that the adverse effects upon his health of being a Horror obsessed Gamer are fairly obvious but he is clearly a man who becomes immersed fully within the world he creates in his bedroom.
What is it about the genre of Horror which has such a huge appeal to people who conform to this particular psychological paradigm?
The answer probably resides in the passageway to subjective fantasy that Horror offers from objective domestic reality.
Jake’s obesity has taken its toll on his postural control. Although he is wearing a camouflage style military shirt and combat trousers, the manner in which these items are stretched over his body serves – if anything – to evidence a total absence of bodily discipline. Jake has a rounded, wide and oily face with a prominent broad forehead and an upturned snub nose.
As I re-enter the room after buying myself another drink, Jake is introducing the central character of his novel to the group before reading. I have missed Jake revealing the “special power” that the protagonist of his book possesses but I swiftly get the impression that it is of a paranormal order.
So in other words, although he may seem at first glance to be an unremarkable man, he is in fact superhuman. It would seem, from the very outset, that our feet have been firmly placed in Mary Sue territory.
Jake elaborates upon the central concept of his book further:
“The thing you have to understand about him is that he can do so so much. But there is just this one thing holding him back. But if it wasn’t for this one thing, really, there is just no telling what he could achieve. He could literally rule the world.”
Procrastination is the human’s mind shield against the fear of being mediocre.
If the mechanism of the Xavi-Iniesta-Messi triumvirate that became the focal point of FC Barcelona’s attack in the late Noughties (one of the greatest club sides in football history) taught us anything worth knowing, that lesson lay in the constant movement of their carousel football.
The best football is played when it is intuitive and instinctive.
The Spain side of Euro 2008 which would go on to enjoy an unprecedented level of domination in international football (which is unlikely ever to be matched) was one which did not expect success but found it by relieving itself from any burden to perform.
Jakey reads from his book.
““Back! Back! Back!”” The crow said. Its eyes glistened like pebbles. Wellington gasped in horror. He was frozen to the spot like ice. If he could just summon his powers, he could escape this torment. But there was something holding him back. His power was draining like winter rain down the water well he spent so many summers sitting by – just thinking about how he had these extraordinary powers but had never learned how to use them. Because something was holding him back.”
I sit and watch the disinterested expressions around the table. I am looking for clues.
Is anyone else hearing this? What year are we in?
I think Stephen King is one of the great writers of the past Century, but I am not sure that fact alone could justify this.
Jakey has now stopped reading. He wipes a bead of sweat from his brow.
His face is flushed red and he is practically panting because of the emotional and perhaps physical exertion that he has put himself through.
Yet I rather imagine that he has achieved some strange form of catharsis.
“So Wellington was dreaming?!” Sarah asks hestitantly.
“Yes!! Yes!! Exactly!” Jakey responds excitedly.
“I didn’t realise that it was a dream until the final section of the chapter.” Says Sarah.
“Really?? That’s exactly what I was going for. Yes!” Jake pumps his fist in the air seemingly experiencing a euphoric moment of his confidence being boosted by public recognition.
“I thought it was absolutely terrifying.” Roxanne adds. “I really enjoyed it. I am just worried that I would be too scared to read what comes next!”
“Really? Yes. Finally someone gets it. Finally someone actually gets my stuff!” Jake says.
I wonder whether he might be getting a little carried away in the moment.
Finally someone gets it. Finally the “it” is being gotten. By someone! It is all coming together. It was all worth it. The years and years of planning. They told me to get a proper job. They told me that I would never make it. They told me that it would never happen.
Well, what are they going to tell me now?
Did you hear that Mum? Fuck you! They get it! They all sat there and they all listened. And they get it.
Yet despite all of the hysteria in the room at the moment (admittedly mainly coming from one of our number) I remain unconvinced that there is really that much to be “got”.
Jakey goes on to describe the structure of his book in more detail.
Each chapter representing a different dream.
Each dream set within a different timeframe.
From the Victorian Age to the Future with a capital “F”.
The story is however always the same.
Here is a man who could do so much but there is just this one small thing holding him back.
What on Earth could it be?
Why restrict the question to this planet, when the protagonist of Jakey’s book also appears on another?
The writing is pedestrian at most.
When I am asked about what I think of it, I am tempted to say “I think it’s horrific.” but I am stopped by good sense and a sense of sadness at potentially ruining Jakey’s big moment.
I have the impression that he may never enjoy a bigger one than this.
Besides which, bad puns aside, his novel does not really work well as an addition to the Horror genre. It just is not scary enough for that.
In the end the story is of a man who is fundamentally an incompetent one. Jakey may have conjured different eras in time, and even different planets, to disguise the rather ordinary reality of this narrative but it is one that no amount of magic can make disappear.
His writing suffers from a modern phenomenon which has degraded art in almost the opposite way to how Nietszche accused Wagner of producing a similarly adverse effect through his music.
Where Nietzsche says that Wagner uses sheer volume – big words that take a huge leap from the page – in order to stir the emotions although the overall totality of the work in question is of dubious notable merit, Jakey is guilty of the reverse.
His palette is again a huge one. Yet although the big picture does undoubtedly in itself demand attention – the small picture is an overly familiar one of modern day ennui.
“You know guys, I am so glad you liked my first chapter. I know this sounds crazy – but sometimes I think I could do so so much. But there is just this one thing holding me back.” Jakey says to the Writers Group momentarily engaging in a public spectacle of post-euphoria comedown introspection.
Not any more Jakey. Not any more. May the Force be with you.
Next up is Ruby – the youngest member of the group.
Ruby is Canadian. Although her surname indicates Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, she has blonde hair and blue eyes. I would hazard a guess that her Canadian family have fairly proximate origins in Central Europe.
Ruby has one of those faces which is superficially attractive from an angle but upon closer inspection reveals enough crooks and dents to render it a face with character rather a beautiful one.
She has an aquiline nose and her eyes are downturned making the distance between them and her high hairline seem bigger than it is. She also has a thick moustache of golden blonde fur above her top lip.
She is a Law student – currently completing her LPC.
She explains that her short story is a long one – even though she has yet to finish it. She wonders whether she should read everything that she has written so far.
Her story begins in Ancient Egypt with a young beautiful woman getting ready to be wedded to a handsome young prince. Then disaster strikes suddenly. Something to do with a tomb collapsing. Or a distant father having to recover from heart surgery. I cannot quite remember the details now. The title of this part of the story was “Cairo 1962BC”.
The story betrays a child like naivety of life. Its fundamental essence is standard Chick-Lit fodder.
The writing is of a poor standard and there is no real characterisation apart from the physical.
Strangely there is an undue focus on one particular physical characteristic of the young beauty.
“Her eyes fixed upon his and she smiled to reveal her cat like teeth. Her pearl white fangs glistened under the moonlight just like the teeth of a cat. He gazed upon her beauty and began to wonder about her feline teeth, which almost looked just like the teeth of the cat. He thought to himself: “There is something about her which I cannot place. Something unusual. Her teeth look kind of like a cat’s.” She was a mysterious young beauty. And do you want to know what the most mysterious thing of all about her really was? She had teeth just like a cat!”
The next part takes us to “Paris 1979 AD”. This draws a few unprofessional muffled sniggers from the more professional members of the group.
The same young lady at the centre of the story is present again – despite the considerable passage of time since we last met her – and she is now getting ready for a date with a boy in Paris – apparently unaged.
“She ran her tongue over her sharp cat like teeth whilst she brushed her hair – pausing to admire her own beauty. She smiled to herself widely – revealing her pearly white crocodile teeth.”
At this juncture – and in spite of every member of the group having been as far away from the story as Cairo 1962BC – our faces are propelled upwards in incredulity. The ridiculous is fast becoming the beyond ridiculous.
Does anyone quite have the heart to tell Ruby that her prose contains one sharp incisor of an inconsistency?
I watch Ruby continue to speak and suddenly feel sorry for her. She is very much a child in many ways.
At least she is a child with some degree of imagination – even if its teeth have been too deeply sunk into The Twilight Saga.
I am not a trained psychotherapist but it seems to me that all this concern with teeth, their sharpness, and their potential to puncture and wound indicates an anxious and curious preoccupation with the penetrative force of male sexuality. The tooth is both a phallic and penetrative symbol. The fact that they resemble the teeth of a cat (or a crocodile) evokes the animalistic thrust of sexual lust.
We have now been listening to Ruby read for around 20 minutes. And all that we have heard really amounts to is her wondering aloud what it might feel like to get fucked for the first time.
I wonder whether I should put this point to her. We are here to give feedback after all and I do feel that with the Freudian overtones of her story being so obvious to everyone but her, she would perhaps benefit from being made aware of them herself.
But I am a fully qualified City lawyer. Ruby is at the start of that process – at the bottom end of that chain. Qualification in the City is not an easy ride and I wonder whether such a stark and public summation of her creative output might have unwanted side effects on her self-confidence.
So I do the only thing I can do in that situation. I drink.
I space out and drink the time away.
And I can tell you – by the end of the story, I am thinking about my own cat teeth more than anything else. I am positively purring.
But time is getting on.
This pussy has to split.
Feedback to Ruby is an anticlimactic affair. She is the unwanted kitten that nobody quite has the heart to euthanize.
Her story is certainly no classic. Yet people - with an eye on the time - give praise to her with automated efficiency in order to make light work of the task.
This prompts Ruby to go on to describe the remainder of the not so short short story.
“Then what happens next is like, she goes to bed with the boy, and then like she turns into like a cat and just vanishes. Then like she becomes a woman again in London. In the present day. Like the whole thing is like a cycle. And it like starts all over again.”
I am watching the face of Neha closely as Ruby speaks in anticipation of the mimes of disdain.
She is however instead staring at me directly. The palm of her left hand is cupping her considerable bosom. Her right hand is gripping her inner thighs.
Uh-oh. Here we go again...
I wonder whether my eyes are actually open at this moment before Sarah thanks us all for coming and invites everyone for a drink.
Neha is still staring – her lips curling upwards whilst her eyes are fixated in a puzzling gaze of disgust and wonder.
Perhaps I should say something. This is becoming a weekly fixture which is making sheer coincidence seem like an increasingly tenuous explanation.
It is however not the easiest subject of conversation to tackle with the most amiable of people. With her it could be suicide in broad daylight.
“So, what did you think of the writers today? Yeah God. There are some seriously talented people out there. Such wonderful storytelling. Martin really came flying out the blocks with the boat one. Was it a boat or a speedboat?! That felt more like a fucking rocket mate! Wooosh! I could barely catch my breath. Jakey seems like he could achieve so much. It’s hard to believe anything could hold him back. And Ruby. With the cat teeth! Jesus! That was almost as good as losing my virginity! Like a virgin, touched for the very first time...Hey, here’s a weird thing. Were you by any chance staring at me whilst playing with your pussy back there?”
I could say something I suppose. I really should do in fact. The playing with the tits thing is also very offputting when you’re trying to concentrate on keeping your eyes open and pretending to listen.
But then again.
The boxing is on this evening. And I have half of a Toblerone left in the freezer.
My work here is done for the week.
