They say that a writer’s daily life is a rich creative seam, merely waiting for us to pluck the ‘story’ from within.
Assuming this is true, my next novel will include the heroine throwing away a tenner’s worth of food because some swine unplugged the freezer and she didn’t notice for three days. (Because of…amnesia! Yes! And the person who unplugged the freezer did it because they knew there was a severed limb inside, and they plan to blackmail the heroine, except the heroine has no idea whose severed limb it is. With hilarious consequences!)
This will be followed by eight chapters where the heroine does nothing but stand in a massive queue to buy some train tickets. (Because she is fleeing the blackmailer, you see? Except when she buys the ticket she opens her wallet and realises there’s a ‘left luggage’ ticket inside, and when she goes to redeem it, inside the locker is…a suitcase containing a million quid!) Then she goes to Sainsburys and stands in another massive queue (because obviously she’s being tailed by the blackmailer, and she wants to make out that she’s doing ordinary things, except she’s in the yoghurt aisle and she’s thinking ‘wtf? Do I even like yoghurt?’, and then when she pays with some of the cash from the suitcase, security guards leap in and arrest her for attempting to pass off counterfeit money). And then she goes home and watches the Sarah Jane Adventures. (Which will be watched from outside the heroine’s grim cell by the security guards – who are obviously fake and work for the Big Villain – because it’s very very good and even evil henchmen would be in thrall to it, and learn the error of their criminal ways purely via its gentle educational message.)
All of this will then build to a gripping peak involving doing laundry and boiling an egg. (Um…the heroine escapes and returns home to wash Eau de Sweaty Henchman off herself, and on raiding the airer has a Proust’s madeleine moment while clutching a pair of knickers, just in time for her to remember her secret ninja skills and give the Big Villain a good kicking, all within the time it takes to soft-boil to a firm yet dunkable yolk.)
Phew. No wonder I feel a bit tired.
This Observer interview with the Mighty Boosh. Noel is absurdly kidlike, Julian is surly and tired, both are very funny and the interviewer does a neat job in separating them to see what happens. Plus S3 is in a second-hand shop owned by Naboo. This cannot produce anything but greatness, truly.
I managed the glass of red wine but not the three pages. MUST REWRITE LAST THREE PAGES. Or I could delete them. No one would know. It could be enigmatic and surreal and people might debate my decision to end in the middle of a sentence for decades to come.
Random episodes of Farscape, cinnamon bagels, severed limb disposal.
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