HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
And a fine day for it; summer came back. ZaZa baked again, in honour of my birthday. We began with home-made ice-cream in brandy baskets with strawberries and sauce….mmmmmmmm!

lovely pics too.

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I have on occasion made the odd incredible MAJOR ERROR. How these things come about I do not know but I believe it's-at times-my lack of composure,the time to just weigh up the pros and cons before committing.I try too hard at times and sometimes it flies in my face.One particular incident still slaughters me when I think back on it.

I moved into a shared house about 5 years ago and much to my surprise I was the only guy living there with 5 other young women.In theory that's what any guy would call fortunate! It was at times and the more comfortable I got in the house the more outgoing I became.I had quit smoking pot before moving and looking forward to my experience living with who seemed like nice down to earth people. So one day while the girls complained of being bored I thought I would treat them all to a DVD on me.Eager to please them in my first week there,I raced to the Blockbusters store thinking of the brownie points this selfless act would earn me.Whats the worst that could happen?

Mainly my knowledge in the history of serial killers would be my downfall on this occasion and I thought I had rented a simple chick flick.In my mind Ted Bundy was the lazy sofa dwelling,beer drinking modern day Homer Simpson from the American sitcom"married with children." You know the one with "love and marriage, love and marriage,go together like a horse and carriage"?

It appears my judgement in this case was a bit off as Ted Bundy began to masturbate over a hedge as the popcorn was passed between my pajama clad new female housemates.To my horror this Mr Bundy character was perving on a young woman undressing in her bedroom.

Some words may not describe the look on my face as I stuttered my innocence to the 5 girls I have just moved in with,that will be living with me from now and onwards?First impressions etc?The collective turn of their heads towards each other then eventually to me took an eternity.I could have died right then.It was quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened! Comedy? Serial killer / sex attacker most notorious evil mentalist in the history of man possibly?

I was sweating and panting more than Ted was as I fumbled with the remote control,desperately trying to end this fuckin nightmare and trying to explain my innocence at the same time.I think I managed to get a laugh and of course be believed but it wasn't really the outcome I was aiming for.

I swore that guys name was Bundy too,how embarrassing if it wasn't I'd feel like a right idiot!
The good intention,the innocence of the gesture and the calamitous result of such a deed will have me in stitches in my latter years I hope.




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Lovely news - although I didn't get anywhere in this comp (yes, well, really...) Short Review author Clare Wigfall, whose collection The Loudest Sound and Nothing we reviewed a few months ago, has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with her story, The Numbers.......

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Lordy, what a rollercoaster of a day. Up with rosy-fingered dawn (lucky dawn) today as I'd booked an 8.30am haircut and Lynda is super-efficient and always turns up early. Indeed when Lord H left the house at 8.15am, he found her parked outside and sent her up. She'd probably been parked there all night. Perhaps I should have offered her breakfast? Anyway, after her tender ministrations, I now look fairly presentable. At least temporarily.

All this meant I could pop into Godalming first thing and stock up on essential local papers and jiffy bags (in case someone actually buys Thorn in the Flesh (click on full post for links) and I have to send it to them - hell, you never know!). I also spent my birthday book vouchers in Waterstone's, and the girls there were incredibly helpful and got me books I might actually want to read - ie dark, quirky and different, which was what I asked them to find. I suspect they might have been significantly less helpful if they'd known I was one of the hated Breed of Authors. Bookshops don't mix with the likes of us, you know. Interestingly, one of the girls also said how boring most of the stuff they had in now was and it was very dull that everyone was writing the same sort of book, and how lovely it was that I as a reader was making their jobs exciting by asking for something different. Cue my line of bringing Goldenford and our wonderfully different books to their attention, but I was too frightened to mention it, to be honest - it's not often bookshop staff are nice to me and I was too moved by the experience to ruin it ... Sigh. I am a Grade One Wimp, to be sure ...


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Ick. Just got in from the dentist's. I have gained some metal in my mouth and a numb face. Seriously, half of my bottom lip and chin I cannot feel. Weird. And I've been told (I'd forgotten about this bit) that I can't eat for two hours. And I am hungry. Curses.

On the bright side, I think I've almost finished the Very Short story I've been working on this week. Does The Lamp Timer sound like a good title to you good folks? I get the feeling I might need to don my thinking cap. Not that I'd feel it.

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Some moments of joy this morning when I realised that a delightful person - who I suspect is probably the doctor at the University Health Centre who enjoys taking my dark stuff on holiday with her, God bless you, Vicky - has bought a copy of A Dangerous Man (see full post for links) from its Amazon listing. Delightfully, this meant that for a few brief minutes I was actually in the Amazon gay fiction charts - ye gods, Carruthers, somebody pass me the smelling salts as I've never been there before ... Okay, it was in the late 70s in the list and has now sadly vanished but I'm hanging on to my moment of chart glory with all my might. Hell, wouldn't you? ...


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Inspired, as I always am, by Clare, I thought I would try and find three beautiful things to say today, in the face of such tragedy, in the face of the fact that the baby I mentioned turned out to be the child of the cousin of a friend, and her mother, who had tried and tried for a child, saved her daughter by handing her out of the window of the car seconds before she herself was crushed and killed by the rampaging bulldozer driver.....

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My ten year old daughter is in an inventors' club at school. She spends most of her spare time jotting down ideas for inventions, and the rest of it trying to actually make them. She says she's quite good at coming up with inventions but what she finds hard is thinking of problems people might have that need solving (by means of a new invention). So she is always asking us to tell her the problems we face in our lives, so she can think of an invention to help us.

Yesterday I gave her a few of my own problems to work on. I was trying to think of things that might conceivably be solved by something a 10 year old could invent and successfully make. That turned out to be a big mistake, because when I stopped patronising her and told her a real live problem - one that I was convinced would be impossible to solve - her face lit up immediately and she said: "I can invent something for that!"


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It is just over three months to lift-off, and the publicity juggernaut is revving up.

By that I mean that Pauline has sent me a list of things that I should do. “I see that Black Kids’ second single went straight in at number thirty-six,” she added. “Nice job picking them as the next big thing.”

“Are you marketing them on the side?” I email her back.


Picking an item from the list at random, I call my local library. I have no idea where my local library is, having never belonged to one, but the Internet directs me to Acton. An Indian man answers the phone.

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Have spent most of the day attempting to look normal and welcoming (God, but that's one hell of an effort, I can tell you) at the University's Open Day. Had an initial moment of terror when I turned up at 9am to discover our Student Care Services table was completely bereft of all literature and minus a pull-up stand with our name on it. It turned out that nobody had turned up as asked for to get our boxes of literature so the Student Advice team and I did it ourselves. That still didn't solve the problem of who the hell had stolen our name stand, so Student Advice and the Marketing Team spent the whole morning attempting to search for it. This meant that people wandering round had no idea who we were supposed to be and we kept having to tout our wares in the time-honoured fashion of shouting and gesticulating. The problem was finally solved by Les from Counselling who remembered that the Health Centre had taken the stand for one of their events, so he went and retrieved it himself. Gawd bless you, Les ...


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