I’ve never been very good at accommodating “constructive criticism”, but particularly from sources so plainly unqualified to offer it so abruptly. You’ll therefore excuse me if I take this opportunity to make a cup of tea and carry on with my day.

But it was not until the 22nd century and the refinement of quantum theory to the point of application that such aspects of pathology were truly understood. Once physicists first observed the behaviour of particles that existed in a multidimensional and pantemporal state, physicians came to understand organisms that functioned in a distinctly similar manner; in particular, viruses. This led to a broad reclassification and recognition of a number of existing medical conditions, the most famous of which, we now know, is the quantum virus known as Gauisus Poena, or as it was previously termed, ‘Love’.

An analysis of any individual’s previous ‘romantic’ relationships will inevitably demonstrate itself to be the progressive pattern of such a viral infection. However, despite significant pharmaceutical advances in treating the debilitating effects of this virus, it remains a curiosity why so many remain both belligerently uninoculated against infection, and willfully receptive to its symptoms.

I cannot begin to describe how utterly content I am with my life at the moment. And I write that sentence fully aware of my conceit and hubris in doing so.

You see, I recently deleted a post that began in precisely the same way, but went on to say the exact opposite. I was really low when I wrote it. Depression’s like something between herpes and an unwelcome relative - you’re stuck with it for life, and you never know when it’s going to turn up unannounced with its insufferable luggage or how long it’s going to hang around making your life hell. There’s no reasoning with it. There’s no magic cure or words to make it just get the message and go away. You just have to sit it out until it gets bored and leaves you in peace.

I will make no further mention of this ex-post, other than to say thank you to a good friend who gave me a harsh but sincere (and thus fair) verbal smack for posting it, and to apologise to An Unreliable Witness who took the time to comment only to find his words so ruthlessly denied substance like my so many unwritten diary entries, or countless Tory protestations of being a socially conscious liberal party.

I won’t wax lyrical about my blissfully exhausting weekend contentment anymore than to say a HUGE thank you to Jane Bodie, Claire and Nina at The Royal Court for putting together the most insightful, stimulating and encouraging course (and indeed group) I have ever been a part of. Suddenly ideas seem to be pouring out of me through the thin film of sweat upon my brow as I lounge here typing, mid script, exhausted on this hot June evening less than a week from my 28th birthday and spilling Marlboro Light all over my long suffering MacBook’s keyboard. No thanks meanwhile to London Underground for giving me a train delayed by five, then ten, then twenty, then a final thirty five minutes this morning, making me half an hour late and costing me between £5 and £10 worth of tuition time. Doesn’t sound like much does it? But I don’t see why I should waste £10 for the privilege of London Underground making me late yet again. God bless my mum however who raced to Gunnersbury tube station at a moment’s notice to pick me up and drive like a lunatic to Sloane Square to get me to my course on time. If anyone else gets similarly stood up by LUL I’ll give you her number. Her taxi service is fair and reliable, though you will have to suffer Magic FM for however long your emergency journey may take.

Working with words and ideas gives me a buzz that I can’t describe. And I’d forgotten that. I’d really forgotten why I wanted to be… why I am a writer. Getting into a novel, a short story, a poem or a script I’m working on is a high you can’t appreciate unless you’ve been there too. It’s better than sex and the closest my cynical soul can get to being in love. It’s the total antithesis to depression. It’s as if as soon as that unwanted relative finally leaves, that pretty young thing you thought would never call unexpectedly whisks you away for a romantic weekend. Suddenly you get what life’s all about. Suddenly colours you hadn’t noticed not only flush brighter than ever before but take on colours of their own, smells remind you of everything and everyone you’ve ever loved and every breath you take of it all says to you in a huge endless hug “You know what? You’re fucking great you are. I love being with you.” And you just can’t get enough of it.

And as if two days of intensive scriptwriting workshops weren’t enough to remind me of everything I’d somehow forgotten, I staggered home utterly intoxicated with the world only to hyperventilate all over again. I’m once again in print. Ms Peach, the original yummy mummy, has done an incredible job compiling submissions for You’re Not The Only One - a collection of entries from bloggers around the world that’s to be praised not only for the sheer stupendous scale of the thing, but for a sizable chunk of all proceeds going to a much needed cause.

Buy a copy.

Do it now.

It’ll possibly be a while before I post again. Not only have I urgently got to do something about all these concepts suddenly yawning and blinking awake in my head like lazy students remembering their degree but, as I mentioned, I’m turning an holistic 28 on Saturday. As a result I’ve treated myself to something. Just a little thing. Y’know, for the dawn an’ all that.

There’s suddenly so much to do and I cannot wait to throw myself into it.

Take care y’all.

An actual transcript…

BEN:  You know you said just go for the zeitgeist - y’know, like Amy Winehouse - take something old and make it modern?

LITTLE ONE:  Yeah.

BEN:  Like, put a modern spin on it by throwing in a few swear words and talking about being wasted?

LITTLE ONE:  Uh huh.

BEN:  So how about ‘The Two Ronnies’, only more modern: ‘The Two Arseholes’?

LITTLE ONE:  No.

BEN:  No, it would be great. We could have two giant arseholes.

LITTLE ONE:  (shudders) Just… no. But we could have two blokes referred to as ‘the two arseholes’.

BEN:  Bit limited.

LITTLE ONE:  Well, we all know what they are, they’re the two arseholes. But what’s their names? Like, “oh their names are” - ring ring! - “hang on I’ll just get that,” oh no, we never heard their names!

BEN:  Hmmn.

LITTLE ONE:  And while the audience are watching it I’ll go round and flood the room with laughing gas. Ah! A laughing factory! Like when they make different things every week! Like ‘Bertha’! (sings the theme tune to ‘Bertha’).

BEN:  No.

LITTLE ONE:  (sniffs) A factory that makes models of miniature factories.

BEN:  That’s Austin Powers.

LITTLE ONE:  Clown factory.

BEN:  No.

LITTLE ONE:  A children’s entertainer.

BEN:  No, definitely not.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Yes, Mayor’. Like ‘Yes, Minister’. I like that. ‘No, Mayor’.

BEN:  I don’t think Boris Johnson would be available.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘The Conservatives’. Cos it’s all shifting, innit.

BEN:  Aye.

LITTLE ONE:  Ah! Youth centre chavs!

BEN:  Bit ‘Byker Grove’.

LITTLE ONE:  Then an adult version where they all get kicked at the end.

BEN:  Hmmn.

LITTLE ONE:  Stupid kids who are all teens, like a modern Enid Blyton, and they go on an adventure round their estate and learn a lesson every week.

BEN:  Like ‘South Park’.

LITTLE ONE:  Yeah!.

BEN:  Like ‘South Park’.

LITTLE ONE:  But with real people! They could be called R Kelly, Susan, and Dangle. Dangle’s the funny one.

LITTLE ONE:  No, really, Susan’s like 25 stone. Obese… obese! ‘Obese City!’… (coughs) Who all live in a little hole under the… (pause) mayor’s building.

BEN:  This is just typing practice for me.

LITTLE ONE:  And nothing more.

LITTLE ONE:  There’s some good stuff there.

LITTLE ONE:  A band. (Makes popping noise) Ooh! Magic bag! A band who keep trying to get a record deal and never do and you never hear them play.

BEN:  That’s been done many times.

LITTLE ONE:  A cat in a bag… let’s blank that. Oh, that’s my crazy Jesus spent.

BEN:  That’s my crazy Jesus spent?

LITTLE ONE:  Creative juices. That’s my creative juices spent.

BEN:  Ah.

LITTLE ONE:  A wood shop… where they’re all wankers. And a really lovely delicate middle class girl has to work with them, and they’re all (demonstrates their attitude by coughing up phlegm in manly way) and she has to take orders for wood and she’s all distraught.

LITTLE ONE:  This is going very well.

BEN:  I think we should stick with the mix of ideas we had before - Brian Blessed in a house that travels through time and space, and a dog who doesn’t like breakfast, with a family who drinks tea out of a different cup every week but doesn’t realise it.

LITTLE ONE:  Regulars.

BEN:  Regulars?

LITTLE ONE:  In a pub. Oh, that’s ‘Cheers’. How about ‘The Man Who Thought He Could Reason’? And always gets beaten up at the end?

BEN:  That’s just Boris Johnson again, and why does everyone have to get beaten up at the end of your things?

LITTLE ONE:  An opera singer.

BEN:  Yup?

LITTLE ONE:  Who’s a tosser. And it’s a very sophisticated agency… ah, boring shit. Do you remenber ‘May to December’? Ugh. (Suddenly gets up) Oh! This will help! (Gets notebook). The other day I watched Top 50 sitcoms and I took notes.

BEN:  How serendipitous.

LITTLE ONE:  I gotta lot here. Okay. Let’s look at, oh, Top 50 characters. ‘Rigsby - fast. Wants Miss Jones.’

BEN:  Was it Miss Jones? or James?

LITTLE ONE:  Jones.

BEN:  He was always saying Miss James or Joan wasn’t he?

LITTLE ONE:  (Ignores Ben) ‘Bill Cosby. Natural.’

BEN:  Git. Natural git.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Monty Python - an element of surprise with handbags.’ (Quotes Monty Python at length). ‘Wayne and Waynetta.’

BEN:  I’m not a Harry Enfield fan. I like Kathy Burke, but not Harry Enfield.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Hancock - miserable funny. You knew he was never going to win so you felt sorry for him, like Ricky Gervais in ‘The Office’. (Suddenly shouts) I’m the only gay in the village! Everyone’s okay with minority. ‘Green Wing’, Dancing in the surgery. Niles, Frasier. Difference in brothers, blah blah blah, cotton wool. Mrs overall. Frank Spencer. Stump’s lovely wife.’

BEN:  Huh? Who’s Stump?

LITTLE ONE:  Stunts. Lovely wife.

BEN:  Right, cos that wasn’t making sense for a moment.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘They auction Marlon Brando at Southerby’s.’

BEN:  Who do?

LITTLE ONE:  They do.

BEN:  Do what?

BEN:  Nevermind. That actually happened though.

LITTLE ONE:  Mmmmnn. ‘Abusive friendships.’

BEN:  Yes we are.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Victor Meldrew, plant in toilet.’

BEN:  This is just a monologue isn’t it?

LITTLE ONE:  Ooh, I can’t read that at all.

BEN:  I thought so.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Vicky Pollard. You actually believe she’s a girl. Demonstrated decline of articulacy. Young Ones. “Oh no the front door’s exploded… My parents are dead. You think that’s bad? Yes I do piss face.”‘

BEN:  Can we stop doing this now?

LITTLE ONE:  I’m not finished yet.

BEN:  Please.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Channelling pain into jokes. Wallace and Gromit, long suffering family friend.’

BEN:  Wallace and Gromit is not a sitcom!

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Spaced’…

BEN:  Now that’s brilliant. That’s the kind of thing I’d have liked to have written if it hadn’t already been written. Bastards.

LITTLE ONE:  ‘1990s slacker lifestyle.’

BEN:  Bastards. Bastards..

LITTLE ONE:  ‘Tony Benn doesn’t want to be out of touch.’

BEN:  Shame.

BEN:  How is it you’ve written pages and pages of impromptu notes about sitcoms and not one bit of it is either usable or funny?

LITTLE ONE:  (lights cigarette) ‘Take a character, and think about what house would he live in. What car would he have? Lynx, voodoo, Africa. Shouting out about Dixons during sex with chocolate on face.’

BEN:  This is all Alan Partidge isn’t it?

LITTLE ONE:  (nods) ‘Fawlty Towers - beautful towers, beautiful and funny. Only 12 episodes. Honest and funny.’ And that was based on when Monty Python stayed in Torquay. And they left because the man there was so rude.

BEN:  Really?

LITTLE ONE:  Yeah.

LITTLE ONE:  And what have we learned from this, Benjamin?

BEN:  That we have to stay in a really bad hotel in Torquay.

LITTLE ONE:  Theme park! Or a doctor’s surgery for really small people.

BEN:  I think we should stop now.

The pretty Miss Peach has come up with a practical exercise for people who love the sound of their own keyboards. A small group of bloggers are putting together a book of short pieces by, surprisingly, other bloggers all over the world.

You’re Not The Only One will be a collection of submissions from blogkeepers on any topic as long as it’s personal - written about an aspect of the life of the person writing it, by the person living it. That after all is what keeping a blog is all about, isn’t it? That and shameless egocentricity and self-promotion, naturally.

Have a look here for more details and how to submit. The finished book will be on sale through Lulu for £9, of which £4.30 will go straight to the charity War Child.

If you blog but aren’t able to submit anything (which would, let’s face it, be pretty lame), then please at least put up a link back to Sarah’s post to help spread the word about this good cause.

Now go trawling through your old entries or write something new and send it on over.

I saw you from the bus. You mouthed something - could have been anything. It looked like three words, but I pretended it was four, five maybe. Even two. I pretended I couldn’t see through the years of unwashed dirt, clumsy finger marks and breath smeared across the glass. I watched instead the city kick dirty newspapers around your feet, stared at the neon kebab sign haloed behind you in flickering reds, at the tarts and thugs cackling through crude foreplay all around you. Anything but at your lips. I half-pretended the glow hurt my eyes. The light changed to amber faster than anyone noticed, and I was away before I could even think about looking back. All that history blurred past faster than I could blink a snapshot of a single thing - the litter, the light, the shuffle of high heels and boots in a vulgar waltz about your humbly polished shoes, or your face as you watched me let me myself go without a word or a second glimpse.

We move in silence.
I whistle along to the tune in my mind like the breeze over granite-coloured water - the sea air washing through my head alone, salting each thought. You say nothing. You never do. You just stare at the horizon, dumbfounded. Only you could be dumbfounded by the simplicity of a straight line. We sit like this in British Expeditionary Force uniforms - me cradling spheres and your mind grasping at lines, each surveying the idioms that once were our battlefield, bobbing like survivors in the sea.
Somewhere else unheard, unreal, we catch the coarse sounds of the fishing boats returning to harbour - the sharp clunk of lobster pots spilling their fresh catches, the hacking glottal wheezes of white bearded sea-dwellers in yellow oilskin, leather-faced from a diet of saline air, tobacco and rust.
You notice as the world distracts me - enchants me from my unheard song, lures me from your unwatched horizon, anchoring me crudely to one sphere amongst many. None of this is real.
“What was that?” you ask, indignant that the world now snares me so much more easily than fantasy.
“That was trust,” I reply. “Trust like a kid looking up, wide-eyed - wide-eyed but not shielding their eyes from the sun.”
But you don’t understand. You don’t know what a child is because you never left childhood behind. You sigh, or maybe it is me, and watch the marbles in my hand as I stare hard at your distant line. We acknowledge abeyance with a nod. We have to find common ground. Here, on the sand.
So we build a fort upon No Man’s Land and declare war on the sea instead, holding hands with unclutched swords and flying an invisible banner above. Our banner, crafted by our own hands, stained with our own blood. We watch it dance in the wind, deep red spasms against endless cloudless blue, neither of us shielding our eyes from its glare.
We watch it move in silence.

The writer no longer burns.
He cools himself with lukewarm instant coffee, eats cheap chocolate and doesn’t cut his hair.
He reads Vonnegut, bus tickets and old journal entries alike, the latter filled with the ash of long-cooled embers. Still not yet a Random House novelist nor a Faber poet. No Boy Nextdoor in the bed beside him. No such person now under the name he was given. All just names now. Words.
He collects, inventories and categorises words.
He kids himself that this is the calm before the storm - the nowhere time barely filled with games of Patience, idle lovemaking and staring thoughtlessly into starless skies. Silent. The universe and fate sharing a last breath like lovers about to be lost.
The writer no longer writes.
The writer reads. He watches. He waits.
He breathes.

But fear not, gentle reader, for if you cannot wait (or indeed afford) to read my masterpiece in the prestigious pages of Poetry.com’s latest Compendium of Truly Great and Outstanding Verse* then I can offer you an exclusive peak at my, no doubt, winning entry right here…

In fact, why not consider making your own entries to this reputable and world renowned competition? It costs you absolutely nothing (that’s right! Nothing!) to enter. Your poem is all but guaranteed to be published - it’s a dead cert! The only things you’d ever need to pay for are silly small details, such as actually receiving a printed copy of your work, or attending the compulsory banquet to discover if you are indeed the overall winner of the annual contest. In Washington.

I know, it’s hardly a new thing. These scams, and indeed this particular website, has been around for years, and yet they still exist. I’m not as naive as I probably sound when it comes to confidence tricksters, and how they prey on people’s faith, trust, and aspirations (and, yes, often greed). I just appear to be turning into something of a Grumpy Old Man cum armchair vigilante in my old age. I recently had a conversation that stretched over a month or so via email with a lottery phisher. You know the types - “Dear winner, you have won the lottery!!! To claim contact us at this hotmail address, now!”

So I replied.

Not as myself of course. I replied as a doddery old woman, completely clueless as to where her late husband had put her bank details, let alone how to use the computer, but extremely grateful for the opportunities that all this cash could bring after a very difficult year that saw the loss of her husband, a long spell in hospital and financial worries that had all but wiped out her savings (I did work it a little more subtly than it sounds). This was not entirely to waste the time of the individual who’d contacted me personally (oh yes, all my friends call me ‘winner’ don’t you know), and had zero issues about ripping off a dotty old woman. It was mostly about having some guilt-free fun at their expense.

If you have a go, then let me know how you get on and indeed what you submit. The most ludicrous entry to get a notification of publication gets a pint of Guinness and a packet of pork scratchings on me. You’d be mad not to!

Mad.

*For most people genuinely applying to Poetry.com, verse is another word for poetry.

I bring my own order to chaos.

Never underestimate the motivational power of an ordered, tidy room. Dig doggedly enough through the detritus of mundane living and you find something made of silver - a talisman shining old-fashioned smiles from beneath the receipts and pennies. Beauty within the dirt. Buried treasure. Follow the map back to the tale of extremes - raw chaos, ability, of beasts of the field grazing in fields of emotion.

Twist something rare from the weeds, the mud and the splinters.

Everything now is Potential - the garlic crusts baking in the oven beside the cheap Merlot, gulping tobacco’d air in unspluttered breaths; the fat pumpkin waiting to be mashed, gingered, chilied and made Autumn soup; the pretty blond things bewilderingly queuing up like a box of assorted courtisans, their words all warm and sweet like the husks of baked honeycombs. The future is a great big wide open cliché of a road, leading to the promise of adventure for someone who never learnt to drive manmade machines, who prefers the crunch of granite and leaves beneath tattered shoes, who wants to inhale the world itself as he’s walking through its many perfumes, always moving towards somewhere where there’s ocean, towards any great big sprawling unconquerable chaos.

That’s what life is. Not this city. Not this existence. This is just a war.

Its dirge of benefits, overdrafts and allowances gives way to shameless indulgences in innocence - the desire to live life itself. Moods are polar by nature, humans are creatures of mood. The world spins ungrudgingly on its axis - night, day, Spring, Autumn - flesh reigns and smothers the spirit before spirit emerges and carries flesh away like a sail. Imagination and belief defy human science. It will out. Always.

The last charges of the war rage outside - the dying cracks and thuds of Bonfire Night. A distant flash, a boom. The smell of gunpowder like a constant yeoman. The war ends, tonight.

Death’s cloak has a silver lining.