Billygean.co.uk

“And… clutch down and brake to a stop,” MadFather says.

“Brake to a stop,” he says again. “Um – brake, Billygean!”

I finally stop the car just short of a fence.

“Bit quicker next time?” he says.

“It’s hard!” I say.

We drive around the block again.

“And clutch down and -”

I slam on the brake, and stall the car.

“Right then,” MadFather says. I wonder if he’s ever had a student as remedial as me. I just learnt the back wheels don’t turn when the steering wheel does.

He taps his bristly chin and seems to ponder for a moment. “Okay.”

“Hm?”

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s say there’s a kitten under the brake,” he says. “You don’t want it to get away so you have to brake quickly, but you don’t want to crush it…”

“Ooh, okay!” I say. I like kittens.

We drive. “Clutch down and…” he says.

I bring the car to a perfect stop.

I walk along the corridor in the library (am I ever anywhere else?) and catch sight of another person on the other side who I try to dodge. I am not really in the mood to encounter the library weirdos.

I am feeling very smug, because Company magazine are doing a feature thing on THIS VERY BLOG and I have to go to London to have an interview and photographs taken of me and such, which, when I think of what I am about to write, does make me cringe slightly.

I shift my armful of books and get huffy at the other person in the corridor who is walking too closely to me

Briefly I contemplate what books I will get out, and how much my pesky fines will be. I check my phone and send MindReader a text telling him I am almost done.

I turn left into the fiction section and the Stranger and I do that weird English thing where you both try to go the same way and you laugh at each other and make embarrassed faces.

It is at about this moment that I realise the walls of the corridor are mirrored, and I am trying to walk past myself.

“Oh, congratulations again!” I say as the host of the party comes up the stairs.

I am waiting for the bathroom at my friend’s housewarming.

“Thanks!” she says. “So sorry I’ve barely spoken to you and MindReader.”

I give a wave of my hand. “Don’t worry,” I say. “Hosting is…”

“So are you having a nice time in London?”

“Lovely,” I say. “So – how’s things?”

“Oh it’s a long story…” she says as the toilet becomes free. “Shall we just go in together?”

I look at her and at the door.

This has happened once before when I drank a cocktail AND a glass of wine (quite a lot for one who has a tiny body which can’t process anything that’s fun to consume), and accidentally let someone from law school come into the toilet with me and grill me about whether I fancied MindReader (a resounding yes) while I tried to conceal my bits AND wipe.

I push open the door and she appears to follow me.

“I won’t look,” she says, as I try to pull down my tights in a dignified manner.

She tells me how she is as I pee which, I have to confess, I don’t pay too much attention to, so worried am I about the wiping.

I am wearing a dress, which, luckily, covers my woo-woo as I wipe. I’m pretty sure it’s just like hers, but I don’t want her to KNOW that – you know?

Having successfully wiped, I try to pull up my tights and wince as they get uncomfortably stuck on my bum. I’ll sort it out later, I think, and then wonder where one has to go to be alone if not the toilet?

I stand and straighten my dress and look at the faintly yellow liquid in the toilet.

“Do you – erm, shall I flush, or are we sharing?”

“Oh let’s share,” she says, “saves water.”

I shrug. It is her house after all. I find myself hoping she is drunk.

I wash my hands very intently at the sink, avoiding eye-contact and other-contact as she pees.

“I just went into the bathroom with someone again!” I say to MindReader as I return back downstairs. My tights still don’t feel right.

“Billygean!” MindReader says. “Who was it this time?”

“Hostess,” I say.

“Did she have a wizard’s sleeve?”

I confess I had to look that one up.

MindReader and I are at an engagement party in Cardiff (Wales to the Americans amongst us). Incidentally if you and I are ever at a party together please do not ask us when he is going to propose, prompting a hearty ‘never!’ from the sarcastic boyfriend himself and a defensive but well-meaning ‘if it’s forever what is the rush?’ from me.

Anyway.

“What did you do today?” MindReader’s friend asks.

“Well we came up yesterday,” MindReader says, sipping a beer, his other hand slung casually around my shoulders. “you know – a mini break.”

I meet his eye and smile as he glosses over the packing of gluten free bread and the ringing of restaurants and the tears as our ‘neighbours’ in our hotel woke us up shouting at 7am.

“Oh excellent,” he says. “See much of Cardiff today?”

“Yep,” I say, “left hotel at about one, walked to town and I dragged MindReader round the shops til 6, then we got some dinner.”

“And now a house party?” he says, looking at me evenly as MindReader excuses himself.

I nod.

“Better then?” he says, with no hint of irony or accusation.

I look back at MindReader’s retreating form and wonder briefly if it is possible to love as much as I do right now. I think of how he got up at 8 and spent hours in the lobby so not to disturb my slumber til one. I think of my hand on his arm as I needed to stop walking halfway through the afternoon. It is true that if I hadn’t got back to sleep after our neighbours woke us then today would have been a no walking day. It is also true that dinner on both nigts was a complete faff; that if we were abroad And i couldnt demand they wash their woks would have gone hungry.

But – and this is, I grasp, the crucial part – I did manage a full day out; we did go away for the first time since 08, and I am okay. Sometimes, how things seem might just be how they are.

“I suppose I am, rather,” I say, sipping my wine, my only complaint being that my feet hurt in these ridiculous shoes.

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

I want to like your books. You wrote The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe afterall, which are very good films. I’m currently reading the latter and have also read The Guardian and one whose title I can’t remember. Yes.

While it would make me want to wallow in the bath to have someone criticise my book on the Internet, it also makes me wallow in the bath that you can get published and I can’t.

Some points to note:

* I do not need to know every character’s backstory before I meet them. I don’t care if Paul had a nice house and used to enjoy playing in the sandpit. It actually has very little to do with who he is as an adult and if I wanted to read a book about children I would have bought a children’s book. Children, unless they are your own, are not interesting. Adults are.

* Therefore perhaps you would consider having childless adult protagonists if all the child does is play on their own, be told to go away when the adults want to discuss him, and create massive plot holes when the adults are both out of the house and nobody is apparently babysitting him.

* While I would much rather you SHOWED me that tom liked geography, if you have to tell me, please don’t hedge your bets. “While tom was good at all subjects, he especially enjoyed geography…” It’s okay Nicholas. I’m not going to judge tom for being bad at maths. Likewise, just say anna had a good relationship with her dad. DON’T say “while anna got on with both parents she was especially close to her dad” OR just show me ONE scene with her BEING CLOSE TO HER DAD.

As you can tell, I am far more judgmental of your writing than of your characters.

* no more fast talking lawyers with alliterative names please. Can you say cliche?

* All your men are cops who can’t control their tempers (and say things like “i sure hope youre happier here than me, kid” when potential buyers ask him why he is selling his house) and all your women are psychologists who bake and have babies.

* No more “from the moment he met her he knew…” very tedious and unrealistic. Are you psychic? Because most people aren’t.

* Things like “he only slept for four hours a night and, oddly, was never tired” irritate me. I KNOW it’s odd.

* Sentences such as “there were single men in whatever-small-town-this-one’s-set-in, but they weren’t necessarily the kind of men she wanted to be hanging around with” grates, too. Necessarily? Just say it! They’re drug addicts!

Also: please stop with the ‘he grumbled’ and ’she laughed’ and ’she asked’ (I know it’s a question, thanks), and he said sternly and she said meekly.

Thanks.

Billygean

You can vote for me here, which would be nice!