Ian Probert's Blog, page 20

Johnny Nothing review

Very nice review on this blog. About two minutes in:

http://greenembersrecommends.com/2014/04/05/the-not-so-shocking-news-dialogues-episode-4-now-with-more-sparkle/comment-page-1/#comment-2259

 

The Game – Chapter 01

Just one more look… One more look and it’s all over.

Three players were still alive. A smartly dressed man whose name was Brown had just over ten thousand pounds left on the table. The chip leader was a man named Shields, who was studiously rearranging a pile of plastic tokens worth in excess of twenty-four thousand pounds. Palmer himself was carrying just over sixteen thousand pounds; his brain felt like someone had stuck a rusty bread knife though it. 

Keep it together, Tommy boy… One more look and you’re almost there. 

The pain was beginning to overwhelm Palmer. He was finding it difficult to think. His cards faded in and out of focus. The others in the room regarded the stranger in their midst with suspicion and bewilderment. They didn’t know what to make of Palmer, with his fucked up face and his strange, jerky way of laying down his cards. They didn’t trust him and their patience was running out fast. 

Keep it together.

“Look friend… Do you have any fucking intention of playing your hand?” Brown had been threatening to turn nasty all night.

Palmer struggled to respond. “I can’t… I can’t…”

“Can’t what?” interrupted Shields. “Are you sick or something?”

“I can’t… I need a moment to… To… Think.”

“Jesus!” exclaimed Brown. “I can’t be doing with this. I’m a fucking pro. Make a fucking decision won’t you!”

“Mr Brown,” a familiar voice called out wearily over the PA system. “Let’s try and behave like gentlemen shall we?”

Brown looked up guiltily. “I’m sorry, Mr. Conn,” he said finally. “Yes… Yes… You’re right… It’s just that this idiot is taking so long…”

“I would remind you, Mr Shields, that there is a time limit of eight minutes per play. As such Mr Palmer here still has just under two minutes left in which to place his bet.” 

Two minutes. Palmer had been holding off for as long as possible, naively hoping that his superficial understanding of the game’s tactics might somehow pull him through. He’d already been forced to look a number of times, all at crucial points in the game. He was rapidly approaching his limit. Palmer was pretty sure he could manage one more look, possibly two if he really had to. But anything else was out of the question. If he didn’t do it now he never would.

 

“You have one minute left, Mr. Palmer,” advised the voice from the loudspeaker. 

Palmer gave a grimace and looked.

Brown was holding a pair of twos and a king. Palmer concentrated for a split second longer and caught that Shields was holding two nines and a jack. He also unexpectedly caught that Shields was not his opponent’s real name. Palmer pulled back and was immediately hit by a wave of nausea; this was mixed with a feeling of extreme relief. His sixes put him ahead. Now was the time: “All in,” Palmer announced, climbing shakily to his feet and pushing his pile of chips into the centre of the table. Sweat poured down his scarred forehead.

The other two players both looked up in surprise for a brief moment and then quickly returned to their cards and affected an air of casual disinterest. But the damage had been done. Palmer had suddenly turned a nondescript play into a matter of life and death. Now it was his turn to wait.

*** 

“Who is this guy? He plays like a fucking lunatic,” said Harry Conn. Conn was a large man with a broad back and deep set intelligent eyes. He was watching the game in an upstairs room on CCTV. “And what’s with those scars?”

“They call him Scarface – like in the Al Pacino movie,” answered Vincent Drego. Drego had just returned from a long telephone conversation with Tony Vance from the Palomar Club. “He’s a friend of Aiden Jefferies.”

“Jeffries?” said Conn. “What’s he got to do with that loser?”

“Jeffries made the introduction. Apparently this guy just appears every couple of months or so. He don’t do the pro circuit. He just turns up and plays and then disappears when it’s over.”

“What’s his form like?”

“That’s the thing… According to Tony Vance, this guy never loses. He plays like a fucking amateur but he always wins.”

Conn put a meaty hand to his brow and stared darkly into the distance. “And he thinks he can just waltz into my club and pull a scam? Who the fuck does he think he’s dealing with? He’s making a big mistake. A big fucking mistake.”

“That’s another thing, Harry. This guy ain’t operating no scam. Vance said he’d been checked out three or four times. It’s hard to believe it but he’s clean.”

“Nobody plays poker like that and expects to win. He must be doing something we can’t see. Watch him closely, Vince, I’m going downstairs.” 

*** 

Keep cool, Tommy. Keep cool… Almost there.

Brown and Shields were both on their feet now. All three players were standing over the table watching intently as the croupier turned over the cards. For a moment there was silence as the information sank in. Then Shields turned slowly towards Palmer. “You did good,” he said, unable to conceal his disappointment. “I’ve been playing for more than twenty years and I’ve never seen anyone bet so big on a pair of sixes… You did good.”

Palmer nodded his head at the reluctant compliment but said nothing.

Brown was less magnanimous. “I hope you caught that, Mr. Conn,” he said, turning towards the surveillance camera hanging over the table. “This guy is a fucking cheat.”

Though the pain Palmer could hardly hear the other man’s voice. He cupped his forehead in his hands and tried to pull himself together. He could go home now. Surely he could go home.

“Hey! Are you listening to me, you fucking freak?” said Brown. “I just called you a cheat. There’s no way anyone would bet so big on a pair of fucking sixes.”

“Mr Shields,” said Harry Conn, walking into the room. “I’d respectfully remind you that I do not tolerate cheating in my club. When you accuse a player of cheating in my club you also accuse me of cheating.”

Shields ran his eyes up and down Conn’s not inconsiderable bulk. “I’m sorry Mr. Conn,” he said, finally. “I didn’t hear you come in…”

“Apology accepted, Mr. Shields,” replied Conn, smiling pleasantly.

“…It’s just that this fucking freak has to be doing something. I mean, let’s not kid each other – we all know that, don’t we?”

“Let’s make this a final warning, shall we?” replied Conn with a sigh. “Let’s shake Mr. Palmer’s hand like gentlemen and collect our coats.”

For a moment Shields seemed to be on the verge of saying something more. But he held on to his frustration and grudgingly did as he was ordered, moving his hand out towards Tom Palmer. “You just took 25k from me tonight,” he said, as Palmer weakly returned the handshake. “Let’s hope that it won’t be too long before you give me the opportunity to win my money back.”

“Sure… Yes… Sure…” mumbled Palmer, not really understanding what the other man was saying to him.

“That’s very good Mr. Shields,” said Conn. “Nice and civilised. Now, perhaps Mr. Palmer would like to join me at my table for a celebratory glass of champagne. He looks as if he could do with one.”

***

“First things first, Mr. Palmer,” said Conn, able for the first time to get a close up view of the stranger’s badly scarred face. “The house takes five per cent. You know the rules. That’s two-and-a-half thousand you owe me. You can give it to my associate here, Mr. Drego, when you leave.”

“Yes… Okay…” said Palmer, still struggling to hold off the pain.

Shields and Brown had now left the building, as had the croupier and the other men who had many hours earlier paid £5000 each to enter the card game. Only three men remained:   Conn, his sidekick Drego and the shaking figure of Tom Palmer. Outside the club, the sun was rising.

“Not thirsty?” asked Conn, gesturing towards Palmer’s untouched glass.

“I… I… Don’t drink…” said Palmer.

“You don’t look well,” said Conn.

“Headache…” said Palmer. “I need to go home…”

“Ah… Home… Yes, I’m glad you brought that up,” smiled Conn. “I’ve actually given this matter some thought and I’ve decided that on this occasion I’m going to let you leave with all your fingers intact.”

Palmer heard that one alright. Suddenly the pain in his head subsided and he stared nervously at his host.

“I’m a fair minded person and as such I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. You understand, when I see a poker player play like a fucking loser yet still manage to go home with everybody’s money I start to smell a rat.

“In your case, though, I’m prepared to suspend my disbelief for the time being. My associate here, Mr. Drego has been reviewing the tapes of tonight’s little soirée and he assures me that nothing untoward happened on your part. This, I have to tell you, is fortunate for you because every instinct is telling me that you were cheating tonight. And I don’t like cheats. I don’t like cheats at all.

“I know you were cheating and you know you were cheating but fortunately for you I’m a great respecter of the law. I believe in innocent until proven guilty. This means that I’m allowing you to pick up your coat and leave my club. But a word of advice: if you ever feel the urge to indulge in a pleasant game of cards I’d think very carefully before you decide to come back here again. It’s not that you would be unwelcome, you understand – good poker players of any age, colour or creed are welcome at my club – it’s just that next time I might not feel so law abiding. I think you comprehend what I’m saying. Now go.”

Palmer gratefully rose to his feet and made for the exit. He patted his jacket pocket and felt the thick wad of £50 notes he had deposited there earlier. Tonight had been too close for comfort: it was only a matter of time before Palmer’s world was wrenched to pieces. He’d have to find another way.

“Mr Palmer…” Conn’s voice invaded Palmer’s head and he found himself turning to face the other man. And he did something that he hadn’t anticipated doing, something that happened a lot in the early days before he had learned to control his actions. Palmer dropped his guard and let instinct take over. For the briefest of moments he looked at Harry Conn.

There was darkness and horror and the screams of women and children. This was a person with many demons. Palmer caught the smell of burning hair and heard the crunch of breaking bone. Palmer heard voices. Someone talking on the telephone. He caught snatches of Conn’s childhood: the taunts, the beatings, the despair. And out of the black void came a name, it kept repeating itself, and repeating itself. If filled Tom Palmer with terror: Mr. Happy.

“…Let’s hope for your sake that this is the last time we meet.” Palmer snapped back to reality and the pain returned tenfold.

***

Jeffries was snoring in the car outside. Palmer tapped on the window and woke him up. Jeffries wiped the sleep from his eyes. “How’d you get on?” he asked.

“Just drive…” replied Palmer. “Just drive…”

 

Smack – Chapter 39

At this point it’s probably best for all concerned if I try and keep the literal transcriptions of what he tries to say down to a minimum. All you need to know is that my father sounds as bad as he looks, which, as my mother revealed in her earlier phone call, is not good. He’s lying in my old bed, his ashen face peering over the blankets, his eyes dull, set inside sunken sockets. From the wall an Australian soap is showing on the television, the sound is turned down so that the only noise that can be heard is awful wrench of my father’s breathing. He tries to speak, but it is not easy; every word is a struggle for him. He talks in a slow whisper, reluctant to let the words come out, as if he knows that there are only a finite amount of words left inside him and he wants to make sure that none of them are wasted.

Though a shower of coughs and splutters and bits of lung, he says: “John… you came…”

“Yes…” I reply.

“Please… sit down…” he urges.

I look around the room but the only chair available is a small child’s chair. It is the one that I used to sit on when I was kid, the one I used to sit on when I was playing with my little tin typewriter. As I grew older this chair was left abandoned in the corner of my room; I never threw it away – nothing was ever thrown away in our house. I pull its flimsy frame closer to my father’s bed and lower myself on to the tiny chair, a little afraid that it will collapse under the extra poundage that I have accrued in the intervening years; as I do so the cabbage smell grows stronger; I try my best to pretend that I haven’t noticed it.

“You’ve grown a bit…” says my father.

“Yes…” I say, patting my stomach. “Too much good living.”

My father looks at me: there is no expression on his face as he does this. He lies in his bed and studies my features; I have no idea what he is thinking about. Then, finally, he mumbles: “What a bloody mess… eh? What a bloody mess…”

Under normal circumstances I’m pretty sure that I’d be making a joke about that last comment, something like: ‘Surely I don’t look that bad!’, but now is not the time for humour, how could it be? I simply nod in agreement.

Then he says: “Your mum tells me that you’re doing alright for yourself… magazines isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” I reply. “But something like that…”

My father tries to smile. “We always knew that you’d be a writer…” he says.

“No… I’m not a writer… I just work in publishing, that’s all…”

Without any warning my father breaks his gaze and turns his eyes towards the corner of the room: “Go into the bottom drawer of the cupboard.” He tells me.

And I say: “What for?”

Before he can answer he has a particularly powerful coughing fit: this time it really is worthy of a mention here; when it has finally subsided he says: “Just do it…”

I stand up and open the drawer as instructed. Lying inside among the bric-a-brac is a stack of pages. The pages are blue-lined and have evidently been torn from a school exercise book. I recognise them instantly, although I really don’t have any right to. They are covered in my handwriting, or rather the handwriting that I used to produce when I was much younger. I raise them to my nostrils – I can’t resist doing this – and they smell of me.

From his bed, my father makes a noise resembling a chuckle and then says: “We kept them for you…”

There are about two dozen pages in all, each one covered in my juvenile handwriting. I inspect the first of the pages: at the top, written in faded blue Biro and underlined are the words: THE MONSTER FROM MARS by John Price, aged 8 3/4. Two or three pages along is similar underlined title, this one reads HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER by John Price, aged 9 1/4. I look towards my father in astonishment, “Why did you keep these?” I ask.

He tries to laugh again. “Look at the end of each story…” he tells me.

I do as he says and begin to laugh myself.

“And then we all went home and had our tea…” says my father.

And then we all went home and had our tea. If there is one sentence in the whole written language which best sums me up, this is probably it. And then we all went home and had our tea. I laugh even louder: this was the way that I used to end most of the childhood stories that I wrote while locked away in my bedroom, locked away from him. I would invariably start off full of energy, providing elaborate details of events and characters, giving painstaking thought to dialogue; but as the day wore on, tiredness and fatigue and boredom would set in and I’d find myself hurrying through the final few pages. My hero would build a rocket ship and head off to Mars, there he would meet all manner of nasty slimy monsters and do battle with them; then, with the story building to a tense climax, I would run out of ideas: my hero would escape with the minimum of effort and, in my immortal words, find himself heading home for his tea. It’s the way that my seven-year-old mind chose to resolve matters… and if I think about it, the origins of a pattern that I have been adhering to for most of my adult life. As the Everton fan once remarked when his team lost to a second-half Ian Rush hat-trick in the 1984 FA cup final after they had led by a goal for the whole of the first half: great first half, bit of a shite second. And, perhaps, this is why I ended up doing what I ended up doing, the reason I found myself anchored to the ephemeral world of partworks. I may have despised working in this particular branch of publishing, I may even have been ashamed of some of the truly dreadful titles that I have contributed to over the years, but it’s taken my father and a stack of old pages torn from a school exercise book to make me realise that maybe, just maybe, I’ve been doing the right thing all along.

Now I’m thinking about my job again: and now I suddenly know what I’m going to do when this is all over. In actual fact, I’m going to do exactly what I told Carol I was going to do on the day that I was unceremoniously slung out of GP: I’m going to get another job, a similar job, in another partwork company, a similar partwork company. I’m going to do this because this is what I do. I’m going to be just as bored… just as frustrated… just as pissed off as I always have been; but at least I’ll know that what I’m getting all worked up about is the right thing.

“Thanks…” I tell my father.

“No need to thank us…” he replies. “Like I said: we kept them for you. We knew that you’d want to have them one day.”

I stay with my father for a further twenty minutes: you have to laugh really, at the way the human mind works. Because I’m sitting in this absurd little child’s chair now and what I’d like to do more than anything in the whole world is utter just one simple word: Why? And he’s lying there on his death-bed, also, I imagine, wanting to utter just one simple word: Why? And yet neither of us knows how to say it, how to introduce the word into the conversation, how to stop ourselves from talking around in circles.

So we talk about life, we talk about death, we talk about football, the weather, we talk about anything, anything that isn’t important. I sit in that chair and smell my father’s cabbage smell and look at his grey, shrunken features, and he occasionally coughs and I occasionally reach down to the foot of the bed and hand him a tissue. And then, finally, when it looks as though we’re about to run out of things to say, there is a knock on the bedroom door and my mother appears holding an old Kodak camera in her hands. She asks if I would mind posing for a picture with him, and of course I can’t refuse. I don’t know why she’s doing this, I really don’t understand why she would want to have a photograph of me looking like I do and him looking like he does. There is no logic to her request, but I do it nevertheless. I bend down on my knees and hang my arm limply around his bony shoulders and smile. And when the camera flash goes off it’s like someone has fired a bullet at me. And I feel like falling to the floor.

Lizzie’s excellent blog

Hi,

I’m very impressed with this blog. http://mylittlebookblog.wordpress.com it’s run by a lady named Lizzie. Haven’t ever done this before but strongly recommend you take a look.

Ian

The look of love

The look of love

First interview with a boxer in probably 27 years.

Smack – Chapter 38

Saturday morning: 9.54 a.m.: This time Marie is in charge of things: she’s had all Thursday and Friday to prepare for it and she’s leaving nothing to chance. On Marie’s instructions I call my mother and tell her that we’re coming to visit today. I ask her if she’s sure that my father isn’t going to order me out of the house again and she tells me yes, she’s sure he won’t. She asks me what time I’ll be arriving and what I’d like for my tea, and I tell her probably early evening and not to bother because we’ll get something to eat on the way. Then she asks me how long I think I’ll be staying for and I say I don’t know, the week-end probably. Then she tells me how much she’s looking forward to seeing me properly this time and I say yes so am I, although I am not. All very civilised.

Marie and I eat breakfast and then I go and check over the contents of the bag that she packed for me yesterday. Inside are neatly folded shirts and trousers, socks rolled up into balls, a brand new toothbrush still in its wrapper, a suit protected by a plastic zip-up, some shaving foam, even a couple of ties.

While Marie locks up the house I take the bags out to the car. It is then that I realise to my horror that I have forgotten to clear away the remnants of Ralph. As soon as I open the car door I am hit by his smell; and when I look into the back seat I can see a small forest of discarded dog hair. I think for a moment and then go back inside and tell Marie that it’s probably best if we went in her car; I’d forgotten to mention that my car had started playing up on the way back from my father’s: it sounded like a gear box problem and I wouldn’t want to tempt providence by risking another long drive. She seems convinced enough by this display of fancy footwork.

It is while we are putting our coats on to leave on that a further problem emerges: I discover with some alarm that the mobile phone I am supposed to have lost in Marie’s absence is still inside one of the pockets. I get a chance to remedy this oversight a couple of hours later when we stop at a service station for a coffee: while Marie visits the ladies I quietly drop the incriminating evidence into a waste bin, carefully burying it among the abandoned burger wrappers and plastic cups.

Marie drives: it is a sort of unwritten law that only she is allowed to drive her father’s car. She drives a little slower than I do; we listen to Jazz Fm and I smoke cigarettes. It feels a little like a trip to the dentist; I am too nervous to talk very much and Marie is wise enough to leave me to my own devices, to let me make whatever preparations I need to make for what is about to happen.

 

Noel and Liam Gallagher… John Lennon… Mike Tyson… Jesus of Nazareth… in terms of people who ended up not seeing a great deal of their father, I’m certainly in good company. And what happened to these people? The Gallagher brothers went in the papers threatening to beat up their estranged father if he ever came near them; Lennon ended up doing Arthur Janov’s primal scream therapy in an attempt to try and exorcise his childhood demons; Tyson simply blanked the father who appeared out of nowhere at the height of his son’s fame; and Jesus of Nazareth? …well we all know what happened to him… This is what I’m thinking as the countryside flashes by.

What makes a son hate his father, and what makes a father hate his son? Actually, I’m probably ill-qualified to answer this question, because if you shone a torch into my face and applied the thumb screws I’d probably be forced to admit that whatever my feelings are or have been towards my father, hate has never particularly been one of them. Intense dislike, sure… the occasional urge to commit patricide, maybe… but never really hate in the same way that I hate semolina… or used to hate Margaret Thatcher when I was younger… or Garry Bushell… or Jeffrey Archer… or the Australian cricket team sometimes.

 

It isn’t really worth providing details of the journey: It’s fair to say that both of us have already been down that road before. All I know is that my mind is a lot clearer: I don’t have Carol and the does-she-doesn’t-she-will-I-won’t-I-scenario to worry about; there is no Ralph sitting in the back of the car; and I’m not pressed into the driver’s seat wondering who’s been leaving messages on my answering machine at home. As far as I’m concerned the whole world could be calling and it wouldn’t make the slightest iota of difference to the way I’m feeling right now.

We drive at a leisurely fifty-five and hit Exeter by around two o’clock. I sit in the passenger seat chewing on boiled sweets, almost into my second packet of cigarettes. I think about my father’s voice on the phone the other day: how weak and frail he sounded. I think about Carol: what an idiot I’ve been, how could I possibly have imagined that a girl like her could have been attracted to a fat old loser like me? I think about Louise in the pub last night: the tears running down her poor shattered features. I think about Marie: relieved that I’ve not lost her, that I’ve managed to salvage something from the wreckage of my behaviour over the past fortnight. And I think about my job: about how unfair the whole situation is, about how cruel people can be; and yet somehow I’m happy, I’m pleased to have found an escape route from a life that was killing me with an unremitting precision every bit as efficient as the cancer that is destroying my father. Then, at about two-forty-five, I see a red brick tower emerge on the horizon, and we’re driving into the centre of Starcross.

 

The sun is shining at last and there are more people about than before. The little grocery shop-cum-post office is now open and someone is inside talking to the shop-keeper. The tide is out and I can see several men wearing bobble hats scampering about in the sand looking for cockles, something which I myself used to do to pep up my pocket money when I was a child. We pass the Anchor pub and I instruct Marie to turn right, then we’re parking outside my parents’ house.

Before Marie even has time to pull on the handbrake I see the front door open and my little old lady mother is loping towards us. She comes out into the street and looks into the car, smiling. Marie waves hello to her and I open my door and climb out on to the pavement. Then, before I can do anything about it, my mother reaches out and has her arms wrapped around me, hugging me like she used to. She says: “Thanks for coming, love.”

Marie closes her door and stands across from us, watching this mother and child reunion. She is smiling, too. Then I pull myself awkwardly away and announce: “Mother… this is Marie…”

My mother stands up as straight as her little old lady body will allow and says softly: “John… please… don’t call me ‘mother’…”

Marie cuts in before I can respond: “Hello Susan… it’s nice to meet you at last…” she says warmly.

Then my mother walks over to Marie and gives her a hug and looks over her shoulder at me and says: “Are you two married, then?”

And I tell her no we’re not, although to all intents and purposes Marie is my wife because we’ve been living together for such and such a time… And my mother shakes her head knowingly and says: “You should get married, you know.… there’s nothing like a good wedding…”

 

We move inside the house and perch ourselves on chairs in the living room while my mother puts the kettle on and goes upstairs to inform my father of our arrival. The living room is much as I remember it: a well worn three-piece suite, large screen television underneath the front window, flowery patterns on the carpet, cheap ornaments from Blackpool or Weston-Super-Mare or somewhere like that on an old, chipped dressing table.

Marie and I sit and stare at each other without saying anything. Now that she’s finally managed to get me here I’m not too convinced that Marie is actually enjoying herself as much as she imagined she would. She seems shocked by the house, by its lack of size, by its poverty; it’s certainly a far cry from her parents’ house in nice middle-class Barnes. Perhaps she now understands why I didn’t want her to see all this: it’s not that I’m ashamed of my past – it’s just that when it’s being splashed all over the front pages I prefer to have a little editorial control.

The tea arrives and my mother tells me that my father is not feeling too good today but if I don’t mind the state of his room I could go and see him in a few minutes if I feel up to it. While she saying this to me, Marie suddenly holds her head up and sniffs the air a little, apparently she’s picked up on the cabbage smell that I noticed on my earlier visit. My mother sees her doing this and turns to towards her and says: “It’s not pleasant, is it?”

And I frown: “What is that smell?”

And she replies: “It’s him… your dad…”

I remember reading in a auto-biography of Lauren Bacall that every time she kissed Humphrey Bogart in the months leading up to his death, she could smell his cancer. This, I imagine, is what it smells like.

I tell my mother that I’d like to drink my tea first (which, I discover, has been loaded with two sugars) and compose myself a little. We make small talk. My mother asks Marie if she works for a living and Marie tells her about her publishing career. My mother looks Marie up and down, evidently impressed. Then Marie asks her what she does for a living and my mother laughs and tells her not to be so silly, that’s she’s too old to be working these days. And I interject and tell Marie that my mother used to be a hair-dresser, which I thought she already knew.

I finish my tea and look nervously at my watch, not registering what time it is. Then I stretch my arms and yawn and tell my mother that I’m ready.

What happens when we die?

Blatant advertising, I’m afraid. Here’s an excerpt from my new kids book Johnny Nothing (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ITZTOUA). This chapter attempts to answer such time immemorial questions as:

What happens after we die?

What does god look like?

Why are most accountant transvestites?

Why does the devil resemble Alan Titchmarsh?

I hope you enjoy it!

 

Chapter 22  – Handbags

Ebenezer Dark was having a dream about the instructions that he had given to Johnny Nothing a day or so earlier when the youngster had visited his office. It was both a convenient and an inconvenient dream. 

It was convenient because it gives me the ideal opportunity to do a movie-style flashback and let you know exactly what was said to Johnny in his office on the day in question. It was inconvenient because Mr. Dark was currently sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, which, even more inconveniently, was hurtling down the motorway very, very quickly indeed.

To make matters worse, sitting behind the wheel of a small mini and hurtling very, very quickly indeed in the opposite direction was a young lady named Minnie Driver. To make matters worse she was mini driving on the wrong side of the motorway. Silly moo, don’t you agree?

What’s the chances of this but Minnie was also a solicitor and she was also asleep and having a dream about a ten-year-old boy named Ronny who had visited her for advice only the other day? In actual fact, Ronny was the star of another book called ‘Ronny Everything’ and his parents had just stolen HIS cash card in order to stop HIM from spending all the wonga. Funny old world, isn’t it?

It’s an absolutely amazing coincidence – I’m not denying it – and opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities for sequels prequels, cross-pollination of story-lines, Ebenezer and Minnie falling in love and getting married, etc. etc. But…

Bang!

Actually, that bang is simply not loud enough to describe the truly ear-splitting noise that the two motorcars produced when they crashed into each other head-on. Let’s try all caps and a couple of exclamation marks:

BANG!!

Still not good enough.

How about a nice illustration to demonstrate just how loud that bang was?

 

 

That’s better. Although if you’re reading the interactive version of this book press the button to the left labelled ‘BANG!!’ and you’ll get an even better idea of the ear-splitting noise that the crash produced. For still more fun, wait until your dad’s having a snooze on the sofa and hold your iPad or Kindle up to his waxy earhole and press the button. Write and tell me what happens.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced having a dream in the middle of a car crash and then waking up to find that you were dead. I can’t say it’s happened to me much lately. But if you haven’t I can tell you that it really is confusing. In fact, when Ebenezer and Minnie awoke from their dreams to find themselves dead, their level of confusion was simply off the confusion scale.

The first thing that they noticed was that they were floating a good ten or twelve feet above the wreckage of their smashed up vehicles. This is what happens when you die — ask a teacher. You leave your body and float away into infinity. At least, that’s what I read somewhere I think. Looking down they could see their mashed up bodies sitting motionless in the respective driver’s seats of their mangled cars. It looked like an explosion in a tomato ketchup factory that had been sprayed with zombie gore.

The next thing they noticed was each other. And out of politeness they both gave each other a friendly little wave and a really cute bashful smile. This initial joviality quickly disappeared, however, when the pair of them put two and two together and realised what had happened. It was Ebenezer Dark who spoke first:

‘I do believe that we’re dead,’ he glumly announced in his best solicitor’s voice. ‘And I do believe that you are culpable!’

‘I do believe that you’re correct,’ said Minnie Driver, in her best solicitor’s voice. ‘In that we are both dead. However, I do not agree that it is my fault. After all, you were asleep at the wheel.’

‘Agreed,’ agreed Mr. Dark, ‘In that I was asleep at the wheel. However, not only were you asleep at the wheel but you were also driving down the motorway on the wrong side of the road.’

Minnie Driver pondered this for a moment and watched as an ambulance duly appeared at the blood splattered scene. ‘I cannot fault the validity of your argument,’ she conceded finally. ‘For this reason I reluctantly accept culpability and I am willing to make a frankly insulting offer of damages.’

It was at this moment that another voice entered the fray. It was deep, and booming and masterful. LIKE THIS. Except in a really chunky font with better kerning and thunder and lightning coming from the top of the ‘H’.

‘I am God,’ the voice bellowed in a general tone that was a bit like that angry T. Rex in Jurassic Park when that stupid kid shone his torch in its eyes. ‘I created everything in six days and then took a day off for a break and I happened to be watching this stretch of the motorway when you crashed.’

Ebenezer Dark looked a little concerned. So did Minnie Driver, only more so.

‘This is what happens when you die…’ continued God, who, I should explain, looked quite a lot like an old man with a long white beard. He could easily have earned a little extra money in December by posing as Father Christmas, except that he wasn’t wearing a red costume; in fact, he didn’t seem to be wearing anything at all. (Which sort of begs the question that if you’re God and all powerful and omnipotent and all that, why would you make yourself look like a doddering old geriatric without any clothes on instead of, say, Brad Pitt or David Beckham in a really smart suit?) ‘…You float out of your bodies and I come to collect you so that I can decide whether you go upstairs or downstairs…’

At this point another figure floated into view. He had red skin and horns and hooves like a red skinned hoofed horny goat. He was carrying a large gardening fork. He jovially waved over at the two recently deceased solicitors. He seemed quite friendly actually. He smiled a lot and looked a little like Alan Titchmarsh⁠1 would if he fell into a vat of indelible red paint. 

‘If you have lived a worthy and honest life you will go upstairs and spend the rest of eternity having a pretty darned good time,’ said God. If, however, you have lived a worthless and dishonest life you will go downstairs and spend the rest of eternity sitting on a blow torch in the depths of hell or somewhere equally horrid such as Burnley…’

It was at this point that God thought for a moment. ‘Wait a second,’ he announced. ‘Aren’t you both solicitors?’

Ebenezer and Minnie shuffled about uncomfortably and looked downwards at their feet.

Suddenly there was a deafening clap of thunder and God shook his beard angrily, if such a thing is possible – although obviously God can do anything. He didn’t say a word. All he did was point his finger downwards and shake his head reproachfully, if such a thing is possible.

Without warning the scene went all shimmery and out of focus. A harp could be heard playing a weird ethereal tune like this: ‘da… dada… da… da dada’. You had to be there really. Then Ebenezer Dark awoke to find himself lying on a stretcher in an ambulance. ‘Calm down,’ said the voice of a white-suited doctor named Doctor White. ‘You’ve had a very bad accident and you’ve been dreaming.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Ebenezer.

‘Nothing to do with God,’ said Doctor White. ‘More to do with this country’s woefully unappreciated ambulance service.’

‘Am I… Am I… badly injured?’ groaned Ebenezer.

‘Broken ribs, broken scull, perforated scrotum, pierced lung, pierced ears, ruptured spleen, broken neck, triple heart bypass, very bad cold, carpal tunnel syndrome, repetitive strain injury, fractured skull, in-growing toenail… I don’t think you’ve got long, old boy.’

‘How long?’ asked Mr. Dark.

‘Well, put it this way,’ said the doctor, ‘I wouldn’t bother booking a holiday this year…’

‘Oh, dear…’

‘In actual fact, if you’ve got any tickets for the theatre this weekend I’d think about putting them on eBay as quick as you can.’

‘In that case I simply have to tell you what I said to Johnny Nothing when he visited me in my office the other day.’

‘Well I can’t pretend that I’m interested but if it makes you feel any better getting it off your chest then do go ahead,’ said Doctor White.

‘I’ll do it as a series of bullet points if you don’t mind,’ said Ebenezer Dark.

‘Whatever.’

‘I told him to:

Withdraw some money from the bank account.


Get rid off all the boxes that were cluttering the flat. Put them up for online auction or something. Put them on Gumtree because Gumtree doesn’t charge a 10% commission like other online auction sites.


Hire some cleaners and decorators and get that dung heap of a flat looking ship shape.


Get some office furniture to put papers and calculators on.


Hire Bill and Ben the bodyguard men. In fact, don’t bother. I’ll arrange it for you.


Lock your parents up in their bedroom to stop them getting up to any more mischief.


Telephone me when you’ve done all this so that I could come to see you and discuss how you are going to get all the money back that your thicko mother has squandered.’

‘Really… How interesting…’ murmured Doctor White, who was absent-mindedly thumbing through the blood-soaked listings guide of the local newspaper.

Ebenezer Dark closed his eyes for a moment and wondered if he was about to die for real this time. He thought about his life. Had it all been worthwhile? Had he done all the things he’d wanted to do when he was a young ambitious spotty nerd or had he wasted it by becoming a boring old solicitor? You’ll find that you probably do the same when you’re just about to die, particularly if you end up being a boring old solicitor. Either that or you’ll post stink bombs through the letter box of anybody who winds you up. Teachers, headmasters and evil ice-cream men are suitable targets. 

It was his father’s fault. The rotten swine. His father had been so mean and pushy when Ebenezer was a young bookworm reading copies of Solicitor’s Weekly. He’d never let him express himself. His father had forced him to become a solicitor. It was the most boring job in the world apart from, perhaps, a checkout girl in a £1 shop that no one ever goes to because it happens to be right next door to a 99p shop. Now that he was on the verge of death, Ebenezer Dark wanted to tell the whole world about the secret ambition that he had harboured deep inside him for all of his life. 

With as much energy as a dying man can muster, Mr. Dark opened his mouth and spat out some words with all his might: ‘I want to be a girl!’ he cried, feeling truly liberated for the first time in his life. ‘I want to be a girl! I want to wear dresses and make-up and go to pretty handbag shops!’

Ebenezer Dark was suddenly aware of another voice speaking to him. ‘Mr. Dark,’ it said, ‘Are you OK? Wake up! Wake up!’

Without warning the scene went all shimmery and out of focus for the second time and Mr. Dark opened his eyes to find himself slumped at the desk in Johnny’s little room in the council flat. Johnny was sitting in a chair opposite looking at him strangely. Bill and Ben were standing behind Johnny staring at him with their mouths wide open.

‘Hmmm… Sorry about that,’ said Mr. Dark. ‘I must have drifted off for a moment or two… I was having a dream about having a dream… Happens all the time, y’know.’

‘But Mr. Dark, we’re supposed to be thinking of ways of earning back the money that my mum has spent,’ said Johnny.

‘Hmm… That’s right…’ said Mr. Dark. ‘Now where were we?’

1 Portly red-faced bloke from the telly. Appears on boring gardening programmes and digs things out of the ground quite a lot.

Photos of boxer Frank Buglioni

 

Smack – Chapter 37

Friday: 7.04 p.m. After we spend a quiet day together alone, I inform Marie that I’ve arranged to go into town for a drink with Dave from accounts and meet Louise, as agreed, in the Ship. Louise is already there when I arrive. She is sitting at a table pretending to read an Evening Standard; it looks as though she put a lot of effort into our date: her face is layered in make-up, she is wearing blue eye-shadow, her mouth smeared with glossy crimson lipstick. Nil pointes for presentation, however, I’m afraid. It will take more than just a lick of paint to cover up the flaws in this particular model: major surgery would be more appropriate.

I look around and notice one or two people from GP milling around the bar and quickly suggest that the two of us relocate elsewhere, which Louise seems happy to do. Either she’s a little embarrassed that we might be seen together, too, or she’s hoping for some privacy so that we can declare our undying love for each other or I can snog her or whatever else she thinks is on the menu. We walk along Wardour Street awkwardly together, keeping our distance, and end up in the Dog House, an establishment which has the advantage of a dark and gloomy basement bar, in which I will be able to spare myself and any innocent bystanders the unpleasant spectacle of Louise’s Medusa-like features.

It begins slowly: we make small talk for the first half an hour or so; Louise asks me if I’m feeling any better about losing my job, I lie and tell her that I’m glad they did it. We sit facing each other at a table and go through the motions. I light the first of several cigarettes and order a round of drinks. Then, as the alcohol begins to kick it in, we get down to the nitty gritty:

Louise tells me how much she enjoyed the other night, although she feels a little guilty about it because it’s not the sort of thing that she normally does. I tell her that it’s not the sort of thing that I normally do, either; I fail to mention how much I enjoyed waking up in her bed, which does not go unnoticed. After drink number two I point myself in the direction of the toilets and when I return I see that Louise has re-positioned her chair, so that when I retake my seat we are now sitting thigh to thigh. Another half-an-hour goes by and this enforced closeness begins to loosen Louise’s inhibitions. By the time that we have finished our third drink Louise is looking decidedly more relaxed, as if the tricky manoeuvre of getting over the awkward business of that first meeting with the other half of your recent one-night stand has been successfully negotiated.

By nine o’clock the Dog House has started to fill up and someone has put some music on, which makes talking a little more difficult. I hide in the shadows, hoping that nobody I know will appear to witness my illicit liaison with the lovely Louise. If my heart was really in it, now we be just about the right time to start the hand holding and the thigh clutching; in two or three drinks time the snogging that I mentioned earlier would be due to put in an appearance. But I’m not following correct procedures: Louise realises this and attempts to compensate by reaching over to me and gently kissing me on the cheek. I shake off my revulsion and say: “What was that for?”

“Oh… you know…” she smiles shyly. “I just felt like doing it…”

In an ideal world it is at this point that I should be now sitting up straight, pulling myself away from Louise and looking at her firmly between the eyes and saying something like: “Ah… Louise… I’m sorry… but…”

But I can’t do this. My hands are tied. I can’t afford to risk rejecting Louise; I have to seek out another conclusion to this scenario. Marie and I spent a lovely day alone together yesterday, the best that we have had for years and years; we lolled in bed together until gone mid-day like we had just met for the first time and I have no intention of letting Louise spoil things by ringing Marie up and telling her about the birth mark on my left buttock. No… the rapids that lie in wait me further upstream will require the use of a steady rowing arm.

However, as I have already proven in the morning room of Carol’s rich and famous father, I am no actor. Louise realises this immediately, even though I manage to overcome my instinctive urge to get up and run when she places her lips on my cheek a second time. She says: “What’s wrong?”

And I say: “Nothing…”

And she says: “Are you sure?”

“Yeah… it’s just feels… well… a little strange for you to be doing that, that’s all.”

Louise grins happily to herself. “Yes… it’s strange for me, too,” she agrees.

“I mean… it wasn’t so long ago that you we’re telling me that I was the most objectionable person on earth and that I should go and see a psychiatrist.”

Louise flinches a little, she looks embarrassed.

“Yes… I’m sorry about that… I was just… a little angry with you…”

I light up another cigarette so that I can do something with my hands. “Why?” I ask.

“Well… we already talked about it that night.”

“Did we?”

“Yes – don’t you remember?”

I shake my head: “No I don’t.”

Louise seems slightly unnerved by this comment: she’s evidently wondering what else I don’t remember about that night.

“You know…” she says. “You started to get all dictatorial on the project. Everybody was really pissed off about it…”

The penny drops. “But I’ve already told you,” I assert. “I was only doing that to keep everyone on their toes because of the rumours about job cuts and everything…”

“Well never mind,” she says suddenly holding my hand in her own and smiling. “It’s all forgotten about now… I’m sorry I was so nasty to you.”

Then, just as I’m thinking of an excuse to free my hand from Louise’s grasp, maybe another trip to the toilet or the bar or something, Louise moves even closer to me and whispers: “… and anyway… I’d never have gone through with it…”

Never have gone through with what?

“Never have gone through with what?

“You know…” she continues.

“No… I don’t know…”

“You know… the… um… Michael Dean business…”

“The Michael Dean business?”

She lowers her voice so that I can scarcely hear her: “Yes… you know… the…the sexual harassment thing…”

I feel an electric shock run through my body. My face whitens and I glare angrily over at Louise.

“You mean it was you!” I exclaim.

Louise pauses for a moment before answering:. “Well… um… yes… I thought we’d already been through this… you know… when we were sitting in that booth in Browns that night…”

“Browns?”

“You know; the club that we went to after your leaving do…”

“No I do not remember talking about it… you mean it was you all along? …I knew it!”

“But I wouldn’t have gone through with it… you know that, don’t you?”

If Louise was a man I’d be smacking her in her big ugly mouth right now; as it is it’s all I can do to prevent myself from reaching out and twisting her mangled head from her shoulders.

She fills me in on the missing background information: It had apparently all started the day after Sarah from Personnel’s leaving do when Michael Dean had called Louise down into his office and asked if the idea of promotion appealed to her. Initially, Louise had had her reservations about doing it but Michael had been so charming, so persuasive, that when she thought about it, it didn’t seem like such an awful thing to be doing. She was pissed off with me at the time walking around the project like I was god so it seemed like a good way of clipping my wings a little. Nothing, Michael Dean had assured her, would ever happen about it. All she had to do was put in a complaint about me and I’d shuffle off into the sunset with my tail between my legs. He’d transfer my services to another project, he told her, leaving her to take control and earn herself a hefty little pay rise in the process. Everyone would be happy.

But didn’t you think that maybe he was doing this for a reason? I ask her. Didn’t you think that perhaps he wasn’t telling you the whole of the truth? Did you really believe that he’d convince you to accuse me of sexual harassment and then not use this loaded gun when the time was right? Are you really that stupid?

Louise flinches again at my last comment. For a moment I think that she is going to cry. “But… but…” she repeats. “I’d never have gone through with it…”

“You wouldn’t have fucking had to!”

“I’m sorry…”

“You’re sorry! Well that makes me feel a lot better… I’ve just lost my fucking job because of you!”

Now it’s my turn to fill Louise in on a little of the missing background information: I tell her about my phone call with Mary Bridges from personnel, about how Louise’s lies may just have happened to have cost me twenty-four fucking grand. About how Mary threatened to provide witnesses and evidence if I tried to fight this gross injustice. Then Louise really does start to cry. A young couple sitting at a nearby table peer over at us anxiously. In the background the robotic drum beat of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ starts up.

In the midst of all her whimpering Louise says: “Yes… sniff… I know… she told me that I’d lose my job if I tried to retract the accusation…”

“And just how exactly did Mary Bridges find out about this alleged rape?” I ask.

“I think Dave Bennett from accounts told her.”

“What!”

Dave from accounts? Dave from accounts? What is Louise talking about?

“Well… people are saying that he got an official reprimand for something or other and told her then.”

“What do you mean ‘people’?”

“Well… everybody …”

“You mean the whole office?”

“Yes… sob… I’m so sorry…”

I cast my eyes over at the blubbering form of Louise, this woman whom I had sexual congress with only a week ago. Her tears cut though her make-up like cracks in plaster, her nose is running, her eyes swollen up like a boxer’s after a twelve-round fight. And as I do so I suddenly have a moment of divine revelation, of pure equanimity of thought, of a sense that maybe the world is not really such an unjust place, after all; that what goes around comes around, that for every negative there is a positive. And I can hardly stop myself from smiling, something which would be an entirely inappropriate thing to be doing if I’m to pull off what I intend to do next:

“Well that’s it…” I say dismissively. “If you think I’m going to see you again you’ve got another thing coming.”

“What?” says Louise.

“There’s me thinking that you and I had something together and all the time you’re plotting behind my back… what sort of a person are you?”

“But… but… I didn’t mean to get you into trouble… I didn’t think that anything like this would happen…”

“You didn’t mean to get me into trouble? You know, Louise… it’s you who ought to go and see a psychiatrist… I think you’re off your rocker…”

“But…”

“I think you’re dangerously stupid… Just what did you hope to achieve by all this?”

Louise looks up at me from her seat. It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for her. I have a feeling that our rendezvous is not going quite so well as she anticipated. For a moment I even have to fight off an urge to reach over and give her a consolatory hug.

“But John…” she sniffs. “I thought that…”

“You thought what?”

“I thought that… we liked each other…”

“Yeah… I did too… but evidently I must have misjudged you… I don’t think that what you’ve done is exactly the best basis on which to build a relationship – do you?”

“Oh… John…”

“I mean… what are you going to do for your next trick… accuse me of stealing your underwear?”

“John…”

“No… that’s it, I’m afraid…there’s no point in carrying on with things if I just can’t trust you…”

 

 

 

Louise is still sobbing when we leave the Dog House. I walk alongside her in the street indignant, angrily refusing to allow her to come within two feet of me. In truth, I’m not very comfortable at inflicting such misery on her; even Louise does not deserve to be treated in this manner. Silently, however, I’m thanking god, I’m converting to Catholicism, I’m offering up my allegiance to whatever supernatural deity it was that allowed me to escape from this potential disaster with such flamboyant ease. I had been expecting the Louise situation to linger around for months on end like an old sore; and here we are now, three-and-a-half hours later, me looking all injured and hurt, Louise fighting back tears of guilt. In terms of how to dump a woman whom you’ve just had a one-night stand with, this is actually as close to perfection as one can get.

I leave Louise at Tottenham Court Road tube station, telling her that when I’ve had chance to calm down I might call her some time and we can do lunch. I’ve added the last comment in order to give Louise a little hope to cling to, so that she will not risk burning her bridges entirely by calling Marie, not that I think she’s likely to do that any more after destroying my career in the way that she has. I climb into a cab and even though I’m aware that everybody at GP now believes me to be a sex offender, I find myself whistling contentedly during the journey home. I give the driver a large tip and arrive back at the house just before eleven. Marie seems pleasantly surprised by my appearance: I really have turned over a new leaf – I’ve just been out drinking with Dave from accounts (Dave from accounts… I’m going to be having a word with that little bastard) and managed to make it back before pub closing. What a good boy I am.

A very slow death

In my early forties I was struck down by a disease I knew nothing about. For ten years I suffered from untreated Hypothyroidism. It ruined my career as a writer and came close to killing me. This is my story…

With the power of hindsight it’s hard to believe that nobody noticed. I certainly didn’t: although the evidence was staring at me in the face every time I looked in a mirror. My wife didn’t seem to notice: although really she did but it’s just that I wasn’t prepared or able to listen to any of the hints that she tried to drop in an admittedly uncharacteristically subtle manner. My friends didn’t notice: but they were probably amused that a weight fascist such as I had piled on so many pounds. The truth of the matter was that I was falling to pieces. My body had gone into shutdown. My brain was lost in a deep, deep fog. I wasn’t able to notice anything. I was slowly – very slowly – dying. Life was percolating out of me in a way that nobody could really notice.

It’s sounds melodramatic now to claim that I was dying. Because there was no blood – well, very little. There was no cancer ravaging my body. Most of the time I could just about function and affect some semblance of normality. I could go to work five days a week. I could do my job in a kind of fashion. I may have felt a permanent soul sapping exhaustion that has to be experienced to be believed but then I was in my mid-forties – aren’t you supposed to start slowing down by then?

And yet I certainly didn’t feel that I was slowing down as the millennium came and went and I entered my fourth decade. Far from it. In fact, my career as a writer – if you can call it that – was enjoying a purple patch that some would say was the same colour as my prose. I’d had a bestseller in America that was later made into a TV movie, my first adult book was getting favourable reviews and I was already talking to my publisher about a follow-up. On top of this my first child was about to make an appearance. Life was good.

But life was about to turn bad. In reality this transformation had already begun a decade earlier when I awoke one morning at the foot of the stairs with a chipped tooth and my chin glued to the carpet with congealed blood. At the time I put it down to the hazards of drinking alone but now that I’m an expert I know that a rogue gene I was carrying had suddenly decided to kick in. The gene in question’s sole function is to trick the body’s immune system into thinking that the thyroid gland is a foreign invader. This condition is known as Hashimoto’s Disease (people often snigger when I tell them the name) and probably affects one in 1500 men. It sounds quite exotic doesn’t it? But it’s not really. It’s actually just the hors d’oeuvre, the starter for a main course that is far more serious.

The thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland in the throat that has a slightly undeserved anonymity. It’s not as sexy as the heart, or the liver or the lungs but it’s purpose is just as important. It produces an essential hormone snappily entitled T4 which the body converts to another hormone known as T3. Both are responsible for regulating the function of every organ in our body. They are like petrol and oil: if insufficient hormone is produced things start to rust and drop off. The paint begins to flake, the engine starts to splutter and die.

When Hashimoto’s Disease begins the body doesn’t really know what to do with itself. The simple mechanics of what is happening are actually very easy to understand. Thinking it to be a foreign interloper our natural anti-bodies attack the thyroid gland. Healthy thyroid tissue is slowly replaced by scar tissue and not able to produce the required amount of T4 necessary to power our metabolism.

The body attempts to fight back by producing more T4 but often overcompensates. The result is that the sufferer temporarily becomes hyperthyroid – in other words there is too much T4 swimming around our veins. Think Marty Feldman. Think poppy out eyes. At least before I began avidly reading up on the subject this was the most that I knew about the thyroid gland. Hyperthyroid sufferers have too much petrol: they have an excess of energy, they find it hard to sleep, they do things at a slightly faster pace than most ordinary people. They also tend to faint quite a lot more often than ordinary people.

During a two-year period beginning in 2002 I began to faint a lot. The fainting usually occurred in the early hours of the morning after I had awakened desperate to answer the call of nature. Then the weirdest thing would happen: I would be overcome with a strange feeling of dizziness and nausea and the feeling that I was about to collapse. I would awaken minutes or hours later confused and disorientated on the bathroom floor. When a fifteen stone man collapses he becomes a dead weight. And when a dead weight hits a hard tiled floor bad things can happen.

First there were the obligatory minor cuts and bruises: a cut on the forehead, another on the chin. A broken nose that happened when my head hit the side of a table. Bruised ribs. And finally third degree burns on my back caused when I collapsed unconscious against a red hot radiator. It’s quite an impressive scar actually. Butterfly shaped ironically. Kind of like a natural tattoo. It gives me a touch of character on the beach. I’m just lucky it’s not my face that ended up being cooked by that radiator.

That particular bad thing resulted in my first visit to hospital, where bits of wire were taped to various parts of my body and I was informed that I had a heart condition; a diagnosis that was later rescinded. None of the specialists there thought to check for a thyroid condition. This was understandable, though. It was busy, it was the middle of the night, and I had no history of thyroid trouble.

And none of the specialists that I saw about my hip problem thought to check for a thyroid condition. In the mid-nineties I had slipped on some wet leaves while out shopping in Soho. It was the most absurdly minor of injuries but it simply refused to heal. As the years went by I saw numerous specialists about this. I had x-rays. I had physio. Nothing seemed capable of ridding me of the permanent limp I had acquired that beautiful autumn morning. Eventually after years and years of pain I had an MRI scan and I was told by another specialist that I had a delightfully named condition known as Avascular Necrosis. Basically, something had caused the blood supply to be cut off from my femur and the bone was dying like a prize pot plant starved of water.

A man in a bow tie and red braces cheerfully asked me if I was ‘free in December’, because if so he could fit me in for a hip replacement operation. It would only cost, he told me, £16,000. Nice work if you can get it.

Another specialist told me that he would like to drill holes in my femur head using a technique known as Core Decompression. When I Googled this technique I discovered that it was notoriously painful and had only a 5% success rate and that nobody seemed to know why it might occasionally work. Not to mention up to 26 weeks on crutches. I politely declined. Well it wasn’t that polite if I’m honest.

Yet another specialist gave me the best advice: ‘Do nothing until you can live with it no longer,’ he said. And that’s what I went for. I know that a hip operation in the future is unavoidable but I can live with intermittent pain and a limp for the time being. As I continually and tediously mention: not one specialist thought to check for a thyroid condition. Had they done so they would have learned that avascular necrosis is one of the many symptoms of a malfunctioning thyroid gland.

Likewise if any of the doctors that I visited had done a little research they would have discovered that the seemingly ever-present colds that made life miserable were linked with my thyroid, that my psoriasis, my debilitating joint and back pains (holding a baby in my arms would condemn me to months of constant pain), my dry hair and scaly skin, frankly disgusting diarrhoea, my agonising bouts of depression and panic attacks, my inability to sleep at night, my terrible weight gain, and my chronic fatigue. All of these problems stemmed directly from that little butterfly gland in my neck. And yet nobody knew it.

A more curious symptom but equally worthy of mention was the sound that my throat made. At first it was funny when my throat literally began to scream. If you’ve ever hear Rob Brydon do his ‘man in a box’ trick you’ll know what I’m talking about. When I lay in bed at night my throat would emit a high-pitched scream that was astonishing to behold. It was like someone or something was trapped in there and crying out to be released. Once the laughter had subsided, irritation set in. It was difficult enough for me to sleep at night without an extra person in bed with us. I would lay awake at in the early hours angrily willing my throat to stop making that noise. I would change position. I would toss and turn. Nothing could stop it.

Yet another symptom of a misfiring thyroid is an important one for a writer: when one is hypothyroid (don’t forget that I didn’t know that I was at the time) it is almost impossible to concentrate on anything for extended periods. This mean that I was hit by what I believed to be the most profound case of writer’s block since Moses finished the Ten Commandments. It was simply impossible for me to write. I became an expert at starting things and never finishing them. I would begin a project full of enthusiasm but within days I found that I was simply no longer interested in doing any more work. I have a hard drive full of unfinished manuscripts. My wife told me that I had lost my ‘mojo’ and she was right. I couldn’t write. I could only go through the motions. And this only increased my depression, my sense of worthlessness, and my inability to write anything. Anything at all.

By 2012 I had been suffered from an under-active thyroid gland for well over a decade and I was a complete mess. My weight had ballooned to almost 16 stones despite constant dieting. I awoke most mornings at four or five am and was consequently exhausted by 9.00am. After taking my daughter to school I would often go back to bed and sleep for three or four hours before going to pick her up and then snoozing some more. When friends came over it became something of a standing joke that I would often fall asleep on the sofa. I limped continually and took pain killers to try to offset the ever-present ache in my hip. Apart from a couple of books on photography (which I simply do not recall working on) I’d had nothing published since 1999 with no chance whatsoever of remedying this situation). I felt constantly sick and drained of all energy and motivation. I really was slowly dying.

People were talking about me behind my back. My mother-in-law, a nutritionist, was advising my wife to get me checked for diabetes. My wife gave me a big speech about ‘approaching fifty’ and the need to go for a medical MOT. I was not adverse to this until I found out what it would cost.

The thing about Hypothyroidism (the opposite of Hyperthyroidism) is that when the body does not produce enough T4 the symptoms can so often be confused with signs of ageing. We do get stouter as we get older. We do need less sleep. We aren’t in the same condition as we were when we were younger. Add this to the fact that I was the father of a young child and who wouldn’t be tired?

And then one day I went for breakfast with some friends. Siobhan, a pretty Irish girl, looked at me and said matter-of-factly ‘Have you had your thyroid checked?’

It had never occurred to me to do this because I knew nothing about the thyroid. Nothing except Marty Feldman and poppy-out eyes. It had never actually occurred to me that I was ill. This is yet another aspect of a thyroid condition: it’s like Chinese water torture. The onset of the symptoms is so slow and pastoral that it’s easy to miss what’s going on. It’s not like a heart attack or a stroke in which the physical manifestations of the illness are instant and in your face. It’s the sort of disease that you might never know that you had until it’s too late and you’ve died of it. It slows the body and it slows the brain until you’re living in a fog and you can’t see anything around you.

I went for a blood test and the doctor rang me within 24 hours and left a voicemail. A voicemail from your GP is seldom good news. I thought it had to be cancer. He called me into his office and showed me a piece of paper. When the thyroid gland is under-active yet another hormone comes into play. It is called TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) and is produced by the brain. The function of this hormone is to let the thyroid know that it is producing the correct amount of T3. In a normal person the level of TSH in the body runs from approximately 0.5-4.5, although many specialists argue that anything above 3.5 is dangerous. Mine was 99. Other specialists that looked at my test results laughed when they saw this figure, claiming that the test had to be wrong. Except it wasn’t.

I was given little white pills to take every day for the rest of my life. The pills synthetically replaced the T3 hormone that my body was not producing. I undertook blood tests every month in order to ascertain the correct dosage required. And magically, amazingly, within a fortnight things began to change.

Thanks to Google it did not take me long to become an expert in the Thyroid gland. Among the multitude of research available online was one common story: people who suffered from an under-active thyroid gland spoke of a ‘fog lifting’ when they were placed on medication and I could understand exactly what they were talking about. It was as if I could suddenly think freely for the first time in years. The pain in my joints and back slipped away. I began to sleep. I had energy that I had forgotten I ever had. I smiled. There was colour in my cheeks. I lost thirty-five pounds in weight without hardly trying. I still limp, however.

More importantly I can work again. I can write. I’m not saying that I am the best but I’m going to try to be the best I can be. Since January I have written a kids book for my daughter and I am midway through an adult thriller. I have a lot of catching up to do. A decades worth of catching up.

Naturally I have my bad days, my relapses. Sometimes the tiredness returns, followed by the depression and the bad tempers that can cause bitter arguments. But in the main I’m pretty much the person I was before I began collapsing way back in the 1980s and the fog descended.

It’s just like starting over. I have no agent. I have no publisher (and there’s a good chance that no publisher will touch me with a barge pole given the rather long sabbatical that I have taken). I have to begin my career from scratch.

So what’s the point of me writing all this down? Well firstly it’s to prove to myself that I can. Steve Jobs said that great companies ‘ship’. And in order to succeed we all have to ship. This is me shipping. Secondly, maybe there’s someone out there who’s going through what I’ve gone through. And maybe they’ll read this and give their doctor a call and demand a blood test. Because in my experience with doctors and specialists it’s down to you to make the call.

They never call you. You have to call them.

ADDENDUM

Since this page is by far the most popular page in my entire blog (by a considerable margin) I’ve decided to do a blatant bit of self-promotion. If any of you would like to see the results of my being able to write for the first time in years I have a new book out. It’s called Johnny Nothing. It’s for kids and – I think – is very funny indeed. Although I may be deluding myself.

Here’s the link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ITZTOUA

If anybody out there would like a review copy please send me an email. Thanks