Edgar Allan POTUS

Charles David Longfellow was a very good man. He was one of the best. He'd made his fortune in land management. He really knew what he was doing, that guy. No-one could manage land like Charles David Longfellow, so he had this mansion. You should have seen it. It was really something. I mean it was no Trump Tower, but it was - you know - it was in the running. I mean if you saw where he lived, you'd really appreciate that the guy was a great businessman and entrepreneur, you know what I'm saying? He'd worked hard at his land management so it was true that he deserved it. That was why he lived in such a great place. It was the envy of his neighbours, although of course - you know - it was all part of an estate so they were miles away. There was the village too, but that wasn't so near either.

Anyway, on this one night there was a knock at his door. It was a great door, like Downton Abbey. It was that sort of door. He opened the door and saw a couple of gypsies. I mean I don't know if they were gypsies but they kind of looked that way. They aren't clean people and they don't take good care of themselves. I guess Charles David Longfellow must have had a few butlers around that place so maybe it was one of them who opened the door. It's like when people try to talk to me about how it feels to drive a Rolls Royce. I tell them to just get out, you know? That's what I tell them. I know how the back seat of a Rolls Royce feels. It's been a long time since I had to do any driving. I don't know if we're allowed to call them gypsies any more, but that's who they were.

'We are tired and hungry,' one of them said, so I guess they were on welfare and had probably spent it all on moonshine or whatever it is those people drink. They had blown it again so I guess one said to the other, let's go ask that rich guy to give us stuff for free. I think that must be what happened. This guy had children you know, a family. He had heirs to his fortune. So these two were trying to take food from his table, taking food from the mouths of his children. You can't really blame him for being a little upset about that. I mean there was a solution, because the younger gypsy was a girl, and you know she wasn't bad looking. Charles David Longfellow was an entrepreneur, like I said. He was a man who saw opportunities, and we need people like him. They're what makes this a great country to live in. He saw a chance for this gypsy girl to pay her way - you know, he looked at the problem and saw a solution, but these were the kind of people who want something for nothing.

'I can't help you,' he said to them. 'I can't help you.' If the girl wasn't going to play ball, I mean what else could he have told them. The old one, I guess she was the mother, said he would be cursed because he hadn't just given up the shirt off his back and the food from his children's mouths. He hadn't just caved in to their demands so they cursed him and walked off into the night, maybe to some Antifa meeting or something like that, some beatnik club or whatever.

He couldn't take it seriously, this curse. I mean it was bullshit, right? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Next evening as he looked out across all of his land - he had to do a double take. He had to rub his eyes. He saw this legion of ghostly figures aglow in the distance, like lost souls maybe. He thought about what the gypsy woman had said, although to be fair, that was the first time he'd thought about her so-called curse since she had said it. He was a busy man. He didn't get to be where he was by lounging around all day. He'd spent the day doing deals, you know? Anyway, he thought about the curse now as these glowing figures came towards him across the grounds of the estate. Maybe they were going to take his soul down to the depths of hell where he would be punished for entrepreneurial vision and keeping his own Goddamn family fed. Maybe that's what they were going to do.

Then Charles David Longfellow began to laugh. He'd realised his mistake. These weren't lost souls. Are you crazy? It wasn't nothing like that. The white robes and the pointed hoods made them look kind of freaky now that the sun had gone down, but these were just a regular bunch of guys, after all, just citizens going about their rightful business, looking out for each other as we all should. Maybe they had found one of the coloureds causing trouble and were fixing to set it right, something like that. Maybe that's what they were about that night.

Charles David Longfellow sighed. It was a real bitch that things should sometimes come to this, but he knew there was some good in everyone. There were some fine people on both sides of the issue. He had coloured friends, of course. Why wouldn't he? You can't accuse him of that.

Anyway, the point is that it wasn't no gypsy bullshit, and that's how the story ends. It was a pretty great story, I'm sure you'll agree.

My Own Personal Nelson Muntz

Nelson Muntz is a character from The Simpsons, the bully at Bart's school who graduates to being merely a slightly unpredictable hardnut in later episodes. When I saw my first Simpsons way back in the nineties, I recognised Nelson straight away. I felt as though I knew him. My own Nelson wasn't quite a bully, but I'd certainly found him intimidating.

The school was tiny, Ilmington C of E Junior & Infants on the edge of the Cotswolds. There were seven kids in my class, expanding to nine or ten by the final year. We got to know each other reasonably well, excepting Nelson - as I'll continue to call him - because like I said I found him intimidating, and I really had the impression he worked at it. One day during the later years, our teacher - Mr. Davies - announced that we would be keeping diaries of our daily activities as a writing exercise. None of us were particularly happy with the idea. Nelson was particularly disgruntled, explaining to the rest of us that he resented the proposal that he might be required to keep a record of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. Even at the age of nine, this struck me as a slightly weird announcement. It must surely have occurred to him that he could simply omit mention of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week, but apparently he really needed to tell us about it.

Boasting aside, he can't have been much of a bully. I never really developed a fear of him as I did with a couple of the older kids; and once we all went to the much larger secondary school, much like his Simpsons namesake, his status was downgraded to that of mere hardnut in relation to some of the genuinely violent psychotics spawned on the farms around Shipston.

Additionally, Nelson was sometimes quite funny, so if we were never quite pals, it was difficult to harbor animosity towards him. He sold me the first two Boomtown Rats albums and one by Public Image Limited when motorbikes and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal lured him away from anything punky, as happened with almost everyone else at our school.

I was never into motorbikes, although I drew the Philadelphia Freaks riding their bikes from the Inferno strip in 2000AD comic. The Philadelphia Freaks were a sports team of horrific cyborgs, and the drawing so impressed my art teacher that it was pinned to the wall in the art class. It also impressed Nelson. He asked if I'd accept a commission to paint horrific cyborgs on the petrol tank of his own motorbike. I said yes. He paid me a tenner, or maybe a fiver, and gave me the drawing of the character he wanted me to paint. He'd taken my art from the wall of the art room and cut out his preferred monster. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but obviously I wasn't going to say anything.

I spent a weekend painting the thing, using the enamels with which I would paint Airfix kits to fill in the detail on a silhouette of the figure sprayed in gold paint. I don't recall the result as having been anything special, and years later, I popped the question on facebook:

Do you remember I painted the tank of a bike for you, maybe around 1982? Did it ever get put back on the bike and did you ever take a photo? Just wondering because with hindsight I'll bet there's probably some reason why bike custom people don't use little pots of Humbrol enamel or whatever it was that I used.

It turned out that he did remember:

I do and do you what I fucking regret selling it to this day it was brilliant the tank and the bike I mean, do you know never took a picture of it either (sorry) I remember to this day it was black with artisan robots and stuff way ahead of its time the bike was an old villiers Sprite 250 that I had for my 12 Christmas !!!

This came as a relief to me:

I'm just glad it worked. All these years I've imagined you taking it out on the road and the whole thing sort of peeling off before you're back home.

I'd anticipated some vague memory of resentment over my shoddy custom job, thankfully without foundation.

Think back it all brings back a bit of a comedy, the day you gave it back to me Michelle Warren told me I couldn't play with her tits anymore after I got my painted tank back it kind of took my mind of things ..... Oh and the paint job was as good the day you gave it back to me think sold it when I was 17 or so !!!

I remembered Michelle Warren but not her tits, and I suspect it had escaped me that Nelson had ever been granted access to them, so it's probably a good job that he mentioned it or I never would have known; but this exchange came later.

Meanwhile back in the eighties, I left school and had no good reason to think about Nelson; but as I've found, as one progresses along the path of one's existence from one place to the next, those I miss tend to be those I never knew very well, those who provided texture, those who had something but not a good reason for us to keep in touch. So from time to time I wondered what became of Nelson. Eventually, inevitably, facebook provided the answer to this question which I probably should have known not to ask; because we still didn't really have much to say to each other, and then there was the Brexit referendum, upon which Nelson opined:

Sorry Lol you are a better person than that !! We have got a real chance to actually do things right and if I'm being selfish get our own way for once, we as a country have objected to 79 (I think) new EU rules and our objections were ignored every single time, try not to look into this too much I think the vote to exit is nothing more than ....... "Do you know what, I am fed up with being dictated to 100% of the time and ignored if I dare challenge or question" we are quite prepared suffer in the short term to forge a better environment for ourselves. The whole immigration bit is largely a red herring and a convenient label to stir the shit

Despite my being better than something or other, this wasn't a dialogue I could see going anywhere useful, which it accordingly didn't:

Doom and gloom doom and gloom suck it up at least we haven't got shit loads of Brussels rules and regulations to tick off before we tackle it all ..... All you need is some Tommy can do attitude .... Ok let's have a brew then come on you wankers lets get at it !!!

This was followed by some peculiar comment about the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel with Nelson announcing that he was heading outside to build a suspension bridge on the grounds of the possibilities having become endless. I was unable to find the comment when I went back to look for it, so maybe he'd deleted it, having discovered that Brunel was the son of French immigrants.

Anyway, the pattern had been established, this pattern being our social media interaction being limited to politics. The one exception was some comment I'd made about the Sex Pistols which he'd somehow read as a criticism and accordingly jumped to their defense on the grounds of the Pistols at least having been better than all that New Romantic stuff which came after, which was all a bit gay. Otherwise, I might submit all manner of posts to my facebook page, photographs of things I'd painted, myself stood on the surface of the moon, selfies taken while bowling with Prince Philip and the Chuckle Brothers, and never so much as a dickie bird from Nelson, but the moment I mention Jeremy Corbyn, as if by magic...

Sad to say you are wrong Lawrence on the simple premise, once an anarchist gets what they want they simply cease to be an anarchist and morph into something more wildly extreme like Che, Pot, or dare I say Hitler ? Or they swing the other way and conform to line their own pockets !

Corbin typifies for me the very essence of anarchy in attacking the establishment - be careful what you wish for !

The thing I found the most mystifying about this one was the bewildering conflation of Che Guevara with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler, almost as though he had no fucking idea about who Che Guevara actually was but was simply pulling names out of his ass. Under other circumstances I might have asked did you even go to school, but I quite clearly remember that he did because I was there too.

It didn't get any better when I opined that the Conservative party comprised mostly amoral money-grubbing shitbags who shouldn't, under any circumstances, be re-elected at the end of 2019. My argument was based on the idea that if all of the country's problems were, as fuckwits claimed, the fault of the previous Labour government and the Conservative government had spent its time in office correcting their mistakes, their apparent inability to correct those mistakes despite having had nine years in which to do so would seem to suggest they might not be the right people for the job. Additionally, Conservative solutions to Labour's mistakes had included the extradition to Jamaica of old age pensioners who had arrived in England at the age of just three months, and austerity policies, by which those physically or mentally unable to work were denied benefits just to see if it might inspire them to pull their socks up and get a job, at least in the cases of the ones with legs. As my mother's job is to provide legal advice to such people, I'd met a few of them and therefore had direct experience of their problems being absolutely life threatening and genuine. The argument that they all get given free cellphones and live a life of dole scrounging luxury never sounded like much of an argument to me, but apparently it worked for Nelson.

Anyone remember the lovely note left on the treasury wall from the last government 9 or 10 years ago ? Well it read like this ..... money all gone, good luck !

Life is fab till the moneys all gone...then some poor fucker has to go in and clean up the mess then gets blamed for the shit not of their making !

Just saying

I wanted to argue against this drivel, to suggest that maybe the whole point of government was finding ways of raising money to pay for essential services - because I'm pretty certain government funding isn't based on whatever small change the previous lot dropped down the back of the fucking couch - but I knew I was in essence arguing with the contents of a right-wing opinion column, something which waves a hand to make some general point about those people, then orders another pint. I was wasting my time.

Money greases the wheels, when you run out guess who suffers the most ....go ask any Cuban when Russian turned off the tap ....and its those in over paid jobs top 5 or 10% pay 70 to 80% of the tax in this country ...where the fuck do you think they will do when they get taxed 99p in the pound as they did back in the 70s ?

Yeah great idea let's eat cake and caviar for a week and starve for a month after month after month, because the money,s ran out ...that's really good for the poorest and most in need like those in hospital or unable to work.

Still there will always be a room at Chequers and massive debt owing to those you ought not to have borrowed from.

Still the needy will have free WiFi and a £600 phone to check if their benefits are in their bank account ! ....well until such time the treasury is empty ?

The thesis, as I understood it, seemed to be fuck those dole-scrounging sponge monkeys and will no-one think of the millionaires?, a thesis I can have delivered direct to my earhole by phoning my dad, should the need arise.

I'd tried with Nelson but I should have known better. I didn't really know him at school, and I don't really know him forty years later beyond that he plays a lot of rugby and holds views such as those given above, delivered with the same bullying tone as the one about all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. He was setting me straight whether I liked it or not.

I shuffled him off into a subgroup of facebook friends, one bound by settings which mean they don't see any of my posts or get to comment upon them...

...not because I prefer an echo chamber but because I can already read and if I'd wanted to carry on reading the opinion column of the Sun I probably would have stayed in England. Regurgitating what you heard some bigger boys saying does not constitute a viewpoint, not even when framed in matey terms as though we ever had anything at all to say to each other. I'm sick to the back teeth of those actively working to make the world worse, those who believe anything told them by a nice man in a suit. I'm tired of the xenophobes, the good company men, the good little soldiers, the loyal snitches, the teachers' pets, the police informants, the head boys and girls, the neighbourhood watch award winners, the apple polishers, the people who are only able to elevate themselves by pushing down on someone else, life's Manchester United supporters, kisser's of the royal arse, grateful Ygors, goodly serfs, those who ask can I carry that for you, master?, and anyone who ever described themselves as proud without having actually done anything to be proud of beyond being born in a certain place.

Life has been better since, at least that part of my life involving social media. My curiosity about whatever became of has reduced to almost zero because most of them apparently turned into arseholes, thankfully with a couple of exceptions.

So that's another lesson learned. I probably should have learned it back when he first cut one of the figures out from something it had taken me hours to draw.

An Englishman in HEB

HEB is my local supermarket, our equivalent of Tesco or Sainsbury's. The most popular, most visible alternatives are Target and Walmart, although they don't quite count, being department stores with grocery sections; and I dislike Walmart due to their employment practices, generally depressing atmosphere, and because the last time I went, I was refused entry with my backpack. This was in the wake of a mass shooting in the El Paso branch of Walmart, down on the Mexican border. I guess the staff were concerned that I might intend to go nuts with a firearm I had fiendishly secreted in said backpack, although my actual intention had been to buy stuff and use the offending item as a means of conveying it all back to my dwelling. I have reservations regarding Walmart's commitment to discouraging persons with firearms going nuts given the great prices to be had in their own well stocked guns and ammunition department; although in their favour, they prevented my potentially deadly ingress by posting a crack team of very old ladies at the store entrance.

'Sir, you cain't come in heah wit' that,' they told me.

There are smaller supermarkets such as Michoacana, which is handy for anything Mexican which can't be found elsewhere, but HEB is the most convenient. As with branches of Jim's diner, HEB is to be found all over town, and each store has a slightly different character according to the neighbourhood it serves, as denoted by an unofficial but widely known nickname. The fancier end of Alamo Heights is served by the Gucci B, whilst the more temperate end of Alamo Heights is served by the Dooney B - a joke which my wife had to explain to me but which apparently makes immediate sense if you've ever bought an expensive handbag. The one on Fredericksburg Road is called the Deco B in reference to its architectural style, and the one near the Jewish Community Centre is sensitively referred to as the Heeb.

My local HEB is known as the Ghetto B because we live at the edge of what many rap artists would recognise as the 'hood. Practically this means that white women with face lifts are rarely seen amongst its clientele, the majority of whom seem to be Hispanic, which itself also means that it can sometimes be difficult to buy bratwurst. On the other hand, I feel approximately at home at the Ghetto B, as though they're my peeps, roughly speaking.

I shop there every day, just fifteen minutes as I make my way home from the trail negating the need of one massive, expensive and time consuming shop at the end of the week in the generally exhausting spirit of a mountain climbing expedition. Consequently I know the store pretty well, and the staff have come to inhabit my current mythology in the absence of workmates, even those to whom I've barely spoken a word. Excepting my wife and facebook, they're what I now have instead of a social life, which works out fine seeing as I've discovered that I'm not actually that social and quite enjoy not having to talk to people all the time.

I know to avoid tills worked by Lorna or the woman with Karl Malden's nose. I checked out at Lorna's till on three occasions when I first moved here, and there was a problem every time. I'd bought the wrong one, or picked one that wouldn't scan, or something else which had her rolling her eyes as though I'd done it on purpose before calling for a manager. The woman with Karl Malden's nose seems less contentious, but once stockpiled all of my purchases at her end of the conveyor belt after ringing up the prices. This meant I was unable to pack them into my bag as they were scanned, and gave me the impression that she believed I'd been banking on doing a runner without paying; so that was annoying.

There have been a few whose tills I always head for, based on some vague impression of their being nice people, or at least interesting people - Jennifer who resembled a Mayan princess, and the young black woman with blue lipstick who always seemed unreasonably happy - both of whom have gone on to hopefully better things. Then there's Lesbia, who used to work at Walmart, and I don't know but that's what's printed on her name tag; and no, I'm not going to ask. There's Thomas who has a girlfriend who lives in England, which is how we got talking, because he flew over to see her about a month before my own most recent visit. It turned out that she lived in a village called Stoneleigh, near Coventry. Given that Stoneleigh is so small as to have neither a shop nor a pub, and I used to cycle through the place two or three times a week when I was living at my mother's place, back in 2010, the level of coincidence would seem comparable to that thing about random chimps coming up with Macbeth.

Today I'm carting my seven tins of cat food, bottle of tonic water, and ten packets of Ramen noodles for the kid to Katherine's till, which is rare, although I think this is the first time I've noticed her name tag. She seems okay, but is very, very small, and I've developed an irrational fear of small people ever since I went out with Dora the Explorer. Someone called Brandy is stood at the end of the belt on bagging duty. As they work they're talking about allergies and having trouble sleeping. Katherine recommends something called Benadryl.

I listen in because I've had a couple of restless headachey nights, which I'm blaming on pollen in the absence of any better idea. It never used to affect me, but I guess now it does.

Usually I pack my own bag, but sometimes it seems rude to do so if there's a bag packer stood there looking bored, as they occasionally do. I give Brandy the bag, the one I always bring with me.

'I love that pattern,' she says with a strong Texan lilt, the kind which sounds like words spoken whilst chewing gum. 'Is that like a crocodile print?'

'I've no idea.' I don't want to be rude but it's just a bag, and weirdest of all is that I've had this conversation before in this store with other bag packers. I guess they're just making conversation.

'Did you say you were having trouble with allergies?' I ask her, because I actually want to know.

'Nope.'

I'm confused. 'Was it you who had the allergies?' I ask Katherine.

'Yes.' She squints at me, curious. 'London?'

It takes me a moment to recognise it as a question.

'Yes, I'm from London.'

'I just love your accent,' says Brandy.

'Thanks.'

'My friend is from London,' Katherine adds, then starts on some story about a phone-in radio show which relates in ways which aren't yet obvious, and I'm suddenly aware that I'm holding up the line. I pop my card into the reader and enter my number.

'Do you know what part of London?'

'No, but I can tell the accent apart from the rest.' She means as distinct from other English accents. 'I bet we all sound weird to you, ha?'

'Well, not really. I've been here ten years so I don't really notice.'

'But at first we must have sounded strange.'

'At first, when I first came here, yes.'

I've had this conversation many times before, but it's preferable to the weirder alternatives, such as the cashier who deduced that I have a rabbit because I was buying rabbit food, told me that she too had a rabbit, then spent the rest of the conversation going on about the terrible smell of rabbits. I found this weird and confusing because Charlie, who is our rabbit, usually smells quite nice.

I've had this conversation before, as I say, but I don't mind it at Ghetto B because I know people are simply curious, interested to meet anyone from a foreign land.

'How do you like it here?' Brandy asks, as they always ask.

'I like it a lot,' I say, as I always say. 'To be honest, I like it a lot more than I like England.'

So that was my adventure for this week.

The Writers' Workshop

Where do you get the ideas for your amazing books? is a question I am asked all too often, and it's not the only question either! Sometimes it's how do you write your amazing books? which is of course another matter entirely. Naturally, were I to answer such questions on each occasion of my being asked, I would barely have time to write my amazing books! Therefore it seemed high time I offered some more general address in hope of satisfying everyone's curiosity, affording my readers a precious glimpse of how the magic comes about; and so today I'll be sharing some of my thoughts on the work of a few aspiring authors.

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. Whether it be Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon 5, I love science-fiction, and science-fiction novels can be great too. In fact I'm unapologetically a particularly huge fan of Philip K. Dick, the crazy genius who brought us both Blade Runner and Total Recall. Unfortunately, anyone reading War of the Worlds hoping for anything in the vein of one of Dick's famous twist endings will be disappointed. War of the Worlds is a steampunk novel, and steampunk is Victorian science-fiction, although I know I hardly need to explain that to anyone who, like me, follows the adventures of that mysterious traveller in time and space known only as the Doctor! If War of the Worlds sounds familiar, then you're probably thinking of the wonderful BBC serial of which this is the novelisation. Wells strives to tell an exciting adventure in jolly old Victorian England but comes unstuck by concentrating on the action whilst ignoring the powerful character development we saw on the screen. I'm all for writers branching out and doing their own thing, but not at the expense of the drama. My advice would have been to develop some conflict for George, perhaps with a childhood scene wherein (for example) his father makes light of our young protagonist, perhaps being dismissive of a childish drawing the boy has done for his dear old dad. Wells' War might then serve as a clever metaphor for George's internal struggle as he wrestles with feelings of abandonment, subconsciously seeking the approval of a father figure while fleeing from the Martians and their terrible ray guns. Wells might do well (no pun intended there!) to pick up a few of my officially licensed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe tie-in novels so as to see how his somewhat flat characters could have been better handled.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence. No-one loves to curl up on the sofa on a rainy day with a super-gooey romance like I do, but I have a hard time believing that D.H. Lawrence feels the same even if that's what he's tried to write here. This is probably the grumpiest, gloomiest romance I've ever tried to read, and the hero doesn't even sound particularly dashing. There's an introduction by one of the author's snooty friends making a big deal out of Lawrence's descriptions of the natural world, but to be honest I found this aspect even more depressing than his failure to summon up anything approaching lovey dovey. My advice to D.H. would be to treat himself to a binge watch of Midsomer Murders for some pointers on creating a charming rustic atmosphere, and because romance does actually feature in the show every now and then - certainly more than you'll find in Women in Love. Women Having a Bit of a Moan would have been a more accurate title!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Behind each successful author there will always be a queue of others hoping to ride on the same ticket to YA publishing stardom, and I'm sure Stephenie Meyer has lost count of those hoping to duplicate her success with the fantastic Twilight franchise. Mary Shelley can hardly be faulted for her ambition in picking such a well established character as Frankenstein, but she  should have done a bit more research. Whilst this Frankenstein sounds familiar from Shelley's long-winded steampunk influenced description, the problem is that old bolts-through-the-neck never shuts up, instead delivering long lectures which I doubt even the great Boris Karloff, the original Frankenstein, would have had the patience to memorise. With a little more effort, this could have been the beginning of an amazing, if not terribly original, franchise with  Frankenstein meeting a spooky Egyptian mummy, a werewolf and so on, but it's hardly surprising that Shelley's publisher declined to pick up the option on this one.

The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I know what you're thinking - it sounds like one of those super saucy Confessions films from the swinging seventies starring Robin Askwith, the key to which was the suggestion of lewd material without showing too much. If Mr. Burroughs saw any of those films, I would say he probably didn't learn anything because this book doesn't make any sense, and is extremely lewd with page after page describing what two men of certain inclinations might get up to if left to their own devices. Now I'm no prude, and I'm a great supporter of the LGBT community, but this sort of thing really is beyond the pale. There isn't even any description of anyone sharing a romantic lunch in suitable preface to the bedroom unpleasantness described in such detail, which I'm sure the author thought was very clever indeed. No-one likes a toffee nosed show off, Mr. Burroughs. In the author's defence, it seems the publisher has mistakenly published the pages of his novel in the wrong order, resulting in a mish-mash of such bewildering composition as to resemble the sort of insanity which was popular amongst the spaced out druggers of the 1960s, and fans of cult classic The Prisoner might enjoy some of The Naked Lunch had Burroughs not spent so much of the book describing things I would rather not discuss with children present.

London Fields by Martin Amis. I have to confess that I don't know how this one ended, having given up half way through. The problem is that whilst Amis clearly strives to recreate the charm of the beloved Cockney characters from EastEnders, he fails to imbue them with what we writers refer to as relatability, which is a quality where the reader is able to imagine him or herself as one of the characters in the book. My advice to Mr. Amis would be to pick up a couple of volumes of Black Pudding Row, my popular series of heart-warming tales of down to earth folk living in a pleasant town in the north of England. It's possible to write working class characters without recourse to foul language, Mr. Amis. You simply have to keep at it.

So there we have it for this time. I hope you've enjoyed my sharing a few humble suggestions as much as I've enjoyed sharing them with you; and if you're a budding author, I hope this has provided a few pointers. A book should transport its reader to a magical world of wonderment and make believe, so it's important that we who have been blessed with the task of arranging that transport should get it right!

The Blue Hole

We are driving to Wimberley, Texas, a journey of an hour or more. Some woman has asked Bess to paint a design on canvas using specific colours, and we've worked out that it will be easier - and certainly cheaper - to hand deliver the finished piece to the woman's parents than to stick it in the mail; plus we're probably due a day out. Bess tells me that I've already met the people we're visiting - although I have no memory of them - and that they are old and will therefore most likely hold with certain views and opinions. I am to be on my best behaviour. It's news to me that I'm ever less than delightful even in proximity to the absolute worst kind of shithead.

Wimberley is pretty and of surprisingly alpine character for this part of Texas. It reminds me of Ruidoso, New Mexico, which is way up in the mountains. Houses are spread out, hidden by walls of cypress, down gullies or up the side of a hill. We follow winding roads and eventually arrive at our destination.

'Be nice,' Bess reminds me.

'Okay.'

Marie and Marvin are indeed of a certain vintage, both retired, and I remember them from Bess's grandmother's ninetieth birthday celebrations. Marvin reminds me of both Hank - Walter White's brother-in-law from Breaking Bad - and Yondu from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, although not bright blue. He's gruff but genial, and immediately comes across as a nice guy.

They invite us in. They compare notes with Bess - mutual friends, Bess's grandmother, and Pearsall, the town serving as a common point of origin for everyone in the room except me.

I look around and notice a bookcase with actual books. This seems like a good sign. It's something I don't see very often.

'So how did you two meet?' Marvin enquires.

It's the inevitable question and I can hardly blame anyone for being curious. We give the answer we always give, which somehow leads on to Marvin asking what I think of all the business with Prince Andrew. You can tell he's treading with care, choosing his words just in case I whip out a sword and challenge anyone insulting her majesty to a duel; or possibly just in case I'm a raving republican.

'I don't really know, but I don't think a lot of it,' I tell him. 'To be honest, I try not to think of the younger royals at all. I think Princess Anne was probably the last one of them who wasn't completely useless.'

I'm surprised by my own later-life monarchism, which is either something to do with having just finished watching the third series of The Crown, or possibly being a displaced Englishman living in a country which has chosen an illiterate fucknugget for its supreme being; but it's true that I've never had strong feelings about the royal family one way or the other, beyond that they seem a wearyingly easy target for those who somehow believe their abolition will lead directly to some kind of classless utopia. I appreciate that there may be a republican argument to be had regarding leaders who've risen to positions of authority without having been democratically elected, but given the dangerous fucking maniacs who have risen to the top through the democratic process, I'd suggest there's a shitload of wiggle room in that proposal.

Marvin chuckles and mutters something about Boris Johnson.

'He was a comedy game show contestant when I was living there,' I say, 'just a bumbling cartoon toff, and he was very good at it. I have no idea how he ended up where he is. He's terrible.'

'Well, we have the exact same problem here, as you know,' Marvin tells me, and it's clear we're on the same page.

We give them the painting which is to be passed on to their daughter, then Marvin shows us his workshop. He creates art by burning lines into wood with a heated stylus much like a soldering iron. This is a new one on me, and he's very good at it, achieving a surprisingly subtle realism in the images he crafts.

We stand by the car saying our goodbyes. Bess hugs Marie.

'I don't do all this hugging thing,' Marvin explains.

'Me neither,' I report with obvious relief and we shake hands.

'You two are the same person,' Bess laughs.

We head to the centre of the town, to the local museum.

The local museum is a log cabin with two rooms. I manage to look at the grinding stones of the old corn mill for about five seconds before the attendant helpfully explains that these are grinding stones which were originally used at the old corn mill. He then describes their operation, how water would drive a mill and the corn would be ground into flour between these two stones. I'd point out that, having attended school as a child, I am very much familiar with the concept, but his monologue presents no gaps in which I can wedge my interjection.

I move on.

All around the room, the walls are adorned with informative essays and illustrations from old books describing the founding of Wimberley. I try to read but the attendant follows me and takes to summarising each piece of writing. I guess he's just glad to have someone to talk to.

The next room is concerned mainly with Jacob de Cordova, a Jewish man of Spanish ancestry born in Jamaica, and who founded The Gleaner. I recall The Gleaner fairly well as the newspaper of choice for almost every Londoner of Caribbean heritage I ever knew, so this seems like an interesting story with more than its fair share of peculiar random swerves. Bess and I look at the picture of Cordova's grave, and the map of Texas he famously drew, and a painting of the Battle of San Jacinto, but it's difficult to work out how all of these elements might be connected whilst our chatty host is yacking away, and now he's somehow onto the subject of James Bond, the famous English spy who wrote all of those books and who had the idea for them while living in Jamaica.

We give up and leave, trying hard to be polite about it.

We wander through Wimberley, taking in a few of the galleries.

Finally we head for the Blue Hole, which is to be found in the local park. Unfortunately, it being Autumn, it's the Orange Hole at this time of year, what with all the leaves covering everything. Bess summons a picture to her phone and shows me how it looks in summer. It's a small lake, surrounded by cypresses, beautifully clear waters with a terrifying limestone orifice at the centre. It reminds me of the cenotes of Mexico which were traditionally believed to lead to the realm of the dead.

We pass another couple as we leave and Bess detects an English accent so we have the usual conversation.

'He's from Coventry,' Bess says.

The woman mutters something about Dorridge. This rings a major bell for me although I can't remember why.

'It's near Coventry,' the woman explains.

'I know,' I tell her as the penny drops. 'I went on a sort of pilgrimage to Dorridge a couple of years ago. Do you know John Wyndham, the writer?'

'No,' she says.

This floors me for a moment. 'Well he was born in Dorridge so I went there to see if I could find his birthplace. You must know The Day of the Triffids?'

'Oh yes,' she confirms happily and we all spend a moment talking about John Wyndham's famed predatory plants.

'Do you remember Quatermass?' she asks, having apparently mistaken the focus of our conversation for scary stuff we can remember seeing on the telly.

Bess and I discreetly extricate ourselves from the conversation for the second time today. Even as the Orange Hole, it has still been worth the trip.