I receive a telephone call.

Posted on by Alex

It is the Tea Room Lady. It is nice to hear from her. We chat for a short while before she gets to her point.

“What are you doing on Tuesday night?” she demands.

This is good. Earlier in the year I was forced to cancel a couple of dinner engagements with the Tea Room Lady. I am free however on Tuesday night.

“Excellent,” she replies. “We are having a do for tourism professionals and need some musical accompaniment. The guitar player has dropped out. Be there at seven.”

I say words like ‘but’ and ‘I do not really’ a lot, but she has gone, so I ring her back.

“This is so exactly not my sort of thing,” I protest inarticulately.

“Nonsense,” she scolds. “You are a very good guitar player, so you have said. Sally will be singing, so you just need to sit there and play some chords.”

I raise my voice in alarm. “Isn’t Sally the middle-aged lady who tells olde time stories about life in agricultural communities gone by?” I gibber.

“No you idiot, she is a proper singer and works part-time in the tea rooms. You will be performing with Sally’s trio.”

This is reassuring. If there is a trio then I will be able to hide at the back. “Who’s the trio?”

“Well, as I said, the guitarist dropped out, so there is Sally and you.”

I arrive at the gig at the appointed time, having snatched a half-hour rehearsal to work out that we don’t know many songs and that my Leonard Cohen tribute set would be inappropriate for the circumstances. A throng of tourism professionals mill about in their throngdom, searching for ideas as to how to improve the visitor experience at their attractions, perhaps with some sophisticated music. We play them a 25-minute version of ‘Moondance’ followed by a 40-minute version of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love.’ Sally’s keyboard player arrives at the last minute, having agreed to bolster the sound. He is excellent. The music is excellent. The crowd of tourism professionals appreciate our excellence. This is the big time once more!!!

“Here you go – I’ll pay you in bread,” says the Tea Shop Lady, handing over a big bag of bread rolls and some loaves. “Can you stay for a second set? If so, I will give you some cheese.”

I stay for a second set. We play a one-hour-twenty-minute version of ‘Just the Two of Us.’ I am paid some cheese. It is good to be back in the music business again.

I am invited to a party!!!

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I circle the venue warily.

The whole thing is intimidating. It is hosted by my important publishers. They have invited all their authors to a glittering party. Plus me, who is an idiot who has written a book.

I study the invitation. It has silver writing and is on expensive card. They have hired the V&A Museum for the night. I take a deep breath and walk in.

“Hello,” says the lady on the door. “Welcome to our party for proper authors, and not just idiots who have written a book. There are name badges here, in alphabetical order. And you are…?”

I point her towards my name badge, which is sitting next to Lord Mandelson’s. Adopting an air of ‘I am completely and utterly comfortable in these surroundings and not at all overawed by the circumstances, in fact I am quite cool about the whole thing yes I am,” I wonder if it would spoil the effect should I take out my camera phone and photograph the name badges.

I enter the arena of party. I do not know many authors by sight, and having previously had a bad dream in which I handed my coat to VS Naipaul to check in, I keep my jacket on. I meander around Whitbread prize winners, editors of The Times, Sue Lawley etc., before joining a group of authors who turn out to be extremely nice and hospitable people.

“OMG OMG!” says one of them, pointing to an elderly lady. “That is Judith Kerr over there!”

I have heard of Judith Kerr, legendary 87 year-old author of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea.’ It is a book that I loved when I was a child, and my companion is clearly also a fan. I do not mention that I am convinced that the book is an allegory, and is about a lady who runs a brothel at home. However, looking at kindly Judith Kerr, 87 year-old author of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea,’ I start to suspect that I might be reading too much into it. She turns to potter carefully away.

“I MUST go and say hello and tell her how much her book meant to me,” cries my fellow author, leaving the canapés and breaking into a sprint. I chat to somebody else, who has written some very funny stuff about Father Christmas. In the background, Judith Kerr, 87 year-old author of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea,’ is rugby-tackled to the ground.

“Can I have your attention please?” exclaims the party host, who makes a speech thanking everybody for coming. At one point she announces that, in a rare event, she is going to single out one particular author for praise. I get all flustered about this, but it turns out that she is talking about the Booker prize winner, which is a bit disappointing. There is a shriek in the background, as somebody administers a paralysing Vulcan death grip to escaping Judith Kerr, 87 year-old author of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea.’ I drink lots more champagne before leaving.

Welcome to my new world.

Short update

Posted on by Alex

Booooo – the Toddler’s nursery has gone bust. So I have had no time to write an’ stuff, what with the looking after her.

But in the meantime, a short piece of mine appeared on the excellent Newsarse website. Newsarse is great – often laugh-out-loud funny, and has many more hits than misses, which is unusual for the genre.

And I was interviewed by Bren and Soph of This Reality Podcast. (Starting at about 18:15 in, if you’re in a hurry). This was actually from a while back, but I hadn’t got round to linking to it. If you haven’t heard TRP yet, I’ve very much got into it – it’s a really nice, relaxed hour or so of chat, generally about unsigned bands and films – and the presenters’ love for those topics comes through. (Although to be fair, Bren did get a little hung up about speed limits on this particular show. Most of the time, the show is not about speed limits.)

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable chat – Bren and Soph have followed Private Secret Diary for years, and it was great to talk to them. There’s some quite interesting stuff in there about anonymous blogging, if you’re into that sort of thing (“hahaha, you pseud!!!” – the LTLP). Aside from that, it will be interesting for stalky JonnyB completists.

I have to go. She is smashing up the guitars.

We argue about baby names.

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“Well what’s on your list?” she demands.

I show her my list. I examine her list once more. Our lists are not quite like those Venn diagrams where the circles don’t overlap, but are more like those Venn diagrams where one circle is at the centre of your piece of paper and the other is in your mate’s kitchen, in Chelmsford.

“I am not calling my child ‘Humphrey,'” I insist.

“I am not calling my child ‘Floyd,'” she insists. But she has fallen into my trap; by putting a ridiculous name on my list, I have started my negotiation with an impossibly high demand, and everything else that I will ask for will seem reasonable. I stare at her list again.

“Charlie,” I read. I think about it. “Hm. That seems reasonable,” I admit.

We have borrowed Big A’s baby names book, and I am bored with reading through it. It is basically just a list of names. Which is very useful and all that, but not incredibly interesting. All I can say is: show me a kid called ‘Aaron’ and I will show you some fucking lazy parents.

I am also bit torn with the issue of Googleability. This is a new consideration for parents. Is it an advantage to have a fairly anonymous, privacy-friendly name, e.g. ‘John Marsh,’ where nobody can particularly track you down? But on the other hand I am obviously expecting my children to be highly successful and renowned. Would it be more helpful to them to name them something like, e.g. ‘Xylophonehead Marsh?’ It is tricky.

I grab my list back and write ‘Xylophonehead’ at the bottom.

Neither of us can agree or compromise. We put the book down. It can wait.