Satan's Cakes – there are just moments ... in fact, there are just weeks. Like the last one. Some idiot manages to arrange that, during a single seven-day period, I should magic up 20 minutes of new stuff for two comedy gigs, do said gigs, learn an hour of new stuff for the show about writing, perform said show, perform a reading, scamper out to Broadcasting House for two wee radio thingies, write a couple of bits for the papers and, meanwhile, keep hitting a play with a stick and trying to think of an idea for a story which in some way reflects the future of Scotland – beyond the fact that it may exist in Scotland during what will be the future, relative to my current position in the middle of an appalling now.
As the idiot in question was me, I've decided I really do need to get a new employer. I am not seeing eye-to-eye with the management. Then again, I only hired me because there was no one else who'd work here.
Oh yes, and I also ended up having to find – on zero notice – a cover image for the next book, this being faintly important, given that people do judge books by their outer furnishings, despite generations of advice to the contrary. No doubt they also force-feed eggs to their mothers' mothers and leap without looking – the mad rascals.
Getting back to those comedy gigs – the Edinburgh date was dandy (at The Stand, always a pleasure) and the headliner, Jo Enright, was grand as ever. Tuesday was then brought to a more than averagely bracing close by a lashing blizzard/wet snow/black ice combination hidden on the high ground between Edinburgh and Glasgow. This added the thrilling and frequent possibility of slewing wildly while being tickled by Death's whiskers. Happily, MC Susan Calman – who was driving us both home – showed the dogged determination of Gene Hackman in The French Connection. Propped up on several cushions and with boxes tied to her feet (she is slightly diminutive) she peered under the steering wheel, gritted her tiny teeth and quite frankly saved our lives on several occasions. I'd have been pulled over in a lay-by and crying within minutes if I'd been in charge and I feel my response to 4x4 number seven overtaking us and blanketing the windscreen with blinding slush would have been simply to faint and hope I woke up in hospital. One of the many reasons why I no longer drive.
Colm Tóibín has already highlighted the apparently amazing fact that writing books isn't a constant giddy whirl of sherbet and dancing – but at least the typing part of the process is generally conducted indoors and in grindingly solitary safety. Now that authors are expected to travel more than drug mules – helplessly bouncing between readings, festivals, book groups and possibly freestyle wrestling – we do find ourselves in increasingly perilous situations. As I sped, occasionally sideways, towards Glasgow I was haunted by memories of a similarly hellish nocturnal drive in Tasmania: twitching, oozing road kill heaped on every verge and a chauffeuse who admitted – once she'd bagged the driving and set off – that substance abuse had removed her peripheral vision and sometimes gave her flashbacks. She then failed to see other cars, road signs and, very probably, anything on this earth for hour after grisly hour, meanwhile chatting and singing merrily – mainly to people who weren't there – as I sank into a fugue state and Simon Armitage started screaming like a girl.
I spent the small hours of Wednesday in a hot bath, folded over like a cheap penknife with clenching stress. I've recently been at home for long enough to get a very good masseur to thumb gouge, thump and stretch me back into the shape a human person might be expected to occupy. Several accidents and mishaps, combined with years of hunching and typing have taken their toll, but as my residual pain levels lessen I'm hoping I can finally have my right shoulder bullied into a more usual position and my neck rearranged into something useful. This intermediate period of adjustment and bruising is slightly purgatorial and headachey and every time my neck, and therefore my throat, has to be moved I tend to lose my voice. Still, I hope I can keep exercising and building up strength and whatnot and be sprightly and resilient by the summer – so the last thing I needed was three hours of manic tension and anxious peering.
I noticed – as we slid – that nowhere had been gritted, despite the weather forecast, and assumed that all the grit money has been given to the Royal Bank of Scotland. I have taken, of late, to blaming every misfortune on RBS and have found it to be a great mental release. My non-earning savings (a self-employed typist's only defence against spinal mishap and decreased production) are RBS's fault. My remangled back: RBS. My lunatic schedule: RBS. My heavingly paranoid counter-reaction to the lakes of coffee upon which I am supported: RBS. The fact that Shakespeare's nose seems really quite pointy in the newly-discovered perhaps-accurate portrait: RBS. (Honestly, who cares what he looked like? He doesn't look like that now, as I'm sure he'd be the first to point out, dark old thing that he was. Sorry, the tenses went slightly awry there in an effort to convey both bodily death and the persistence of consciousness.) From hereon in RBS will carry all my cans and allow me to get on with my life under only the usual vague cloud of remorse. I'm calling it Sir Fredding.
