Lucy's Bedroom

A Spot Of Bother

It turns out that the worst thing about waitressing in a silver fringed thong, white patent leather boots and a pink nylon wig is the general unforgivingness of patent leather. It has no give in it and it keeps your feet clamped like a vice, even if, like me, you’ve had the forethought to wear unflattering but useful support strength pop socks underneath them.

It’s not the only bad thing of course. Some other bad things include: having your thong ‘twanged’ almost every time you approach a knot of men with your tray; backache from lugging the tray all night; and being offered a fistful of US dollars to fuck “me and all my friends” while all his friends laugh.

Some good things include: the presence at the party of large numbers of fairly obvious call girls - clearly we’re just a party favour and they’re the ones who’ll be getting gang banged at Claridge’s later on; the kitchen staff, who are mainly hired for the night from hotel kitchens and who have an engagingly bleak humour about the whole thing; and the quality of dope on offer by the kitchen staff and their willingness to share it with a gang of half-naked girlies sitting on the back steps wrapped in borrowed coats. They call us all Gloria as one of their little jokes for the evening is that they can’t tell us apart in our wigs.

The house is a converted church that’s been decorated with a luxurious minimalism and I got yelled at for standing in the hall gawping at the paintings instead of scurrying back to the kitchen for more nibbles. Other than that, the party itself was remarkably uneventful.

I got myself into a spot of bother afterwards though for the following reasons (in no particular order): my wide-eyed belief that the world is an essentially benign place filled with nicely brought-up and well-meaning people; being a little bit spaced out from the dope; my general sluttishness. What started out as ‘being walked to the taxi rank’ by one of the junior chefs quickly turned into ‘going back to his for a cup of tea’ and from thence to ‘getting throat fucked until I puked’.

Clearly there was no point in calling a proper policeman as I had elected to get stoned and go home with a strange man while almost naked under my coat and I was also the one who first proposed a blow job. So instead I called my friend Andy the Gay Policeman, who was asleep in bed but got up to come and fetch me from the wall I was perched on at the end of the road, having climbed out of the chef’s ground-floor bathroom window.

I climbed into his car and sat there silently while he took in my pink wig, smudged eyes, bruised neck and vomit-stained coat. I braced myself for the angry lecture but instead he patted me on the knee and said, “I’ve had worse.” He’s promised to come back and bust the chef for possession (“…and if he doesn’t have any on him I’ll have a whip round down the station”).

So, that’s been my action-packed weekend. I’m going to take to my bed for a bit with a hot water bottle and a honey and lemon drink for my throat.

Look At That Girl

I’ve been a busy girl today, popping into the agency for a ‘fitting’ for tomorrow night’s job. I thought this was an odd request until I saw the outfit – a silver-fringed thong that ripples and rustles as you walk, white patent leather boots with precipitous heels and a waist-length pink nylon wig! I love my wig and fully intend to steal it and then say some bigger children ran off with it. Still, we all had our photos taken because it turns out the job offered may not be quite in the bag – apparently we have to be ‘approved’ by the client and will get a phone call either tonight or tomorrow morning. Girls who aren’t approved will have their passports taken away and get bundled into the back of a van. I know some of the girls a little from previous jobs and it gives me some confidence that they’re so blasé about the whole thing. One of them, on learning of the location of the party, took under two minutes with an internet phone to discover the house sold for £6.95m. She’s a girl who’ll go far.

Then I headed into the badlands of Dalston to have my photo taken by Patrick. I’ve done a few jobs with Patrick over the last 18 months and I really like him. He’s very quiet and professional and looks surprised when he laughs. It’s mostly been shots for his portfolio before, usually with a few freebies for D thrown in at the end. This is the first time I’ve done a commission for someone else and I’m a bit uncertain about it.

Patrick makes me peppermint tea and shows me big portfolios of similar pictures he’s done before. I turn the big glossy pages with wide eyes. The photos are mostly of a girl called Catherine, who I’ve never met but I’ve seen her photos around Patrick’s studio. She’s a delicate, slender blonde with pale, washed-out blue eyes and wide, high cheekbones. I’ve never liked to ask but I get the impression that at one time she may have been his girlfriend.

Some of the photos show her handcuffed and ball-gagged, her eyes wide in mute appeal to the camera. In others she crawls on the floor, a leather collar around her neck, its lead taut, held by an unseen hand outside the frame. In one she floats in a bath of water strewn with flowers, her eyes glazed and staring, a naked Ophelia. The photos are artistic in composition and execution but undeniably pornographic. Not so much because of their content but because of the knowledge that someone is wealthy enough to pay a girl to crawl around naked for his own amusement.

Patrick shows me the mask the client has asked me to wear. I try to cover my anxiety about this by joking that at least he’s got the good taste to want my face covered up. And Patrick shows me the photo that drew the client’s attention, one he took a couple of months ago that shows me half sitting, half lying on a sofa, my legs splayed at awkward angles, my arms thrown above my head, my face partly cut off by the edge of the frame. And I can see how he would make the leap from this photo, which is all limbs and flesh and the dark shadows of armpits and cunt, to a naked girl masked.

Wrapped in Patrick’s bath robe, its sleeves rolled up and its hem dragging on the floor, I stand and let him tug the mask over my head from behind, my hair scraped back off my face and tucked up inside the mask as he zips it shut. It feels tight and clingy and claustrophobic. I swallow hard and have a moment’s panic at the way the leather seems to press up at the underneath of my chin and against my throat. All sound is muffled as it presses my ears against the sides of my head and I can feel my breathing, suddenly shallow and rapid, as Patrick presses shut the Velcro fastening beneath the buckles at my neck.

He looms into my limited field of vision, smiling reassuringly. “You see, Velcro for a nice speedy release if you want to stop. You OK?” I nod and lick my dry lips. “No safe word when I’ve done everything up, so if you get into trouble just hold up your hand with your fingers crossed and I’ll get you out.” Then he zipped shut the mouthpiece and fitted the mask over my eyes, fixing it in place with press studs at the back of my head. I put my hands to my face and felt my way around the mask, lightly touching with my fingertips the tiny triangle of a gap for my nostrils, my breath through them warm and damp.

Distantly, I heard Patrick say, “When you’re ready…” and I realised I was trembling as I shrugged off his robe and tossed it towards him. He took my hand and guided me back onto the sofa where I sprawled and stretched and arched and spread, gradually, unasked, exposing myself further, my hands cupping my tits and offering them up for the camera, my fingers delving between the folds of my cunt as I held my legs open. Sweat trickled down my face inside the mask as I wriggled one finger into my arsehole.

Suddenly Patrick said, “Wait a minute” and I knelt up, puzzled and alert to the sound of him rummaging in the other room. He came back and took my hand, closing my fingers around a dildo and, as the sound of his camera started up again, I flopped back onto the sofa, trailing its tip along my sloppy slit and sighing as I slowly screwed it in, my knees drawn up as I gripped its end with both hands, steadily fucking it into my cunt with a squelch. I drew it out, dripping and suddenly realised I was in trouble. I held my hand up with my fingers crossed and Patrick fumbled as he unzipped my mouth. “What is it, are you OK?” I licked my lips again and kissed the tip of the dildo, gradually sucking it in as Patrick began taking photos again. I tipped my head right back, my neck stretched out, and let the dildo slide down my throat, gently pushing it with one finger tip as my throat bulged. I felt Patrick close by me now, still snapping away, murmuring “Fucking hell” almost under his breath.

We paused for a moment and I drank bottled water through my open zip before nodding to let Patrick do it up again. Taking my hand, he led me out into the courtyard behind his flat, under cover of the broken-down veranda that juts out from the back of the building, I posed again, nipples stiff with cold, against a whitewashed brick wall, arms and legs spread ready to be frisked, then lying on the concrete floor, twisted like a murder victim.

When I was too cold to go on, Patrick led me back indoors and handcuffed my arms behind my back, stretched around the scaffolding pole that holds his sagging door frame up. I sat on the floor, my shoulders drawn back and my tits thrust out as I spread my legs again and listened to Patrick lying on the floor in front of me to shoot up towards my bowed face.

When I finally peeled the mask off, my face was red and damp with sweat, my hair half plastered to my head and half sticking up. Patrick dodged my tossed cushions and stream of slaps to carry on taking snapshots of me laughing and yelling at him to stop taking my photo.

By the time I’d showered and dressed and composed myself, Patrick already had some of the photos up on the light box and he began showing me how he edited them and changed the effects. I half listened and gazed at the pictures, thinking “Look at that girl”.

Lazy And Venal

Either this new job’s easier than it looks or I’m doing it wrong. I raced through piles of work this morning.

In addition to my editing job I’ve now acquired two more jobs to distract me from studying. The first comes through a photography student friend of a friend that I’ve modelled for a couple of times. He’s got a ‘private’ commission from someone who’s seen my pictures in his portfolio and asked if I’ll pose in some fetish gear. I said no, not believing these pictures won’t end up on the internet. But I’ve been talked into it by the combination of the nature of the outfit I’ll be asked to wear and the size of the fee on offer (hmm, I wonder what that makes me?).

“You won’t be able to see your face; he’s sent me a mask he wants you to wear.”

“What sort of a mask?”

“A leather one with a zip.”

“Where’s the zip?”

“Over your mouth.”

“So you won’t be able to see my mouth?”

“Or your eyes. I mean there are eye holes but there’s a sort of leather blindfold that goes over the top of the mask. It’s quite ingenious actually, it fastens with metal poppers and…”

“And the rest of the mask completely covers my face?”

“Well your whole head, actually. It fastens at your neck with Velcro but there are dummy buckles as well so it looks like you’re buckled in…You’ve gone very quiet…”

The other job is through the sales promotion agency I’ve occasionally worked for in the past. They rang me up with an offer to waitress at a party for some Russian clients I’ve worked for before. “There’s just one thing, and we’re telling all the girls this before they agree to do it. It’s the outfit…”

“..?”

Even over the phone I could hear her blushing as she said it. “Um, it’s a sort of…well I suppose you’d call it a g-string. Or maybe a thong, I never know if there’s a difference.” I can hear her, muffled, asking someone in the office, “What’s the difference between a g-string and a thong?”

“Is that all?”

“Shoes as well.”

“And they want us to be waitresses. Nothing else?”

She starts to reel off the agency’s official line on the terms of employment while I sigh impatiently. Lots of the girls have sex with the clients and while they never talk about whether they get paid for it, of course lots of them do. Toting a heavy tray of drinks around a hot and crowded room full of lecherous Russians in stupid shoes and virtually naked sounds ghastly. I tell her I’ll think about it, ring off and take a look at my bank balance online.

Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not some poor struggling, innocent girl driven into the arms of the sex industry to pay the gas bill. I’m a nice middle-class girl with a rich Daddy and expensive shopping habits who’s too lazy and venal to do an honest day’s work when there’s Scooby-money being offered for cavorting around in the buff. So I sold my soul to the devil and said yes to both jobs.

Jealous

I’ve been restoring a little of the London gloss to my life today after running round the woods like a feral girl. I’ve been to the hairdressers, had my lady-garden waxed, my eyebrows plucked and my finger and toenails painted Chanel Rouge Noir. In the afternoon, I went into my new employers’ offices to talk about what they want me to do and I’ve come away clutching a handful of irreplaceably important memory sticks, which I inevitably only retrieved from the taxi at the last minute as it was about to pull away.

I shall be writing some promotional material as well as drafting up suggested edits (mainly for common sense and continuity) to a series of scripts written by disparate writers. If that goes OK, they’re going to give me some scripting for radio to write from scratch (and if it doesn’t go OK they’re going to toss me to the company bear, or something, I’m not good at concentrating when people are explaining things to me).

As well as a load of work, I also got the induction talk. This was delivered by a couple of the female staff in the ladies as one applied mascara and the other leaned out of the window smoking. Induction consists mainly of warning me off two of the male staff: one because he’s “a commitment-phobe” and the other because “he’s a pervert, no seriously, Lorraine dated him for like three weeks and you wouldn’t believe the stuff he wanted her to do.” Because I’m new, I had to settle for looking wide-eyed and shocked, instead of what I really wanted to do, which was to pluck at their sleeves and say earnestly, “I would believe it, please tell me, what did he make her do?”

It’s academic anyway as I shall be working from home nearly all of the time. And as everyone knows, ‘working from home’ actually means spending an hour in the bath then padding round wrapped in a towel and eating biscuits while catching up on Lynda’s sex life. I think the last time you saw Lynda she’d just started dating upstanding policeman and secret swinger J. That seems to be going swimmingly as Lynda has an active interest in getting fucked by as many men as possible in every position you can think of (and a few you can’t), and J has an active interest in watching her do it.

To my consternation, she’s pulled ahead of me in our unspoken lifelong contest (because what’s the point of a best friend if you don’t secretly want to watch her fail and be miserable while you’re the girl with the most cake?) Lynda’s done a whole two things I haven’t. She’s had three men at the same time and she’s sucked off five men and let them cum on her face.

“You slut.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“I am not. I think it’s a sinful waste of your precious gift to throw it away on men who encourage you in such wickedness.”

“You’re sooooooo jealous!”

I am. My girlish dreams have always been of being gang-banged in all holes then spunked up on until my face is a dripping mask of cum.

Meme

Someone asked me a question about other blogs I read which put me in mind of this meme that's been going round a few of them.

1. My uncle once: took part in a street battle with French police outside the Sorbonne in 1968.

2. Never in my life: have I been on an actual date with someone before sleeping with them.

3. When I was five: I used to come home from school and climb into bed with my mother who was already suffering from the cancer that would kill her. She always wore silk pyjamas and scarlet lipstick. I used to tuck myself into the crook of her arm, breathing in her skin that smelled of Chanel No.5 and tell her what I had done at school that day. In return, she would tell me that she’d spent the day riding on an elephant to have tea with the King of China.

4. High school was: mostly unhappy. I was mildly bullied in the psychological way girls go about it so that there’s never anything concrete to complain about.

5. I will never forget: the first time I got spunk in my eye.

6. Once I met: Dirk Bogarde at a party in Grasse in the South of France. I was only 7 and he was well into his seventies and rather frail but tremendously grand, seated in a huge throne-like wicker chair under a tree, smoking elegantly through a cigarette holder.

7. There’s this girl I know: who’s saving herself for the man she’s going to marry, even though she hasn’t met him yet. It’s a tremendous waste because she’s got fantastic knockers.

8. Once, at a bar: I got chatted up by someone off the telly and sucked him off in the toilets. I only really did it so I could tell people “I sucked off (celeb) in the toilets of the Hawley Arms” but now I realise I can’t tell you who it was because his ego is such that he’s certain to Google his own name.

9. By noon, I’m usually: regretting having eaten my packed lunch at 10.30.

10. Last night: I woke up at three in the morning and ate cream crackers and cheese while listening to a documentary on Radio 4 about a fake Iraqi village in California where US troops are trained for war.

11. If only I had: more money that I have sense (I’d have £1.42).

12. Next time I go to church: will probably be for my brother’s wedding. I’m not going to risk the holy water; it would probably sizzle off my skin.

13. What worries me most: is that I have a genetic disposition to develop the same form of cancer as my mother.

14. When I turn my head left I see: my reflection in a glass-fronted bookcase. I look a bit seedy today.

15. When I turn my head right I see: horse chestnut trees and rooftops through the attic window.

16. You know I’m lying when: I turn bright red and have to run away.

17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: those all-in-one flannel sleep suits with the plastic feet. Seriously, I don’t remember much else from the eighties.

18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: Joan of Arc in Henry VI Part 1 – a hysterical, self-harming adolescent with one steely eye fixed on political power.

19. By this time next year: I will have sat the first set of my exams and be heading into my final year.

20. A better name for me would be: my real name. I’m Mary Lucille, after my grandmothers, but I’m saving my full name for when I’m made a saint.

21. I have a hard time understanding: how anyone could be a small minded and selfish enough to vote for cuts in public services (or stupid enough to think the promised tax cuts won’t result in public service cuts).

22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: treat some of my teachers to a full appraisal of their teaching skills.

23. You know I like you if: I stop bothering to be particularly polite to you.

24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: whoever nominated all the other losers in my category. And then I’d complain that it’s an insult to be nominated in the same category as all those losers.

25. Take my advice, never: push your brother head first through a plate glass window. Nobody was pleased or happy.

26. My ideal breakfast is: the traditional English breakfast – a big mug of tea and a fag.

27. A song I love but do not have is: Sam Cooke singing A Change is Gonna Come

28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: do lots of overpriced tourist crap. Seriously, our economy’s fucked, we need the money.

29. Why won’t people: get onto buses in the order they arrived at the bus stop.

30. If you spend a night at my house: I’ll find you eventually, even if you’re hiding somewhere I hardly ever look, like the cupboard that’s got the ironing board in it.

31. I’d stop my wedding for: someone who stormed into the choir loft and started hammering and screaming “Luuuuuccyyyyyy!!!” then dashed up the aisle and dragged me out of the church and onto a passing bus.

32. The world could do without: local news programmes, especially in London because UK news is so London-centric to start with that local news programmes are just the same stories all over again but this time told by slightly rubbish reporters. It would be alright if the local news was really local. “In the news tonight: bank holiday changes collection day for recycling boxes – many local residents get confused; that big tom cat’s been prowling around again - I mean he sprays everywhere, it smells like ammonia and you can’t get rid of it; I see they still haven’t moved that skip.”

33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: think up an answer to this ridiculous question.

34. My favourite blonde is: Marianne Faithfull

35. Paper clips are more useful than: I am.

36. If I do anything well it’s: cycling round London without getting killed. Oh and I’ve got Grade 8 piano. (You see, you thought it was going to be something to do with sex, didn’t you, but I secretly suspect I may be a bit rubbish and just make up for that with bags of enthusiasm.)

37. I can’t help but: worry that: someone out there is taking all of this seriously.

38. I usually cry: at that bit at the end of The Railway Children where the clouds of steam part on the platform and she cries, “Daddy! My Daddy!” and starts running towards him. I’m welling up just typing this.

39. My advice to my child: is pay attention in school because a little superficial learning goes a long way towards convincing people you’re actually clever.

40. And by the way: I know it doesn’t actually say this in my profile anymore but I’m still not going to reply to emails that go, “Wow!!!!!!!!!!!11!!! babez r u up for 11 inches tonite!!!!!!!”

Content To Be A Sex Object

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting cross-legged and naked on Gregor’s bed typing up my blog instead of…erm…whatever it is I was supposed to be doing today. The general consensus among my party last night was that nothing that happens on Sunday really matters and as I am not now the only one of us to have copped off with someone I’m guessing I won’t be the only one who chooses sex over lectures today.

A certain amount of colourful Scottish swearing and the smell of burning toast is emanating from the kitchen. He’s trying to do something over-complicated with eggs to impress me and possibly to prove to me that he’s not just a sex object.

I, on the other hand, am content to be a sex object and was barely through the door of his room last night before I was flinging off my clothes, sticking my tongue down his throat and inviting him to stick his cock up my arse. Because he’s a polite host, he spent the best part of the night sticking his cock everywhere it would fit while I squirmed and moaned and raked his back with my fingernails.

That’s it, breakfast’s ready and I have to throw some knickers and a t-shirt on so as not to startle his flatmates. Jut time to take a cheeky photo with my tits out on his phone as a souvenir before I go.

Isolation

It turns out my mystery Scottish barman is called Gregor – which I find hard to take seriously. The only Gregor I’ve encountered before is Gregor Samsa, who awoke one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. I’m pleased to report that didn’t happen to my Gregor, who awoke to find himself transformed into a man who’d never tried anal until the night before but had now developed a taste and an erection for it. To celebrate, I let him do it again in the shower and, as I had some stickers in a press pack, wrote one out for him that read ‘I heart fucking girls up the arse’, which he stuck on his rucksack and then went to work.

In my afternoon off today I availed myself of the hotel’s spa and tried an isolation tank. For about half an hour I floated there, in my bathing suit in tepid salty water, convinced that it wasn’t working and I could actually see in the dark and hear things outside. Then suddenly it was like that moment just before you go to sleep, except not followed by going to sleep.

I’d been advised that I might have waking dreams during this phase, and that these might “unlock hidden parts of your psyche”. I’d just thought, “Yeah, yeah, shut up now” while this was being explained to me but it was half right. I did have a very vivid fantasy about being fucked by a crowd of men who I couldn’t quite focus on clearly enough to distinguish but who crammed their cocks, sometimes two at a time, into my cunt and arse and mouth, grabbing at my tits and fingering my clit and all pulling out to spray their spunk over my face and body until I was coated in it, eyes gummed shut, spread-eagled and stuck to the floor. So I think it’s fair to say that wasn’t a very well-hidden part of my psyche that got unlocked there.

It meant that, rather than emerging in a state of well-rested floopiness, I came out with every cell in my brain screaming “Fuck me now!” C, who has been in the neighbouring isolation tank and who now has a very large bath towel wrapped around his waist, asks me whether I dreamed about anything. I sheepishly say, “Um, yes, a bit…what about you, what did you dream about?” He looks shifty then says “I had a dream about screwing all the girls who wouldn’t look at me in school.” I put on my best ‘Oh, how interesting’ face and completely fail to avoid looking down to see whether he’s got an erection (which he has a bit under the folds of towel).

While this would seem to be an ideal moment to say, “Yes, I had a dream about being gang raped and now I’m gagging for some dick, by the way did I mention I really fancy you?” the 0.01% of my brain not engaged in thinking about fucking reminds me that he’s my boss so I go back to my room and text Gregor instead.

He’s working but I hang around perched on a bar stool and getting chatted up by the other barmen until his break when, ignoring their sniggers, he leads me into the store room and fucks me bent over a chest freezer while I finger my clit and bite on my fist to muffle my moans as I cum, then crouch down and suck on his cock, milking his spunk down my throat and licking my lips.

Memo To Self

OK, memo to self. When you’re on the first day of your new pretend-job and your new employers have flown you to a lovely 4* hotel and bought you food and drinks, don’t – that’s don’t – pull the barman and go to an after-hours party for other bar and hotel staff with him, go back to his place and let him fuck you senseless then roll up for the first session of the day wearing the same clothes you wore last night except for your t-shirt, which is now inside out.

Everyone was too polite to say anything directly, but the way they looked at me makes me suspect I’ve already acquired a nick name but will never find out what it is.

What can I say? He was dishy and I was drunk. He growled softly in my ear that he wanted to cum all over my tits and I thought, “Oh, go on then”. In my defence…no, it’s no good, I can’t think of anything.

We have a date of sorts for tonight, and when I say ‘date’ obviously I mean he’s coming over to the hotel and I’m planning on letting him do me up the arse this time. If things go well I may even ask him to tell me again what his name is.

Sneering London Media Whores

I’ve got a view of Edinburgh Castle from my bedroom window. Now, those of you familiar with the topography of Suffolk will be thinking, “I knew it was flat, but surely it’s not so flat that you can see all the way to Scotland? Doesn’t the Lake District get in the way?” And of course you’re absolutely right. I am, rather unexpectedly, spending my Bank Holiday Weekend at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. I’m a last-minute replacement for someone far more important than I am who’s broken her leg tripping over a pyramid in Egypt. (I thought I’d add ‘in Egypt’ for the benefit of any American readers who are used to having their films captioned ‘London, Engand’ and ‘Paris, France’ and might be under the impression that we have pyramids in the Tottenham Court Road.)

My role for the weekend seems to consist entirely of looking decorative while carrying a stack of folders and occasionally frowning prettily when men explain things to me that I already understand perfectly well. I’m determined to put up with this for the sake of my new pretend-job.

I’ve inherited pyramid-girl’s agenda so on Friday I have to sit through a discussion panel on documentaries and the keynote lecture by Peter Fincham (he used to be Controller of BBC1 before being hounded out of office for allowing a trailer to be broadcast that suggested the Queen was a dumpy, bad-tempered woman who gets jewelled robes in return for scowling at the world – imagine!)

But on Saturday I have a more exciting day with a masterclass by Graham Linehan (of Father Ted fame), a Q&A with Steven Moffat (scariest Doctor Who writer since Robert Holmes) and something called How to Save ITV, which I’m sure I was only booked onto as a joke. It would be kinder to draw the curtains and tiptoe quietly from the room while it expires in peace (and besides, I’d much rather go to Richard & Judy in Conversation but everyone else is going to that so I’ve been told I jolly well have to go to the ITV thing and take notes).

Then on Sunday I get to have a lie in, listen to a talk by Armando Iannucci and slope off home early.

This is almost certainly the most exciting thing that will ever happen to me in this pretend-job. Everything else will be typing and photocopying and sellotaping some things together while simultaneously cutting other things in half. So I’m determined to make the most of it. I’ve already opened all the drawers and cupboards in my hotel room, looking for free things, I’ve ordered a pot of tea and eaten all the Golden Oat Crunch individually-wrapped-for-your-convenience biscuits and put my pyjama bottoms in the trouser press.

I’m off out in a minute for a crawl round Grassmarket’s pubs – which we’re technically designating ‘dinner’ – and a game of Festival Bingo. We all have proper bingo ‘dabber’ pens and bingo cards with squares relating to the wider Edinburgh Festival that’s still going on in the city. So one square is for when you spot someone trying to entertain the masses by pretending to be a statue; another for being handed a flyer for any production describing itself as ‘biting satire’; and another for having a conversation with anyone not working in a pub or restaurant who is actually Scottish. You get the idea - it’s a game for sneering London media whores like me and my new employers.

Hideous And Terrifying Vegetable Animals

The weather has turned quite autumnal – wet and grey and darker in the mornings than even a few days ago. I’ve spent most of the day cycling with Ed the postman (we bonded over bicycles) and feeling a bit sad that I’m going back to London in a couple of weeks’ time. As we sat under a tree eating cheese and pickle sandwiches in the drizzle with our anoraks zipped right up, I had a sudden surge of geekiness. Maybe I should just settle down with someone like Ed the postman, join the Ramblers Association and spend my life attending steam traction-engine rallies at the weekends.

I’m out-of-sorts because the whole ‘I decide what happens to you’ game ended a bit awkwardly when D tried to start it up again while I was having an interesting phone conversation and I shoved him into the other room and shut the door on him. By the time I’d finished the call and come out, he’d gone into one of those “I’m not in a huff” huffs and the game was over. Nothing wrong with that, except as D pointed out the next day, I seem to be increasingly ending games I’m a bit fed up with. I denied this hotly but on reflection he’s right.

This has had the unfortunate dual effect of (a) bringing out all D’s insecurity and you’ve-gone-off-me neediness and (b) making me turn silent and introspective while I wonder what’s going on. As you can imagine, my reaction just stokes up his.

The interesting phone conversation, by the way, was with C the writer I’ve mentioned a couple of times and it was offering me actual paid employment as a junior under assistant trainee lower-in-the-pecking-order-than-the-office-cat script editor. And when I say ‘paid’ obviously I mean I’m getting three and sixpence and half a Kit Kat (which is good for independent telly). But it’s something I can do alongside my course and put on my CV (or leave off it, depending on how the show turns out) so I said yes.

As a peace offering tonight I made D a vegetable animal from a cauliflower floret with a button mushroom face, parsley ears, peas for eyes and carrot sticks for legs. I’m not sure what animal it was but I was very pleased with it. And as his part of the reconciliation, D sent me a text message saying he would be finishing late and staying over in the nurse’s home.