Mil's Mailing List Mail #36

OK, this is bad. I admit that - freely. In my defence, I could point out that Margret and I have been together for round about seventeen years now and that, during all that time, I've been otherwise relentlessly delightful; but you know I am not one for such talk. Instead, I'll simply state the facts. As always.

Right, Emily had given Margret a present for her birthday. The present was this.
For those of you whose company filters leapt in there - preventing access to that page so as to demonstrate your employer's belittling contempt for your free choices - let me describe the item. It is a pair of knickers. It is a pair of edible knickers - 'edible' because they are made entirely out of sweets. You know those bracelets/necklaces you can buy that are small, threaded, coloured sweets? Picture that technology extended into the area of underwear. (Kicking yourself that you didn't think of it first, aren't you?)

Anyway, these knickers stay in their box in the bedroom for some time, set aside for the right moment. Then, one evening, just after CSI has finished, Margret - who's been in the shower - glides into the room in only a loose bathrobe.
"How about coming upstairs?" she asks - pausing for a single, meaningful beat and looking me right in the eyes before adding, "I could put on those edible knickers..."

And this is when I make the slight error - first one in seventeen years, remember - of expelling air heavily, patting my stomach, and replying, "Nah - I've just eaten a big bag of crisps."

Oh, yeah, you can see it now - we can all see it now. But, at the time - unprepared, one's mind still slightly unsettled by the eerily boxy shape of George Eads's head - it's all too easy for a person to get these things wrong. Don't judge me unless you were there, man.

Still, at least she's not the kind of person to store up stuff like that and then throw it back in my face having waited years for the most comprehensively devastating moment, eh?

OK, a few quick announcements before I move on. (And this is a one-off, by the way: I'm not having these Mails - devoted as they are to time-wasting ramblings for you to read immediately after you've said things like "I'll get right back to you with those figures, Bob." or "Thank you for calling our premium rate support line - I'm just going to put you on hold for a moment." - turn into a public service news board. So don't even think about asking me to "Perhaps just mention..." something or other. Else.)

Right:

http://microurl.com/mil/Lug+Event
Combining Linux and Wolverhampton? The needle's off the scale! (Paintball the following day, though - I'll be having some of that.)

http://microurl.com/mil/GreatWriting
A writers' resource site created because the BBC-funded version closed down, possibly so they could redirect money into producing another series of Strictly Dance Fever hosted by Graham Norton.

http://microurl.com/mil/Diesel
Some American bloke asked me to mention that he distributes my e-books. As you know, I'm fiercely in favour of real bookshops staffed by real misfits and depressives. But, I suppose, if you're going to buy an e-books anyway, then you're going to buy them online: so you may as well buy them here rather than from a huge, sprawling corporation like Amazon. Thus, I include the link.

That's that all over with, then. What I'm going to do now is give anyone out there who thinks they'd like to be a writer a warning look at the reality of it. Yes, yes - you imagine it's all intense literary introspection in the clock-ticking stillness of the night, and fizzing, erudite, witty discussions with fellow Bohemians in fashionable cafes, and sending long, disjointed, sexually transgressional letters to Alyson Hannigan. Well, it's not. What it is mostly is panic, misery and scrambling embarrassment against the clock. For an example, the Spanish version of [a large, well-known women's magazine] recently did a feature, sparked by the release of the Spanish translation of the TMGAIHAA book. They contacted me to ask if I'd answer a few questions as part of the piece. Naturally, I said I'd be happy to.

So, you are me. The magazine emails you the questionnaire late one day. They stress that they have left it so late that they are gnawing at the deadline and you need to get the answers back to them a soon as you possibly can - now - NOW. You find the email about 2 a.m. and you have to reply to it before you can go to bed, so that it's all done for them when they arrive the next morning. Make sure you answer the questions, rather that appearing to pompously avoid what they've asked you, plainly and directly, because either you're an idiot or you simply can't be bothered. Are you ready? Psyched? Righto: you're on your own here - off you go.

Mil.
----------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW

- Your humor, is inherited o you have not had left more remedy than to develop it to survive?

-I imagine that you have been inspired by your own familiar surroundings. By which you have been inspired exactly?

-One impertinent question: Your girl has been laughed itself with your book?

- We hoped that you also amused much writing it... And for your friends, you must be the admired man more of the planet!

-It would not have to say this but... I believe that to the femenine it comes to us well that us ironize in a book, sometimes. What we will remove in clear?

-Tell us briefly those five things of your girl that to you put nervous super.

-Really, we can so get to be witches with our pairs?

-And now an autocritic exercise: The men young, like Pel type, of what errors they sin?

-I do not know if you know some Spanish woman but, topics what you have heard on us?

-In case it needed to us: How we can make to leave K.O. to our boy? Tell us a few examples, please.

-What is necessary to do for to seduce you?

-And so that you take odd habit to us?

-How it is the relation with your small ones? They are looked like you?

- These thinking already about writing something new?