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Better stop. Got to read a script tonight, a comic play which has developed out of a new writing workshop we’ve been ru
I can’t believe how quickly I’m turning into a sad, reactionary old git.
Dear Pe
I’m not putting it off any longer, Pe
Carl Phipps, our new star, came in to the office again today to drop off his current ten-by-eight. He’s already had an offer of a film and he’s only been with us a few days! I’m afraid this has made him rather grand. We call his type Uhoaas which stands for “Up his own arse actor”.
Dear etc
Depressed. Very depressed. I met the new BBC1 Controller today. He’s younger than me! This is the first time this has happened. I mean me being older than one of my bosses. I don’t like it at all. He’s a whizzkid from Granada. I think he made some documentary proving that the Conservative Party is funded by a gang of Middle Eastern prostitutes, so obviously that qualifies him to schedule the entertainment of a nation. Looking at him, I suddenly felt the icy hand of mortality upon my shoulder. I’m thirty-eight, I’ll be forty in two years.
I thought about going for a run. I didn’t go, but I thought about it.
I feel very sorry for poor old Lucy at the moment. Not only has she got all this fertility business on her mind, but now it sounds like she’s got a real idiot to look after at work. That new actor, Phipps guy, can’t remember his first name, Cunt or something, although I doubt that could be it. He sounds like a right pain. She went on about him a bit over di
Dear Pe
I’m going to see Dr Cooper today. I feel better now that I’m finally acknowledging that there actually probably is a problem and that I’m begi
Just got back from Dr Cooper’s. He says that five years or so is not actually that long to be trying and that he knows any number of women who tried for seven years and then had twelve apiece. I feel a huge gin and tonic calling.
Dr Cooper has, however, offered to do a blood test to check my hormone levels and a sperm test for Sam. I told Sam about it this afternoon and he took it very well. I thought it might bother him a bit – men are so fu
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!
I’ve got diluted sperm. I know it. My sack is empty! My balls undone! Can’t write any more tonight.
Dear Pen Pal
The blood test is all set up for next Tuesday. Apparently this will ascertain if I’m ovulating or not. My God, I shall be so a
Drusilla is horrified at the prospect of me having a blood test. She thinks that modern medicine is totally intrusive (and I suppose wandering about naked at Stonehenge isn’t intrusive). She thinks I should employ visualization therapy, which apparently consists of breathing, relaxing (surprise, surprise) and visualizing. She wants me to visualize a baby inside me, in my stomach, in my arms, in my very soul, a complete and perfect part of me. I said, “Drusilla darling, that’s all I ever bloody do,” and she said that was the problem. I’m obsessive, I need to visualize mystically rather than desperately, I need to allow myself the freedom to dream. Sounds like absolute bollocks to me.
I’ve booked a class for tomorrow night.
Sheila has suggested that I drink more heavily and take up smoking. This is because the only two times she’s ever got pregnant (Joa
Sam seems to be going a bit fu
Dear Self
Heard an interesting fact about sperm today. Not that sperm is on my mind or anything but the subject came up in a taxi, as it will from time to time. Sperm counts, it seems, are generally down in the Western world. Seriously down, in fact, twenty-five per cent since before the war, or maybe fifty, the cab driver couldn’t remember the exact figure. It seems that for whatever reason, be it additives in the food, pollution, radiation from our mobile phones, or the gunk at the bottom of Pot Noodles, we modern men are considerably less flush in the sperm department than our grandfathers were. Isn’t that strange? I mean modern society’s attitude to old people is basically one of contempt. We don’t want to look like them and they cost too much to run. Most people think of old-age pensioners as being embarrassing wrinkly sad acts, terminally unhip.
“Poor old Grandad,” we think.