A Million Ways

Today was one of those over-familiar days marked by a noticeable absence of occurrences. Despite it being winter, the mercury was in the slightly-too-hot for most, if not all, of the day, and I was forced to sweat about in little more than a figure-hugging T-shirt and an ambiguous pair of undershorts, an outfit which departed quite drastically from yesterday's chilly wardrobe of German trench and snug Penguin leggings. But gripes with the weather soon proved to be on the extraneous side of the day's events, for early on a thing occurred (let me preserve the mystery for a sentence or two) which was to change my memoirs forever.

I had just finished work on my latest exposé, High Society, about the prevalence of drugs in modern life (I hope no one beat me to that title), when that blasted doorbell (two slugs, last June — I'm surprised it still works) startled me from my chair. Dragging myself to the front door, I was rather bemused to find myself face-to-face with a fellow author. He seemed to be holding an impressive wad of manuscript paper, the visible of which bore the unmistakable stench of laboured prose. Showing the distraught-looking penman in, I asked him the nature of his visit, to which he responded with a resigned glance at the dogged pages in his hand. Knowing all too well what this meant, I plonked him on my comfiest chair and fetched a vile of bitters. Snatching the glass from my grasp, he thanked me kindly, swug it, and passed out. I picked up his manuscript.

Hold on. He had only written two pages, and a rotten two pages at that. This was hardly the point where you go about abusing the hospitality of your contemporaries — that comes when you hit a dead-end at page 175. The nerve of the fellow. And me too tired to seek revenge.

Some minutes later, I climbed into and had a shower. Despite water restrictions, this gave me that lovely feeling that everything was going to turn out all right — provided I significantly re-worked this (the ending in particular) come memoir time.