Inconceivable

there was a second full moon shining on Primrose Hill tonight. I think we were very lucky that they didn’t do us for indecency.

Anyway, as I say, had Sam not insanely attempted to give the police a false name I think they would have let us off there and then, but instead they took us in. I certainly think that Sam’s following up his false name debacle by warning them that he was an intimate of Downing Street made matters worse. I mean, you do not try and pull rank on the rozzers, particularly if you haven’t got your trousers on. I didn’t really mind getting run in, it sort of made me feel even more pagan and dangerous, like a witch or an outlaw, as if the forces of order had tried to constrain our tryst but had arrived too late! And anyway, I knew they’d let us off in the end. After all, it isn’t a crime to assume a pseudonym, is it? I don’t think it is, or what would they do about stage names? In the acting profession if you have the same name as somebody else, Equity actually make you change it, so it can’t be illegal, can it?

Well, anyway, we sat about a bit at the police station and after a cup of tea and one or two off- colour innuendos from the young constables they let us go. Sam got quite shirty about the jokes the coppers made, which I thought was stupid since they were no worse than the sort of rubbish he commissions every day. They even dropped us off back at our car, which I thought was nice of them.

Anyway, it’s all over now, for better or worse, and here I am, lying in bed. Sam’s already snoring, sleeping the sleep of the great and powerful lover, but I’m wide awake, clutching my crystals, humming Celtic hymns and praying to Gaia to deliver new life into my body. Let Mother Nature make me a mother too!

In my heart and my soul I truly believe she will.

Well, it’s now the evening following our Primrose Hill tryst and today has not gone well.

In fact, today has gone worse than I could have dreamt possible.

On the plus side Lucy is very happy about our success last night. She seems to have convinced herself that the power of positive thinking has been the missing factor in us getting pregnant. She has therefore decided to believe absolutely and fundamentally that Primrose Hill will work its magic. When I got home this afternoon I found her sitting in front of the fire watching a Saturday afternoon film on Channel Four and looking wistful, sipping camomile tea and gently trying to will her eggs to envelop my sperm. It’s a strange thing, but you know she did sort of look pregnant, I can’t really say why, but sort of serene and womanly and, well, fertile. I know it’s silly to say that, and particularly silly to get our hopes up, but then perhaps it’s not. Perhaps Lucy is right. Perhaps positive thinking is what we need. Anyway, if there’s any balance of fair play in the world we’ll be pregnant; because the rest of my life is double buggered squared.

I have not mentioned my inner torment to Lucy, of course. When she asked me how things had gone today I said, “Fine.” I did not feel that in her present state of self-induced mystical empowerment she would want to be told that her husband was an utter joke. I did not feel it fair to tell that sweet, trusting, potential nestbuilder that the career of her champion and protector now hangs by less than a single thread. That we are shortly to be paupers. I simply could not bring myself to tell her that the Prime Minister’s visit to Livin’ Large was the most right royal cock-up since Henry the Eighth discovered girls.

Therefore, Book, unable to seek support from my preoccupied wife, I am turning for solace to you. It happened like this.

Despite my late-night run-in with the law on the previous evening, I was up bright and early this morning. Livin’ Large goes out live at nine a.m. and I had promised to take my niece Kylie along, which meant going to the studio via Hackney to pick her up. Kylie is the daughter of my sister Emily and has apparently, of late, taken an interest in politics. My sister, anxious to encourage this new maturity in a girl who up until now has liked only ponies and Barbie, asked me to take her along. To add to the excitement, Grrrl Gang, a kind of post-post-Spice Girls group, are also appearing on the show and Emily says that Kylie worships the ground they walk on. Or, in fact, more accurately, given their ridiculous shoes, she worships the ground they walk seven inches above.

Kylie was something of a shock. I had last seen her about six months before at a family do and she had been a very sweet and pretty little eleven-year-old who had a picture of a horse in a locket round her neck. I’m afraid to have to report that the butterfly has reverted to a caterpillar and that Kylie or “K Grrrl”, as she now wishes to be known, is a horrid little pre-teen brat. Her nice blonde hair has red streaks inexpertly dyed into it. She has a nose stud (Emily says she got it done on a school trip to Blackpool and that Kylie has threatened to run away if it is removed). She wears enormously baggy army combat trousers into which eight or nine of her could be fitted. Her tummy is bare save for a tattoo of a rat holding a hypodermic needle (mercifully a transfer). Her crop-top T-shirt has the words “DROP DEAD” printed on it and her once-pretty face is now contorted into a permanent sulky scowl.

I asked her if she was excited about going to the studio. The look of astonished contempt she gave me would have scrambled an egg.

“Oh yeah! Right, as if! Like I’m really going to get excited about going to a crap kids’ show. Yeah, right, that’s really likely.”

I could not have felt more withered if I had been a sultana. This girl made me feel like a piece of one- hundred-year-old shit. I was grateful that I’d done my duty by Lucy on the previous evening because this child was in danger of un-manning me entirely. I did my best to engage her interest, which was, of course, fatal.

“The Prime Minister will be there.”

“The Prime Minister is a meat-eating fascist.”

“Grrrl Gang will be playing live.”

“Grrrl Gang are crap and sad. They don’t even sing on their records because it’s all done by a computer, if you didn’t know.”

“I’ll introduce you to Tazz.”

“Tazz is a moronic duh brain who wouldn’t have got anywhere if all the sad old men at the BBC didn’t fancy her.”

I thought this was extremely unfair. Tazz is an excellent presenter and a lovely girl. Yes, it’s true that she’s fairly gorgeous and does indeed have the factor that in showbiz is traditionally called “something for the dads”, but there’s far more to her than that. Being consistently perky for three hours on a Saturday morning is more difficult than a lot of people think. It takes real talent.

“Don’t you like Livin’ Large, then?”

“Oh yeah! Sure, as if! Livin’ Large is crap.”

“Well don’t come, then.”

“No, I’ll come, I suppose.”

And so we went. Kylie, like most young people of my acquaintance, wanted it both ways.

We got in the car and Kylie sorted through my tapes, rejecting every one with pained groans of contempt before turning up the radio full to prevent further conversation. Actually I wished that Lucy had been with us to see her. Kylie has always been such a nice little girl. Lucy tends to see her as an example of the joys we are missing out on by being childless. Up until now I have agreed with her on this point. Kylie’s dolls, her love of stories, her obsession with all animals has always been just so cute (a word I hate), but that’s what Kylie was. We went on holiday with them the Easter before last and it rained all the time. Kylie spent the week lying on her tummy in front of the fire reading the entire Narnia saga. It was a lovely thing to see and Lucy and I had wished she was ours. Well all I can say is that if ever we do have one she can go to a boarding school for the grumpy pubescent bit, because it is not attractive.

Anyway, back to my disaster. Whatever Kylie might have felt, I personally was very much looking forward to the morning and meeting Tazz. She really is gorgeous and quite simply every bloke in the country fancies her. Heterosexual blokes, that is. I realize that these days it is not done to presume that people are necessarily heterosexual. Although, quite frankly, if I was gay I reckon Tazz would turn me around, but then I said that to Trevor and he said, “Well, does Leonardo di Caprio turn you around?” To which the answer is a very big “No.” Quite frankly, I think that Leonardo di Caprio looks like Norman Lamont. It’s just that Tazz is so perky, the most pathologically perky girl on television, perky beyond all reasonable