I’ve been reading a collection of top Science Fiction short stories. Probably because it’s on the Kindle, I haven’t been jumping around the stories, just working my way through them in order. I’ve read four so far and enjoyed them all, except for one common fault: their endings suck!

            I feel like I’ve been Wile E Coyoted right over the cliff edge: I look down and realise there’s nothing there, then plummet to – might as well milk the analogy – rock bottom.

            In the case of one story, I actually turned over the Kindle, convinced it must be continuing on the back. Which, let’s face it, is about as intelligent as the man in the audience who got offended by a ventriloquist’s act so went on stage and punched the dummy . . .

            I feel that two of the stories represent the polar ends of the problem; the pole itself I’ll call Drive. Let’s call one end Character Drive and the other Plot Drive.

            At the start of the first story, which I would say is an example of Character Drive, the main character has what at first he thinks is a chance meeting with an old associate. They’re in a European city, let’s say Berlin for the sake of this article. In the opening pages, we’re introduced to an alternative Europe and USA that have experienced different kinds of revolutions. We also meet a whole posse of the hero’s friends, and his wife; get shown their apartment; we sit in on several long discussions between his friends and the ‘chance’ acquaintance, who slowly reveals his master plan . . . We also get lots of interesting details about post-revolution Berlin. Then the story moves to a mass demonstration in which a fantastic display of new technology may or may not have taken place –

            – and here we’ll pause for a moment, because at this point we’re nearly at the limit of words that normally constitute a short story. Yet I’m aware of several lines of the story that are still wide open, both at plot and character level. The hero’s wife, for example, has a job she hates but which is safe: will she break out and do something she’s more passionate about? Will the revolution(s) be overturned? And so on.

            But what actually happens is that after the demonstration, all our characters retire to a bar to discuss whether or not the display they’ve just witnessed is genuine. The hero has a flash of inspiration and realises that the demonstration was intended to mask the German’s real technological discovery and –

            – and that’s it. The story just stops. But, but, but – I want to know what happened to all these new, interesting people I’ve just met, and the unusual worlds in which they live, and the wife’s job, and, and, and –

            It reminds me of the old Russian folk story where the devil makes a deal with a farmer: that he can have all the land he’s able to walk around in a day. But if he’s not back by sunset, the devil takes his soul.

            So the farmer starts out at dawn and it being a long summer’s day, he heads out wide, figuring he’s got plenty of time to circle back. He’s relaxed; he takes in lots of details, extends his circle a little to include that especially fertile-looking meadow over there; then that dark, mysterious wood his children will enjoy playing in; and, oh, let’s have that bend in the river, too, where he can sell the fishing rights . . . and a little further out he goes again.

            But he notices that the sun is directly overhead and his circle is not half-way drawn yet. So he thinks he’d better flatten out the return curve and speed up a little. But he can’t resist fanning out just a little more to include that rich-looking peat bog, and that stand of valuable oak . . .

            Before he knows it, the sun is setting behind his home hill, and the devil’s long shadow is directly in front of him. With horror, he runs, all thought of endless profit gone from his mind. But he’s too late: just before he reaches the devil, the sun disappears below the horizon . . .

            On the other hand, there would have been a different problem, story-wise, if the farmer had instead sprinted out in a long, frugal oval, diligently turning back at noon (or just before) and rushing back to make sure his soul was safe.

            Which brings me on to the other end of this particular bar, to Plot Drive.

            My other story example starts with a murder. The killer could be a female robot that looks and acts exactly like a human. Two cops are on the case, male and female. They have to interrogate the robot which must answer their questions truthfully; in fact, she shouldn’t be able to do anything else. And yet, there is more than a hint that she might have been thinking for herself . . . The story thunders along, setting up a fascinating scenario where the robot will testify in court, where her guilt or innocence depends on just how human she has become. The female cop goes home to prepare for the court case and –

            – it just stops! No court case, no decision . . .

            This was the story that had me turning over the Kindle, staring at the blank scene, going, “No, no, no!”

            Both stories should probably have been novels. Both drove off the cliff edge – one like a sprinting Wile E Coyote, the other like the Magical Mystery Tour bus that just didn’t manage to turn in time.

            One was mainly overcome, I think, by Character Drive, the other by Plot Drive.

            But here I should pause again for a moment to reflect. Both stories sold to very good magazines, and both were selected for a top collection. So does it matter that they don’t end satisfactorily? (For me, at least.)

            Whether or not the authors intended to finish where they did is difficult to tell, but my writer’s gut instinct is that they didn’t actually plan it that way. I suspect they set out on their different drives then at some point had to make the decision whether to extend into a novella or novel. Or to cut things short.

            I’m sure both authors could argue convincingly about why they ended where they did. And these are the decisions writers have to make, which are rarely totally right or totally wrong. However, I do feel that where short stories are concerned, they’re more likely to fully satisfy readers if the author has pitched his mind to an ending before he starts to write. This can be the expression of a fine feeling, the conclusion of a set of meaningful actions, or the making of a moral point. He then draws his story-mind along the line connecting the start with the finish.

            He may in fact subvert the ending when he gets there. Or take it a couple of steps further.

            But what he doesn’t do is Coyote over the cliff edge.

“I’ve been looking for the best bike oil–sorry, lube,” I say to Nige, figuring he’ll be interested in a technical discussion. I spent half a day on the internet yesterday, reading all the customer reviews on the leading lubes. “I’ve been a Purple Extreme man up to now but I’m finding myself attracted to Finish Line.”

“Well, it can’t be easy getting your purple extreme over the finish line, Tel.”

We’re in the Jolly Farmers, on the edge of Lewisham. It’s Tuesday and not a Quiz or Singalong night, which means there are only a few of us at the bar. Harold, a regular whose hair I’ve watched turn grey and shoulders irreversibly stoop over the years, is nodding slightly on his stool. One day, the barmaid will ask him if he wants another and there’ll be no reply.

I’m planning to use a lube analogy with my writing group. Maybe I’ll tell them that in order to write well these days, you have to take some apparent backwards steps, back to a time when people did all their own decorating, repairs and, well, lubing.

“What’s wrong with 3-IN-ONE?” says Nige. “I use it for everything.”

“Well, I used it too, when I was a kid,” I say. “When we did all our own bike maintenance. But that was before lube technology improved so much.”

“Yeah, right. Improved about as much as paint brush technology.”

“Do you know,” I say, determined to get on with the analogy, “that people take their bikes into the shop these days, just to have a puncture fixed.”

I snort to show that I do at least fix my own punctures.

“I can see the sense in that,” he says. “I mean, how long does it take you to fix a puncture?”

I think about this for a few seconds, remembering the last time I mended one. As usual, I’d forgotten the exact process, so, what with all the remembering, then the struggle with the tyre levers, and the even bigger struggle getting the damn thing back on the wheel — “Oh, about half an hour,” I say.

“And how much does the shop charge to fix a puncture?” he says.

“Eight quid, I think.”

He wags his head from side to side, calculating. “So, if you work in the City and make say £50 quid an hour, half an hour’s going to be £25 of your time, ain’t it? Cheaper to pay someone else to do it.”

“Yes, but no one’s writing is going to improve if we don’t fix our own punctures.”

He laughs, then sips daintily at this lager, in strong contrast to the half-pint gulps he’ll be taking two minutes from closing time in an hour or so. “How are you going to have time to write if you’re fixing your own punctures?” he says. “And doing the gardening, cleaning, decorating and all that other boring crap?”

“Yes, but it’s not just about saving money, is it? It’s about doing something under your own steam, getting fitter and knowing you’re going to arrive at work on time.”

“As long as you don’t get a bleedin’ puncture.”

#

Several years back, when I’d first decided to cycle to work, I’d thought carefully about the kind of bike I would need. Taking into account the weather, the need to carry stuff, the short winter days, and the largely flat journey, I’d concluded that the ideal commuting bike was a solid job with a basket at the front, three hub gears and a dynamo lighting system, probably no more than a hundred and fifty pounds the lot.

So I went into Action Bikes, Victoria branch, clear in mind about what machine I needed and therefore sure I’d be in there for no more than a few minutes.

However, the last time I’d been in a bike shop was 1969 when there were only two types on offer: the practical kind I now had in mind and the ‘racing’ model with drop handlebars and five gears (ten for the seriously sporty).

Things had changed since I was seventeen. I was prepared to ignore ‘racing’ bikes, no matter how attractive, since I knew their wheels were too delicate for pot-holes. And I was clued in enough to realise that the ‘mountain’ bikes one now saw everywhere were energy-inefficient in that their wide tires provided too much friction with the road surface.

What I wasn’t prepared for was a new category of bike – the ‘hybrid’ – apparently the perfect combination of the style and speed of the racer and the rugged strength of the mountain bike.

In the modern manner, there were several dozen variations of hybrid to choose from and after an hour or so my mind had become curiously numb towards pure practicality. So it was that I found myself shelling out five hundred pounds on a Trek with twenty-one gears and suspension. Well, there is a bit of a hill up to Brockley Cemetery so the eighteen extra gears should come in handy.

My model did not come with mudguards, lights or anything to carry stuff in. So I spent another hour choosing accessories with the knowledgeable and bike-mad Kiwi assistant. We could have spent a lot longer on lights alone, since I learnt about several different dynamo arrangements I could choose from; then there were all the battery systems, ranging from around ten pounds a set to over five hundred for the twin headlight nickel cadmium rechargeable halogen trail search beam specials. But I think we both realised I wasn’t seriously bike-aware after our cycle shorts conversation.

“These are lycra shorts?” I said.

“Yes, mate; they prevent chafing, around your bollocks mainly.”

“Are they easy to wash?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.”

I was thinking about the special short style mudguards I’d just purchased. I could have got the old-fashioned type which cover most of your wheels but don’t look so good. Kiwi had assured me that the stylish ones would “keep most of the crap off your arse, mate,” but I had the distinct feeling that I would still be sporting a brown skid-mark on the outside of my lycra shorts whenever it rained. And they didn’t seem to make shorts in brown.

“I don’t suppose you sell specially thin underpants to go with the shorts, do you?” I joked.

“You don’t wear ’em with pants, mate.”

We both looked at each other in disbelief.

The vision of skid marks on the inside and outside of my shorts ended my fashion coma, and from that point on we moved swiftly through the rest of the accessories.

Mind you, the carry rack, specially designed waterproof panniers, lights, mudguards, luminous vest, high-pressure pump and tungsten steel lock came to another hundred and fifty pounds, making six hundred and fifty in total.

Well, that was the price of a year’s season ticket at the time, so the bike would be paying its way in about twelve months. Although I should really add on the cost of a yearly service, replacement parts like the brake blocks (Shimano specials at a mere sixteen pounds a set), having to take the train when the weather’s too bad at non-season ticket rates and therefore probably looking at about ten years before I broke even. But at least I’d save the odd eight quid mending my own punctures and lubing my own chain.

#

It’s now eleven-nineteen and Nige has just reached for his last pint. I’m feeling a little light-headed, either from the beer of the realisation I don’t have a clue what to teach my writing group tomorrow.

“3-IN-ONE really lubes everything?” I say.

Nige swallows half the pint, frowns. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend using it for foreplay with your missus, Tel. And in my case, given the continuing hiatus in my sex life, I’d probably do better starting with WD-40 the next time I get lucky.”

I finish my pint and put down the glass so it’s half on and half off the beer mat, something I know really annoys Nige’s inner spirit level. “Most of my writing group finds it hard to actually sit down and just take off,” I say. “So I’m going to tell them that they can’t wear pants and lycra fashion shorts .”

“Which means what exactly?” says Nige, glaring at the barmaid to come take my glass away.

“That whatever way you ride, you can’t afford to worry about your skid marks showing.”

The barmaid still has her back to us so Nige reaches out and moves my glass to the centre of the beer mat. “I know what you should tell your writing group,” he says.

“What?”

“To quit searching for the perfect bleedin’ word and just 3-IN-ONE it.”

Recently, I took a workshop on Show Not Tell with a group of new writers. In preparing the session, it occurred to me that there are different ways to approach such a core subject, from the easy to reach to the damn near impossible to get hold of, and perhaps it’s a tutor’s duty to try for the latter as much as possible.

My struggle was about how to talk discuss this issue at a more fundamental level than normal. And ‘normal’ means, for example, that instead of Telling the reader your main character is really funny, you Show him doing and saying things that actually make the reader laugh. So the reader doesn’t get peed off that he isn’t laughing despite the author having told him he will be. But I felt there was more to this than being prescriptive about what constitutes a Tell or Show. Besides, great writers have no problem Telling in the most direct manner when it suits their purposes.

I thought about a biography I’d read recently which had been written from tapes made by the man in question in conversation with the author of the book. However, she’d included a prologue in which she repeatedly told the reader how ‘hilarious’ (amongst other qualities) her subject was. Yet, although the book was interesting, I didn’t find myself laughing at all. I suspect he’d been funny in the tape sessions, but the author didn’t have the skill to Show this in prose. Perhaps she felt she’d not succeeded and therefore tried to Tell us up front to fill in the missing Show for her.

About the same time, I bumped into the blog of a writer I knew from having shared a writers’ forum with him some time back. He was promoting his (quite expensive) online tutorial in short fiction writing, declaring that you would be working with a ‘master’ of the art. I didn’t recall him showing much mastership on the forum, so I checked out his latest credentials but all he had by way of short fiction writing credits were a few placings in magazines and journals that don’t pay anything. I then checked out his Writing Tips page and read his entry for short fiction: basically, a long list of Dos and Don’ts.

So, I found myself thinking that the first absurdity in creative writing tutoring is writers who haven’t really written anything creditable advising new writers on how to write. This, of course is a form of Telling rather than Showing in itself. And the next absurdity is the same people making lists of Dos and Don’ts. In short, a lot of writing advice is prescriptive on the one hand, and only deals with obvious issues on the other. Together, this constitutes a barrier to progression, I believe. Or to put it another way, and to use that old adage about polishing poo, what’s the point in perfectly Showing a turd? It’s still a turd and would probably be better vacated with a quick bit of Telling.

This led me to figure that the heart of this subject (and probably many others) might lie in how much a writer is willing to be both honest about himself and to take risks. At which point, I found myself thinking about the concept of Essence and Personality as taught by Gurdjieff, e.g.:

“Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. But in proportion as personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it very often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very often that the essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and, in the accepted meaning of the word, highly ‘educated’ man, stops on the level of a child of five or six. This means that everything we see in this man is in reality ‘not his own.’ What is his own in man, that is, his essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in his simplest emotions. There are cases, however, when a man’s essence grows in parallel with his personality. Such cases represent very rare exceptions especially in the circumstances of cultured life.”

(From ‘In Search of the Miraculous’ by P. D. Ouspensky, a book about the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff.)

The personality, then, is constantly Telling all about itself to other personalities. But everything it says is predictable, safe and conventionally detailed. Personality/Telling builds a self-satisfied protective shell around the essence, ensuring it rarely emerges to embarrass the host. So, I think the key to true Showing is for the author to force a way past his well-developed protective opinions, to retrieve some raw essence, cram it directly into his front brain, then do his utmost best to find the words it needs – so a reader can feel the same essence when reading them.

Which isn’t to say we don’t need a personality. Clearly, you’d not get through a working day if you couldn’t just say “Fine!” when your boss asks how you are, instead of providing him with a one-hour description of the multi-layered state of your essence. Similarly, your reader won’t get through a story that doesn’t have sufficient and comfortable personality props. But I also don’t believe your story will be memorable if it lacks essence altogether.

If Gurdjieff is right, then Show Not Tell becomes a matter of life or death for the writer. If he can’t Show essence in his writing, if he’s restricted to dead and derivative Telling, then how can he possibly teach anything?

What I said to the group was that Show not Tell is a quest, not a set of Dos and Don’ts. As a writer, you’re committed to fight for the essence of your story and characters, which means having the courage to search your own essence first. And the key to that search is in saying no – because the personality always wants it easy. So you say no to the first, second and probably a few more words that your personality fetches from its mental smartphone to ‘solve’ your story issues. There is an element of sheer forcing about this, a battle with the surface of yourself, the one you use most of the time just to survive. No wonder writers are strange. Why through choice would you want to fight yourself?

Because when you make those rare breakthroughs, all the years of practice and effort you’ve put in magically energise and make exciting and meaningful connections to the truth of character, story and uplifting prose.

I’m in the Mr Morris wine bar in Brockley with Ben from Number Eight.

Nige isn’t here but he also comes in quite a lot, mainly because it’s downhill, literally, to our street. Which means he can have a bucket or two of larger, just point himself in the right direction then stumble on down without too much thought.

One night, there was a knock on my door. It was Nige who’d yet again lost his keys and needed the spare set he leaves with me.

Despite this, he looked very pleased with himself, swaying gently in the midnight breeze.

“Tel: guess where I’ve walked back from, full of ale, with no problems at all, no bleedin’ satnav necessary, thank you very much?”

“An interview to join the Ku Klux Klan?”

He frowned. “I may be a conspiracist, Tel, but I ain’t no Nazi sheet-lifter.”

I went to fetch his keys and a mirror. “Take a look,” I said.

“Jesus.”

Nige was covered in white powder: jeans, jacket, hair and face. Turns out, his stumble downhill wasn’t as smooth as his lager-swamped brain had believed.

“I must have bounced off every soddin’ white-washed garden wall in town . . . ”

Ben runs an independent bookshop near Brockley, which has managed to survive mainly because he and his wife, Sue, know their customers and their books, and which go best with which. But it’s increasingly difficult for them to hold out against cheap books in the major chains and from Amazon and the like.

We’ve come to Mr Morris to moan about the state of publishing and eat some good home cooked food. Unfortunately, the menu’s changed since we were last here.

“All they’re doing is bread, cheese and olives,” says Ben reading the tiny menu card and sounding as disappointed as if his daughter had announced she’s marrying a Waterstone. “I was looking forward to a nice juicy steak and big fat home-made chips.”

“I’ll ask Robert,” I say, heading for the bar.

Mr Morris is all dark wood and I fleetingly wonder why it is that such lighting in a working class pub would make me suspect they were hiding dirt. Whereas here, well, it all adds to the ambience. Which always sounds to me like an emergency vehicle for bees; then again–

“What can I get you, Terry?” says Robert, who manages somehow to look as if he’s occupying the entire other side of the counter. Maybe this is because he actually owns the place, isn’t just managing it. I’ve seen him before now run outside to berate and even bash yobs mucking about in the bus shelter nearby, because I guess they’re inside Robert’s ambient reach. I wonder if I should risk a joke about atmosphere and buzzing insects. Probably not.

“Well, I would have said steak and chips, except you aren’t doing it any more?”

At the last moment, I turn ‘more’ into a question, thus avoiding what might have been taken as a challenge.

Robert’s bald head wrinkles slightly with his thoughts. “Caroline and I decided . . . ” he begins, and I lean on the counter, settling into that strange condition I seem to spend too much time in, which is doing a lot of listening, even when I’m the customer. Who’s supposed to be always right. Or at least served.

Ten minutes later, I put down the wine bottle and two glasses on our table.

“I’m still hungry,” says Ben.

“It’s quite interesting, actually,” I say, pouring the wine. “What Caroline and Robert have decided to do with the food here is similar to what I’ve been trying to tell my writing group.”

“Is there anything that isn’t?”

“Before, they had to hire two chefs and a washer-upper, and were constantly run off their feet getting in supplies, and so on, which also meant the drinks side began to suffer.”

“I remember the supplies,” he says. “Yum, yum.”

“Anyway, when the chefs quit, they decided not to replace them. Instead, they thought ‘less is more’ and cut the menu down. It’s now pretty basic but they only use good ingredients that they prepare themselves. Which means they can bring the same level of care to everything, drinks too. It’s like with writing–”

He groans and rather over-does his point, I think, by banging his head softly on the table.

“–if you stick to the stuff you’re really good at, the magic will take care of itself.”

He frowns, takes a long swallow of wine. “You’re forgetting something. Caroline and Robert aren’t providing what their customers really want. They’re just dishing up cheese and bread instead of pies and roasts and custard, you know, the magic stuff.”

Hmmm. Looks as if this lesson might need some tweaking.

But before I can, Ben is hammering home his point. “If me and Sue,” he says, “decided to stock only a few classics–couple of Shakespeares, one or two Dickens and a Jane Austen for light relief, say, and don’t worry because we’d print them off ourselves, using only the best paper available, stuck together with glue made from organic free-range horse hooves–do you think our customers would be happy?”

“Well, I–”

“The great thing about places that provide hot food is that bloody Amazon can’t get into the market. Not yet, anyway. I suppose it won’t be long before you can sit at your kitchen table, dial into Amazon and in seconds there’ll be a plate of steaming hot spag bog in front of you and a Virtual Reality butler to tickle your balls while he pours you a nice cold glass of Pinot Grigio.”

“Clearly, hunger’s affecting your normally optimistic nature.”

He swallows the rest of his glass, fills it again. “You want to know how this is like writing, Terry?”

“Do I need my notebook for this?”

“I’ve spent most of my life selling books because I love them. I used to love them, I should say. But for years now publishers have been putting out mostly crap. Stripping everything down to bread and cheese genre basics. And because they control the distribution, authors have had to follow suit. Oh, they promise steak and chips and spag bog–they sure can write tasty blurbs. But what they’ve actually done is the same as what’s happened here: Caroline and Robert turning out what suits them, not their customers.”

“But they still have an extensive wine list.”

“Yeah, but I came here for steak tonight. You want to know why I’m finally thinking of closing the shop? Because I see more hope for books in self-publishing. Yes, most of it is utter shite at the moment. But the important thing is, it’s not restricting the artist in any way. It hasn’t sacked them because it’s more costly to produce steak than bloody olives and a dip. God, I am hungry . . . ”

In the event, we decide that wine is more essential than food, and by the end of the evening Ben is congratulating Robert on doing things his way and to hell with bloody Cafe Rouge, All Bar One and all those other faux family wine bars.

We do a bit of a Nige on the way back down to our street, and I remind myself to brush down my clothes before bumbling through the door. As I watch Ben swaying up to his front door, fumbling in his pocket for keys, his shoulders seem a little more bent than normal but maybe that’s just the wine and lack of food affecting my perceptions.

I wake up at around three in the morning to the sound of voices from behind the house. I go to the study where the window’s open, it being a warm summer night. Tom, Nige and Kath are sitting out on Kath’s decking, facing the dark row of trees at the back of our houses.

Tom is singing the praises of brain implants. “I can’t wait to have one of ’em stuck in me ‘ead on the NHS. They’re designed so they sit right next to the pleasure centre in your brain. They give you this little control box and anytime you want a religious experience or an orgasm, you just press a button and it’s like the real thing: you don’t even have to leave your armchair.”

Nige laughs. “So, how’s that going to change your life, Tom? You spend most of the day in your armchair already, and you just press a little button on your TV remote control whenever you want vicarious experiences.”

“You’ve missed the point, pillock: these are real, virtual experiences not vicarious ones.”

“So, why stop there? You could have an implant that makes you think you’re virtually doing your garden or finishing the decorating you virtually started three years ago. It’ll be real to you but virtual to the rest of us.”

“I ain’t listening, Nige, because I know that you’re really a figment of my implant.”

Kath says, “Boys, let me get you another drink.”

“Tom doesn’t need one,” says Nige, “he can just activate his beer implant. So I’ll have his.”

I imagine that in Mediterranean countries, such late night neighbourly intercourse is fairly common, but not really in South East London, even in summer. We all get on pretty well here but mostly keep to ourselves. Usually, we stop short of a certain line which demarks the zone of family-like involvement. Which I think is interesting, because authors are almost duty bound to get their characters to step over that line.

Stepping over the line in real life can be painful. Kath, for instance, is a naturally kind-hearted woman, and probably stepped over the line a while back with old Bill, her neighbour on the other side.

Bill had lived in our street since moving there with his wife when still a young man. His house was actually two flats, above and below. After his wife’s death in the early eighties, he continued to live alone in the bottom flat, never even entering the one upstairs.

Bill’s survival was based on cheery stoicism, mixed with downright stubbornness. Basically, he resisted almost any offers of help. The day before he died at the age of ninety-two, he’d walked to the corner shop as usual to buy the day’s food. He didn’t believe in refrigerators and perhaps he was right not to, since the daily walk probably kept him fit and alive.

Several times Nige had offered to repair and decorate the upstairs flat for free, so that Bill could rent or sell it. But Bill always said no, that he didn’t need the money and especially didn’t want any stranger buggers living over his head.

Perhaps the peak example of Bill’s resistance occurred about five years back. Kath received a call from the hospital one evening to say they had Bill. Fearing the worst, she rushed there to find him recovering but confused as to what had happened. After speaking to doctors, it transpired that Bill had fallen into the Thames and rapidly been swept into mid-stream. Two young men drinking outside the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich saw an old man thrashing in the churning brown waters. They dived in and swam out to him where he tried to fight them off, insisting that he was all right and didn’t need their help.

Who knows, maybe Bill was resisting more life, too.

Bill did allow Kath to visit him most days, to check he was all right; and in later years she’d done quite a bit of cleaning and washing for him, too. Then one day she discovered what she’d always feared.

She told us Bill had quite a lot of money saved up, in addition to the value of the two flats. However, he hadn’t left a will. She’d tried to encourage him to make one on a few occasions, pointing out that since he didn’t have any family, the state would take everything when he died. Of course, he refused. Now, his flats have been empty for a year while solicitors work out the legal aspects of selling his estate. Apparently, the proceeds won’t go to the state, however, since a distant cousin has been traced.

Kath has never complained about Bill’s legacy. And I guess that says something about her and maybe something about the kind of person and the kind of community which exists in this part of the world, and about the various prices involved in crossing lines.

If Bill and Kath’s story was made into a novel or movie, I guess the author would have to make Kath bitter and plot to murder the distant relative when they turned up. Or go mad at what might have been. Plots have to contain a main character with a problem/issue that goes through a climax before it’s resolved. But, I don’t know, I sometimes wish we could write stories about decent folk who stumble about more or less doing the right thing without wanting anything back.

“I will finish the decorating,” says Tom, “I just ain’t got anyone to share the results of it with at the moment.”

Nige laughs. “Why don’t you ask out that Tracy Emin. I hear she’s pretty handy with a brush.”

“Nah,” says Tom, “she’s even lazier than me. Can’t even be bothered to make her bleedin’ bed.”

“Good at the old make do and mend, though,” says Nige. “Did you hear about the tent she made out of a load of her old boyfriends’ Y-fronts?”

I go back to bed, just as Kath says, “Is that because she needed a fly sheet . . . ”

Before sleeping, I wonder if Emin crossed a line, in putting her lovers’ names on public display like that. Well, of course she did. That’s what artists do. And writers. ‘Never tell a writer your secrets’, someone once said, who obviously had.

“Do you keep your tools sharp?” I ask Nige. We’re standing at the bar of The Ladywell Tavern. It’s 11.16 pm and Nick has three full pints of lager lined up in front of him. I know from experience that he is waiting for eighteen past which will give him a leisurely two minutes in which to down them all. In the meantime, he keeps adjusting the glasses so they are in a dead straight line, exactly two inches (not 25 mm) apart. I suspect he also has to prevent his fingers twitching towards his absent spirit level to check the heads are even.

“You been listening to Radio 4 again, Tel?”

I struggle to control my surprise, since he is right. Then again, he knows I get most of my material from Radio 4.

His gaze flicks to the large clock on the wall above the door, then back to the young barman serving someone a couple of yards away.

Nige is a conspiracy theory enthusiast but also something of a traditionalist. He still follows builders’ etiquette, for example, which is that you don’t want to have an empty glass in front of you at two minutes to drinking up time. Trouble is, The Ladywell Tavern is one of these new-fangled pubs which doesn’t always close when it’s supposed to.

“Well, yes,” I say, “they had this carpenter on who said that when his plane is really sharp, the work is easy, the wood just seems to lift away of its own accord.”

“Yeah, right.”

He isn’t concentrating. I’m going to have to settle his mind. “Excuse me,” I say to the barman, surprised when he hears and comes over to us. Usually, amongst Tavern bar staff, the ratio of looking cool to being efficient is directly equal to the ratio between old git and getting served.

“What time are you closing tonight?” I say.

He shrugs. “Not sure. May stay open another half hour or so since it’s busy.”

Nige turns pale and his long brown grey-tinged hair seems to lose its normal gloss (literally) sheen.

“Can I get you gents another,” says the barman, adding ” . . . three?” in Nige’s case. Which is actually quite humorous for a cool guy.

“We’ll get back to you,” I say.

Nige’s complicated mind is at work on something, possibly the dilemma of having to drink slowly for once. But then he says, “Thing is, that carpenter meant what he said literally. If his plane ain’t sharp then taking an inch off a piece of wood will be like trying to shave with a bleedin’ spatula. He wasn’t saying carpentry is like art. That’s just what you writer types choose to think–”

He’s right. That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. I’d just wanted him to agree so I can use it as an analogy in the creative writing group I’m taking.

“–what exactly are your tools anyway? Just a bleedin’ keyboard and your fingertips. Don’t see how you can keep them sharp. Clean, maybe; clean pipes is what plumbers aim for, which is I suppose why you eat too much of that brown rice shit, Tel. It’s like putting pebbles in an exhaust pipe; which is interesting when you think of the term ‘pebble dash’ . . . ”

Nige is now displaying builder’s stream of consciousness syndrome, brought on by the contradiction of laws resulting from having got in as much as one can but not yet being able to swallow it for fear of suffering the major faux pas of being in a pub after closing time with an empty glass.

But in amongst his flowing polyfillababble, I get the point about over-analogising. Earlier this week, there’d been some heated exchanges on one of my writers’ forums, following a new literary fiction writer posting to ask for ideas about where she could learn from other literary writers. I’d suggested the published genre writers on the site would have some good ideas too. But she asked what could she possibly learn from say children’s and science fiction writers (both genres of mine)? And gave the analogy that the number 9 and the number 6 buses go different routes. I, not as calmly as I’d have liked, pointed out that the number 9 and number 6 are indeed going in different directions, but children’s, science fiction and literary authors are in many respects travelling the same route. She didn’t agree. Much time was wasted (which of course is the main purpose of writers’ forums).

” . . . don’t want to end up with a wall of tapes full of useless secrets,” Nige concludes. I haven’t caught the lead-in to this arcane piece of advice but I know what he’s talking about.

In our quiet little South East London street, Nige’s front room is still the way it was when Amanda lived with him. For instance, there is a candle stick at each end of the mantelpiece. But after nearly a year of central heating and dope fumes the candles are now drooping, a libidinous symbol I am not willing to point out to him for fear of any voodooish transference properties they may possess.

Both expanses of wall either side of Nige’s mantelpiece are packed with books and videotapes. Serving his conspiracy needs, the books are mostly histories, biographies and stuff by anti-establishment writers like Noam Chomsky. Nige’s mind is not constricted by standard education since, as he says, he went to a daily war-zone comprehensive where the greatest sign of weakness anyone could display was an interest in learning anything.

His video collection is full of bits of brass plucked form twenty years worth of TV muck. I haven’t actually seen any of it, much as I would like to, on account of Amanda’s parting shot when she left him. Nige, being thorough and orderly, had numbered each of his two hundred or so cassettes, then listed their contents in an index book. For reasons which still escape him she took the index book with her when she left.

He downs the first of his three pints in around 15 seconds then says, “You Radio 4 types will see all kinds of moral allusions in Amanda stripping the bleedin’ ID from me tape collection. But you want to know the real reason she did it?” He picks up the second pint, perhaps studying the thousands of rising little globes of light in its amber core; perhaps not.

“She’s just a vindictive cow.”