When I haven't posted anything to this blog for a while, it may be tempting to assume that my life has fallen appart. Failing to maintain your internet presence, like failing to maintain an adequate skin-care regime, is the first sign that all is not right on the inside, in your brain, is the kind of opinion I imagine you holding.I was eating a Major Cheddar (you know, those giant Mini Cheddars which come packaged like a standard, cylindrical packet of biscuits - what japes!) and suddenly bit down on something hard and marble-like, which turned out to be a piece of tooth and a large lead-like filling which I'd had installed around 15 years ago when they still made tooth fillings out of crushed thermometers, moon dust and cyanide.
The resulting pain was something I can only describe as "whistly". So I registered with a charming dentist who discovered another filling that needed replacing in a tooth which wasn't even hurting yet!
'Bit of a sweet tooth, sir?' he said.
'Ung,' I said, trying not to rustle the qtr. of Kola Kubes against the qtr. of Coughing Candy in my jacket pocket. I am always on the back foot at the doctors, etc., as a result of just having lied about my weekly alcohol intake (especially as 1 unit = standing near a quiz machine, 5 units = receiving communion, 10 units = a small serving of trifle).
'It's quite deep cavity. It's probably fruit,' he said. 'You eat your six a day, right?'
[Thinks: SIX?!]
'Oh yeth,' I said, noticing, as I formed the words, that there was sherbert on one of my shoes.
'Do me a favour then,' he said, 'just zush them all up in a blender and drink it all down in one go. It's much better for your teeth.'
Joke's on him, of course, as I'm lucky if I eat six pieces of fruit a week and most of the things I drink describe themselves - with charming self-deprecation - as a "juice drink". It's a shame that even the things that are good for us are actually bad for us as well, eh?
In other news, there's a stunningly lovely review of Planet-Shaped Horse by Alex Campbell right here. It is the kind of review which more or less makes up for all the crappy reviews I've ever received in that it shows that another human being who doesn't know me completely gets something I've written, thereby proving that all the stupid critics who've written stupid bad reviews in the past were just doing it because they were stupid! That was why! Because they were stupid! I almost feel silly for not having seen it before. Why lose sleep over the opinion of someone who is stupid? Ooh, I hope I get that job at Stupid Land! I wonder what the stupid interviewers thought of me? I hope I answered their stupid questions properly! WHO DOES THAT?! WHO WOULD EVER WORRY ABOUT THAT?!
More PSH bonus content to follow. I've sold the last fifty copies and have just received a new bundle today, so keep those orders trickling in to L.N.Kennard@bham.ac.uk. I'm off to the post office. As Harold from Neighbours once appeared to say when I was watching it with the sound down, "We are two great seabirds."
