Day Two

Got an email today from someone in America, wanting to link my blog to websites which would pay me. Seemed very suspicious, so I did not respond. If they mean business, they will surely contact me again.

As I said on Day One, I used to be an accountant. I was contacted today by an ex client whose company accounts are about a year late, so he is in line for all sorts of dire penalties. Companies House have said he must get his accounts to them by November 11th (Armistice Day) or else. Or else what, I am not quite sure. Anyway, I have been beavering away at the number crunching all day to try and get him off the hook, for a largish fee. I am supposed to be retired, cultivating my garden, dozing in front of the telly, for which I am now exempt from the licence fee, eating cake and drinking tea in Community Centres. No thank you.

Tonight, if I wasn't writing this blog, I would be working on my new novel, called "Holding Hands at midnight."

Holding hands at midnight
Neath a starry sky,
Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try.

1937 song by Ira Gershwin 1896 - 1983.

In 1961 I was going home from the pub when I came across a young woman, lying in the gutter with a broken arm and ribs and a brutally kicked in face, and one eye so swollen you couldn't see the eye at all. No mobile phones in those days and difficult to find a phone box, so quicker than an ambulance was to pop her in the back of the car and take her to hospital, which I did, and I stayed all night to see she was OK.

It turned out she was a prostitute, and a lesbian, which was OK by me, quite interesing I thought. I contacted her girlfriend about clean clothes and stuff, and I kept in touch, regularly visiting while they kept her in hospital. In those days they kept you in hospital until they were sure you were better.

At that time I worked in a bakery and I rented a room from an American couple. He was stationed here in the USAF. I did not know he was an armourer handling tactical nuclear weapons. That means small ones you can put on a helicopter, though their bang would be as big as Hiroshima. Anyway, because of the sensitive nature of his job, the FBI or the CIA had investigated me. When I was a student I had supplied Radio Moscow with reception reports on various wavelengths in various parts of Britain. In return they had played the whole of Brahms' second piano concerto on Moscow Mailbag (about 40 minutes). But poor old Sergeant Rick, my landlord was told "Get rid of that commie, or be confined to base and separated from your family." He had a little boy aged 6 months and they kept him most of the time well wrapped up in a drawer of the sideboard in their living room, as I assumed Americans were wont to do, with the drawer partially open, naturally.

So I was homeless. The girls took me in because I had been so good to them. So suddenly I was living with two very attractive lesbian prostitutes. I continued to do so for a considerable time, and a very happy time. And that is the basis of my next novel, which is coming along nicely, but you will have to wait. No further information will be forthcoming until it is finished and published, which may not be for a while. I have only done 200 pages. The last one was 538.

See you again soon.