Amazing how paranoia can get to you. Was having slightly weird dream. I was walking up Poynders Road in Clapham and there was an extremely lanky, black youth cycling in circles in the middle of the road, on a racing bike that was too small for him. He was more comic than threatening. But slightly further up the road was a small, ginger-haired, white girl. "Do you want to buy a racing bike?" she scowled. For some reason her general demeanour was terrifying. Despite her being a small, ginger-haired girl. Her face went a bit like the way Bilbo Baggins' does when he gets possessive about his ring in the film. I know it doesn't sound very frightening. But it was.
So much so, it woke me up with a start. And I did that thing that happens in films, but never (I thought) in real life, where you sit up sharply as you wake going, "Argh!"
For some reason I was convinced there was someone in the house. Every noise seemed to confirm this, but I knew I was being stupid, so tried to ignore it. Just as I was drifting off again I thought I heard a big bang, like a door being kicked in. (if it was actually real, it was probably my girlfriend's baby kicking out against his cot)
By this time I had invented a scenario where a professional hit-man paid to kill me or my girlfriend had gained access to the house (in a fairly bumbling fashion for a pro as I'd heard him crashing around like a bull in a shop containing nothing as fragile as china, but that still made a dull thud when it fell on the floor. Maybe a bull in a book shop. But a book-shop that only sells paperbacks.). I was even imagining how knowing he was there, I could anticipate him bursting into the room and leap on him unexpectedly, disarming him in the process. Possibly I would die, but the resulting commotion would alert the neighbours (who had probably slept through the soft-backed bibliophile bull-like behaviour, but were bound to be roused by the disarming and the fatal gunshot that went off in the struggle) and at least my girlfriend and her baby would be spared. I would be a hero and the church at my funeral would be full of weeping women, who had secretly loved me all through my life, all dressed in black (though slightly inappropriately revealing) clothing, and dabbing at their faces with white, lace handkerchiefs, who would then all lez up... in honour of me.
I had honestly thought it through to this extent.
I knew there was nobody in the house, but also knew I wouldn't sleep unless I went down and checked. Like if there had been someone that me going down and checking was going to do any earthly good "Ah yes, there you are. Oh good shot!". Let's not even get into who would be prepared to actually pay this slap-stick assassin to murder me or Stephanie. But there are dark forces....
I looked in all the rooms, was momentarily spooked by my jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the dark kitchen, but amazingly the assailant was no-where to be seen. Perhaps he had glimpsed me coming down the stairs and realised him and his guns and knives would be no match for a naked, overweight bloke who hadn't even thought to pick up so much as a coat-hanger to protect himself with.
I still wasn't ready to sleep. I sat downstairs and played on my gameboy and read before finally going back to bed at around 1.30am.
My girlfriend slept through the whole thing. If only she could have known how brave I was on her behalf she would have been very flattered. As long as no-one told her about the funerary lesbian action.
This is a piece I wrote for the Observer Book of the Year feature for today's Observer, which the Observer decided not to print!
The book that has impressed me most for its sheer audacity is "Portrait of a Killer" by Patricia Cornwell. The cover proudly boasts "Jack The Ripper - Case closed" and Cornwell seems to think that she has proved beyond doubt that artist Walter Sickert was responsible for the Whitechapel (and several other assorted) murders. However, if you were to take out all the sentences in the book that include the words "may", "might have", "I assume", "could have", "purely speculative" or "it is beyond the realms of possibility", you would have a book of about two pages in length.
Sickert is guilty, apparently, because there is about 100 to chance that he wrote some of the Ripper letters and because he once painted a picture with "Jack the Ripper" in the title. But Cornwell also seems to have a similar chilling interest in Saucy Jack. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that she used her vast wealth to build a time machine? She might then have travelled back to Victorian England and could have killed all those women (she seems very proficient on the subject of how this would be done) in order to write a book about the mystery, making herself even more money. I have searched available records but there is no evidence that she wasn't in London in 1888.
I have to admit my thesis is purely speculative. But if any publishers are reading this I think I can pad that out to 365 pages.
