Yes, Hidden Gems is now a paperback. And selling really well on Amazon, Waterstone’s, and to order from all good bookshops! See the ‘Hidden Gems’ page on this blog for more details.

Look out for events too. I’m at Waterstone’s in Macclesfield on 3rd December 2011, where I’ll be chatting about Hidden Gems, and signing copies, from 10am-2pm. It should be a busy event if the feedback is any indication.

There’s also a Hidden Gems facebook page, so please pay it a visit and ‘like’, also follow me on Twitter @curtisboll

Thanks for all your support. I know it’s insane to want to make a living as an author, but I’ve tried the sane stuff, and it didn’t work for me.

C

Pietro Caprici once ran a profitable restaurant-cum-bar in London’s Soho. He was fortunate in that his establishment had attracted a legendary status due to the infamous nature of the hard core of his clientele, which consisted of a mixed and ragged group of successful artists, not-so successful writers, film company execs, minor pop-stars and a variety of society wannabes or had-beens. The core of this group was an ancient, charismatic American publishing millionaire, who had spent just about every day at Pietro’s place for as long as he could remember. Historically, here was the place to eat, get and stay drunk, do deals, and rest upon the shoulders and the comfort of those who were not strangers. But the world was changing and this was such a compact microcosm – soft-focused with alcohol, drugs and age – that they failed to notice the circling wolves of change were closing in. Maybe it was just arrogance. Outside the doors of Pietro’s place, sex shops closed and reopened as delicatessens, patisseries or fashionable wine bars. Damp rooms that once had done a healthy business in unhealthy executive massage became comfortable offices for agents of one kind or another. Attics, once used only as the last resting place for pigeons, became luxury loft apartments.
Pietro was the first to notice. Not so much because the streets were cleaner, but because his takings were shrinking. He had run his place for more than twenty years, but the last two in particular had been different. For years he had profited from violent drinking – even if there were only a few hardy regulars in, but recently cirrhosis had seen off a couple. Suicide another. Yet another had actually sold a film-script and moved to Los Angeles. Then there was that damned trend to move to the country or another country. He couldn’t help feeling there was something increasingly sad about the pocket of life he was sustaining. There used to be something strangely romantic about watching people drink themselves out of life, while dreaming of art in the process. This had meant there was always the hangers-on: the young wannabe artists or writers who sought notoriety rather than art and naively thought that fame and success were something that you could catch like a virus if you could get close enough to someone considered to be either famous or successful. This shifting perimeter was welcome as long as its constituents could buy drinks. But such was the capacity for consumption of those at the heart of it all, those on the outside rarely had enough money to keep the pace for long enough to keep them inside. Of course there were alternative tickets to the inner circle, particularly sex – the more creative the better. It was the shrinking periphery that first worried Pietro. He had a daughter of his own, Anna, now at University. She worked hard for good grades. Like most young people these days, she was ambitious. She enjoyed life, but she treated her education like it was part of a business plan. Anna wanted to go into either economics or politics, but Pietro had noticed a similar attitude in those of her friends who were in the arts. It seemed that success in art was now more about the hard sell, than a hard life. And the pitching arenas were the increasing number of bright, light, and busy bars, now spreading like a social infection – as it seemed to Pietro. He decided that something had to be done.
Thinking about it later, he was embarrassed by his own inexperience. The mice were the equivalent of dipping one’s toe into a swimming pool to test the water before gingerly stepping in. In all honesty, the mice were not successful. He had started by humanely trapping those that ran around his own kitchen. He would then visit one of the new bars or restaurants, and surreptitiously release the rodents while on his way to or from the toilet. After a lot of waiting while idly listening to Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’, his eventual call to the environmental health people guaranteed an inspection, and – Pietro hoped – a closure until the ‘problem’ had been sorted. There were so many bars that he managed to completely deplete the significant mouse population of his own kitchen. He resorted to buying them from Petticoat Lane market, getting a good deal for buying in bulk. While browsing among the stalls he also found some giant African cockroaches – bought as a job lot by the stallholder after they had been used in a TV game show. If Pietro knew anything, he knew a six-legged, brown, indestructible, hard-shelled bargain when he saw one, and several hundred of them scrabbling furiously in black bin-bag was too good to miss. He negotiated such a good deal, he wasn’t too bothered that he lost a fair few on the Tube on the way back.
The mice and the cockroaches were a start, but they did cost money, and, if Pietro was honest about it, the results were not really that effective. The Environmental Officers simple gave a warning, promised another inspection and recommended a pest control company. The anticipated closures never happened. The need for a new strategy was compounded on Pietro’s last trip to Petticoat Lane when there was not a mouse, nor any bargain insects to be found (he did momentarily consider the locusts, but not seriously). Impatiently, he bought the closest thing he could find – Russian hamsters.
Of course a plague of Russian hamsters was a great source of amusement to the environmental health officers who turned up at the trendy ‘Met-All’ bar in Greek Street. The only action taken was a temporary closure in order to catch the tiny fluff-balls – most of which ended up as school pets. The bar opened again after about an hour. Frustrated, out of pocket and exasperated, Pietro searched for a new plan. One that was more effective, less expensive, and didn’t involve rodents or large, exotic insects. His flash of inspiration came one evening while he was lighting candles in his bar.
Waste bins full greasy kitchen and restaurant waste burned well. They demanded the attention of the local fire brigade, generated lots of water and disruption, and generally guaranteed a few days closure while the place was cleaned up and checked over. But when one blazing bin accidentally set alight to the restaurant it belonged to, the results gave Pietro a strange, deep-rooted feeling of comfort and happiness which had little to do with salvaging his declining business. The accidental spread of combustion started a run of visits by the West End Fire Brigade into Soho to douse a series of mysterious fires in bars and restaurants. The tabloids latched onto ‘The Soho Bar Burner’.
One such tabloid with a blazing headline lay on a fine table in a large house in Hampstead. Around the table sat a business consortium from various locations around Eastern Europe. Over sub-zero vodka, they discussed the bad-luck that seemed to be dogging their business ventures in Soho. They had spent several years buying up most of the retail businesses, sex industry and buildings there — from vendors who were keen to sell with or without the necessary encouragement. The fact was that this was more of a hobby for them, rather than the serious business of import and export that they did with various governments around the world. A hobby was meant to be a casually enjoyable way of laundering pocket money, but somebody had dropped a red flag in with the expensive white shirts. It needed sorting out, so an investigation was instigated. The services were employed of an ex-policeman who had been asked to retire from the force after being presented with a dossier which listed a range of allegations, none of which could be actually proved, but not of which could be actually disproved either. Walter Mole settled into an early, but lucrative retirement, pursuing with renewed vigour the variety of business opportunities only dabbled in previously.
Walter might have been a bad cop, but he was a good detective. The trail was simple enough to follow. He started by compiling a list of all the problems that had started happening to all the restaurants. No stoner was left unturned. He included every event, including all the visits by environmental health officers. He was given a list of all the bars owned by the business consortium, and proceeded to interview the manager of each one, a task that was not at all unpleasant. Walter thought it only polite to accept any drinks on offer. He noted that there had been a short, but intense plague of mice in some of the consortium’s bars several months ago. But it was news of the giant cockroaches and hamsters that prompted him to get in touch with his contact in the environmental health department.
Finding someone who had bought a couple of dozen Russian hamsters in one go wouldn’t be too difficult. Pet shops proved fruitless, but a stallholder on Petticoat Lane proved to be very helpful. Of course he remembered selling bulk hamsters – to an Italian man who had become one of his best customers, in fact he had even invited him to his restaurant in Soho, but said there was no way he’d ever go:
‘I ain’t stupid! What do you fink he does wiv them poor little creatures!’
Walter Mole thanked the stallholder.
The light of revelation is illuminating, but not always beneficial. Pietro didn’t get involved in the rambling conversations of his customers, which were often repeated because of alcoholic amnesia. Besides, he had heard it all before, and it was rarely interesting. However this conversation was much more serious than usual, and the group would occasionally look at him, which was unusual. Eventually, Corrie, a sometimes successful artist in her mid-thirties, turned to Pietro and asked:
‘Who owns you Pietro?’
‘Nobody owns me — except maybe my wife — and my mother — and my daughter, oh — and of course my mother-in-law…’
‘—No, not you personally, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but who owns this place?’ She looked around the restaurant.
‘This? This is my place. My grandfather bought it when he first came to England. He built up the business from nothing. My mother and father, God bless him, ran it until he died and now it’s my business, bought and paid for with blood, sweat and tears!’ Pietro was prone to a little exaggeration. ‘Why do you ask?’
An elderly man, with a smooth, completely bald head and dark glasses replied in a slow, American voice:
‘Because if you do own this place, you’re probably one of the only places around here not owned by the Russian Mafia.’
‘That’s crazy! All these new bars are independent! And they won’t last.’ As far as Pietro was concerned, this talk of ‘Russian Mafia’ was just more drunken ramblings. He knew they all smoked pot, so they were obviously all paranoid. He turned away indignantly — not wanted to face the reality about the way things were changing.
‘It’s true. A friend of mine, a reporter on the Sundays, has been doing some research for an article — about how trendy it’s all getting around here. He was looking into where this new money has come from, and he’s traced it all back to the same group of guys from eastern Europe somewhere – Russia, Chechnya, Ukraine – those kinds of places. You’re the last of a breed, Pietro, soon they’ll have you as well! You see!’ The group returned to their conversation.
It was too much for Pietro to take in. How could he believe it. What none of this group knew was that Pietro’s grandfather was Russian. Many old occupants of this part of London had come here from mid- and eastern Europe, to escape poverty, persecution and revolution. Many found homes in the West End alongside work servicing the theatres through their trades as cobblers, dressmakers, painters, milliners and carpenters. Others made a living from servicing these trades people – through cafés and restaurants, greengroceries, butchers and bakers, schools. They same story as immigrants into any city, in, and from, any country across the world.
It was four o’clock in the morning, that time of the day which is, like February, neither here nor there, when the full impact of his situation finally hit Pietro. He had slipped into sleep without any trouble, his wife spooned around his back as usual. He awoke at four with a mind as clear as a blue sky after a thunderstorm. He had, to put it simply, fucked up big style. He had inadvertently been playing games with the Russian Mafia. They were bound to want to play games with him. Besides which he had one of the only independent establishments left in Soho. A visit was inevitable. But how would they know it was him? Maybe they would think it was all a series of coincidental accidents — the odd waste bin fire here, a few mice and hamsters there, surely they wouldn’t even think that any of it was deliberate. Maybe the hamsters were a bad idea. But words kept running round and around inside a single track in his head: ‘…the last independent business in Soho.’
Pietro paid rapt attention to everyone who came into his place over the next few days. He could be very off-hand to customers, blatantly rude sometimes, but now everyone was treated with care and consideration (he was amazed by the amount of tips his family were bringing in). His daughter Anna worked as a part-time waitress, his wife Gina did most of the cooking, along her nephew Antonio, who had come over from Italy five years ago for a two-week visit. Pietro also worked the tables and acted as maitre d’, maintaining an attitude which balanced finely between subservience and pomposity.
He didn’t have to wait long: three of them came in late one lunchtime. They were dressed casually, but expensively – cashmere jumpers under leather jackets. Gold watches and too-many gold rings. Bad complexions, and hair that was just too long to be smart or fashionable. At first Pietro thought they might have been record company execs, a thought that lasted until they ordered a beer and a vodka each, plus ‘nibbles’. They sipped the beer as they talked amongst themselves. They looked around the restaurant every now and then, glanced at Pietro occasionally. He didn’t like the way their eyes lingered on Anna. Eventually they each picked up their vodka glass, downed them in one, slammed them back on to the table, stood up, and left.

Burning his own restaurant was the most heartbreaking thing that Pietro had ever done. Tears streamed down his face and he begged forgiveness from his grandfather and his grandmother, his father and God. ‘Always I try to do only what was best for our family!’ He sobbed in an Italian accent – despite the fact that he normally spoke perfect English — being born and raised in London. Whenever he became emotional an Italian accent crept into his voice. Without realising it he also always swore in Italian.
His family had lived above the restaurant for decades. It was Pietro’s father who had decided to move to the suburbs “to give his children a better life”. Pietro had thought about, but — just as previous generations — never got round to, clearing the upstairs rooms on the two floors above the restaurant, which full of boxes and junk left there by his grandparents. He had never even bothered to look at what was in them. Whatever it was, it burned well. With the tracks of tears still on his face, his eyes red and bloodshot with grief, and a heart which seemed to be dragging his entire body, Pietro sat on the late bus back to Clapham. He was in a daze as he walked the hundred or so yards to his house, opened the front door as silently as he could, climbed the stairs, slipped into bed and curled up behind his deeply sleeping wife, who did nothing more than stir gently.
That he didn’t wake when the phone rang was a surprise, because he didn’t think he would sleep. But his wife was shaking his shoulder: ‘Pietro! Pietro! It’s the phone for you!’ His consciousness gradually emerged from somewhere deep.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Sergeant Allinson of the Metropolitan Police. Are you the owner of “Tsarovski’s Tavern” in Soho?’
‘Uh huh? What’s happened?’
‘I have some bad news for you sir, I’m afraid there’s been a fire…’

‘There’s been a few of these around here over the past few months. Course none were as serious as this. Fire investigators said that it was the stuff stored on the upper floors that made it so intense — old oil paintings and antique furniture they reckon. Of course we won’t be able to compensate you for them as they were works of art and antiques, and not included in the normal insurance, but we should be able to sort out the building and furnishings and stuff. It’s going to be some time before you’re back in business though. There’s nothing left but the brickwork — the heat must have really been on!’ The loss adjuster tucked his clipboard under his arm, pocked his ballpen into his inside jacket pocket. He then reached into his side pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, ‘Smoke?’ He offered Pietro. They were both standing up to their knees in charred wood and water. The loss adjuster in green Wellington boots, Pietro in patent leather shoes.
‘This is a no smoking restaurant!’ He said, while looking up at a network of black rafters against a blue and grey sky— as harsh as a Paul Nash war landscape. The adjuster slipped his cigarette back into the packet and the packet into his pocket.
‘Ah well, we’re making a new world! There’s not much else to be done here. We’ll sort out the paperwork and get a cheque to you as soon as we can. Shame about them antiques and paintings though… Goodbye Mr. Caprici.’
Although everything has gone to plan. Pietro was grieving. He felt like he had let down his own family as well as parents and grandparents. And then there was the antiques and paintings — which would now always be a mystery. Burning the bar was half the plan. The next involved getting out of London, away from any threat. The insurance money was generous and arrived fairly quickly. Pietro thought about selling his house and moving the whole family to Italy. But he realised that although his family were mainly Italian, and his wife’s family were Italian — he was English and he’d never been further than Southend or Brighton — both far too close to London to be comfortable.
He remembered part of a conversation in his bar, when someone had raised an indignant, very drunken voice and shouted ‘London! London! London is the arsehole of England! …And Manchester is two-hundred miles up it! I wouldn’t be caught dead there!’ The whole group had laughed themselves to tears.
Manchester was therefore the only place he could think of going, mainly because he needed somewhere he wouldn’t be caught dead in. Half-heartedly he rented out the Clapham home, sold the patch of parched land and brick shell to a property developer, packed his family into the car, and followed the dirty back of a removal van at sixty mph up the M1 and then the M6. It rained solidly from Birmingham onwards. He heard his wife failing to sniffle back the tears. Tears began to roll slowly down his own face and one word kept shouting inside his head: ‘Arsehole!’

Curtis Bollington © 2010

Cover of 'Hidden Gems', a novel by Curtis Bollington

Help support a struggling writer. In fact help support a struggling person!
I’ve published my book ‘Hidden Gems‘ as an ebook, and it’s available from Amazon, lulu.com, Apple, and all other good online bookstores. If you have an iPad or iPhone, or a Kindle, then you have no excuses not to buy it. The alternative is to download an ebook reader, of which there are loads available, including a free Kindle reader for your computer.

For less than a fiver, it’s a good read.

Just click the following link to buy a copy.

http://amzn.to/grsT8C

Alternatively, you can search on Amazon

In case you’re wondering what it’s all about, here’s the blurb…

A crisis in midlife and a midlife crisis are not necessarily the same thing. Arthur Pod is a wedding photographer. His happy lot is upset when his car gets stolen not long after he falls in love at an Irish-Innuit wedding. Then his new girlfriend’s poodles get dognapped by psychotic twins.

Nathaniel Boot is a smuggler who is losing interest in the work that has kept his family for generations. Jobs aren’t going as smoothly as they should. And then there’s his dull marriage, as well as his chaotic genius of an apprentice to deal with…

The lives of both become entangled from a distance, because of a rare, ugly sports car build by the Russians in the late 50s. A car that almost ignited the Cold War, and caused the death in the sixties of a wayward diplomat with a fetish for female clowns.

Really, it’s just an old-fashioned story about love, adventure, crime, animals and travel…

Thanks

Curtis

However Dominic is two next week. The relevance of this is that time shifted when he was born. That first year seemed to take forever. Everything seemed to slow down. Particularly those long hours spent in a rocking chair through the night – swaying back and forth like a pendulum.

I think the increase in time’s stickiness was helped last year by the fact that it was also the year I was made redundant. Or more accurately had to make myself redundant – the victim of someone else’s incompetence. But that’s an episode of my life now consigned to the trinket-box alongside other things useless, but which I don’t have the heart to discard completely, even though I probably should.

I don’t remember a year in my adult life passing quite so slowly. But then there are quite a few years of my adult life I don’t remember at all. But it was a joy being involved in the microcosm of watching Dominic develop into a unique person. Through changes which happen on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes a blip, sometimes a great big jump. Look! He’s almost a completely different boy today.

One of the brighter sides of being made redundant was being at home during this time. At first while I was looking and applying for jobs; now as I work at home now that I’ve set up on my own. But last year was a long one.

Not so this year. I can’t believe it’s the end of November. If last year I could measure the weeks in a day, now there’s hardly time to count the days.  “Shooosh!” There’s another one, gone.

So I’m back in time again. Whatever shift happened last year has shifted back to the relativity I recognise. It’s strange having to cram so much into each day again. And strangely comforting thinking on a Sunday night that it’s Monday tomorrow, then realising on Friday that this day followed Monday with no days in-between.

Of course being back to normal means that I’m back to everyone wanting everything done yesterday. And Dominic will be two next week, and three the month after.

“Shoosh!” – Whoa! There goes another one, and that one was even quicker. Quick! Email me some more ‘o’s – I’m running out.

In this house, the evening is the best time to write — toddler and dog have both been walked and fed and are now sleeping; cat is currently balancing on the edge of the dog’s drinking water bowl considering the best form of entry (it turned out to be chin first). Mrs C is studying for her driving theory test next week. The phones and Skype are quiet. Email is confined to the latest offers from Aldi, Waitrose and various insurance companies. Rather than requests for stuff to be written, edited, designed, created, sent, thought about, etc.

It’s quiet.

But I’m self-employed, with a mortgage to pay, bills, an almost-2 years toddler. The future is the problem, because it’s always there. So while I’ve paid the bills this month, I have to make sure I can pay them next month, and the month after that, ad infinitum (not literally of course — it just seems that it takes infinity to pay off your mortgage).

I can’t be frivolous with time.

I was never any good at sprinting, but loved running loads of miles. I love long, long walks up big hills. I love big projects. I’ve just completed an e-commerce site that’s taken the best part of three months to put together. And I really enjoy writing book-length stuff. Although the absence of a publisher or an agent, and the lack of available time to find one, means any stuff that does get written gets shelved. I work on the basis that at some time in the future I’ll have time to do what I need to do to try and get my own stuff published. Even if that means starting up a digital publishing business — which I could do if I had the time to do it. But the point is that I enjoy big, complicated, difficult stuff. It’s an endurance thang.

I have more patience than just about anyone I know. Apart from possibly Ed. But I’ll eliminate him on the basis that he works extremely hard to be inert by thinking a lot, which takes a lot of mental energy. And any kind of energy counts as work. Being professionally inert doesn’t count.

I can wait for years.

My dentist, wonderful man that he is, always keeps me waiting — for at least 45 minutes. Then apologises profusely. I always tell him not too, because sitting in that waiting room every six months, with my mobile switched off and nothing to do but wait is one of the most enjoyable things to do. No guilt about the fact I should be doing something else, and totally excusable inaccessibility. Where else can you enjoy that these days? Driving.

I enjoy driving long distances on my own. I don’t have in-car access to my mobile. If it rings I stop when I can and call back. I can’t use a computer in the car either. So again I can enjoy totally excusable inaccessbility. Driving is a luxury.

When is ‘one day’? One day I’ll sit all day, and all night if I want to, and write books, or plays, or short stories, or any damned thing I want to. I took a year off once, and wrote solidly for six months. It was probably the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ll do it again one day.

Oh well. I guess I’d better get back to that manual…

Thanks for your time.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing as a follow-up to my recent letter, to thank you from the bottom of my thorax for changing your refuse collection cycle so that you now empty the bins every two weeks. As I explained in my last letter:  previously my family and I led a precarious existence for reasons which I was too distressed at the time to talk about, but which I am now happy to explain. I hope I’m not being too risqué by talking about the lifecycle of what is often called the ‘Common’ Housefly — I cannot think why we are labelled with this insulting misnomer, but this is a separate issue I am currently pursuing with the Equal Opportunities Commission. That aside, the reproductive cycle of a housefly is around 12 days. I cannot begin to tell you how heartbreaking it was to see great hoards of my prospective family — most merely maggots, some no more than tiny eggs — being transported away when the refuse was collected on a weekly basis. The new two-week collection is infinitely better, as it fits in perfectly with our reproductive cycle.
Our adult life is preciously short as it is — between one and three months, and that’s without various threats to our already slight existence, especially being pursued relentlessly by newspapers, mostly tabloids.  During this time we can produce up to five batches of up to 150 eggs. These can take up to two days to hatch into larvae. What follow is a few difficult days, when each maggot is a seething mass of hormones — a state with which the parents of any teenager will no doubt sympathise. Dealing with one unruly teenager can be difficult enough, imagine what it’s like trying to deal with 150! Needless to say it’s a blessing when they finally pupate, a stage which can take anything from three days to four weeks. And I don’t mind admitting that it’s a case of the longer the better if one has a particularly boisterous batch. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a bad mother. Thankfully they emerge as full-grown adults, and of course have only two thoughts on their mind…
With as many as 12 generations in one season, you don’t have to be a genius at arithmetic to work out that this totals 4.75145E+24, give or take a few. Of course this is an ideal figure, but sadly — as I’ve already mentioned, many don’t survive. Good taste forbids me from mentioning the number taken by anglers for example — it breaks my heart to think about the fate of those poor little maggots.
The weekly cycle of refuse collection played havoc with our reproduction: whole generations carried off without a thought. That’s what prompted me to write in the first place. Thankfully, we’re now back to normal, and the place is buzzing again. So I’d like to thank you not once, but several millions of times on behalf of my family and me.
Wishing you all the best for this festive season. Oh, and a special thank you for our Christmas bonus of the extra few days before the next collection. We’ll certainly take advantage of this, especially with all those extra turkey and goose carcasses around!

I remain

Yours faithfully,

etc.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you in connection with the National Lottery, because I am seriously considering giving it up, and you only have yourselves to blame. The reason is that whenever I do it, I never win. Of course — as you’ll see from your records — I don’t do it very often. However I have done it on and off regularly since it started, so I must be one of your most loyal customers. But where’s the incentive if I’m consistently losing my investment? I’m not alone when I say that I think if you could see your way to making me win now and again, I would definitely consider doing it more often, which would be a win-win situation, because you would gain more funds from my investment to put towards good causes, and towards the jackpot fund. In fact if I did win a large sum, such as the jackpot of say, several million, I would buy twice the number of tickets as I do now. Which means that I’d buy a ticket on alternate Wednesdays as well as my twice-monthly Saturday ticket. (So you’d actually be getting some of the money back!). Furthermore, I think I am probably one of your most committed customers when it comes to being ‘In it to win it’.
I would be an ideal candidate for a jackpot win because unlike many of your winners, I truly understand the responsibility that comes with that amount of money, and I am able and more than ready to take it on. You can rest assured that I won’t go down the Vivienne Westwood route of ‘Spend! Spend! Spend!’, nor will I fill a remote corner of Norfolk with pimped-up cars and loose women. I am a fully-grown adult with a responsible wife and son, both of whom are poised, ready to invest in sensible shoes and educational toys. Of course there’s a wild streak in everyone, but I can assure you my wife keeps my dreams of owning a touring motorcycle well in check. She also keeps a diligent eye on my modest consumption of alcohol. So any of the usual fears you might have about adverse publicity would not apply. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the money would be in a safe pair of hands. I do not even have a criminal record, which I hope won’t count against me as a prospective jackpot prize-winner. I am more than willing to eschew any publicity and manage my winnings in virtual anonymity (please note I use the word ‘manage’, rather than ‘enjoy’). In fact it’s fair to say that fame has never held any attraction for me. As you may have guessed by now, I’m a fairly philosophical person, I understand true values and I have always held that the only real luxuries in life are time and space. Winning the lottery jackpot would help me enjoy both of these with deeper intent (i.e. ‘enjoy’ in a philosophical sense, rather than the material). And finally, I would add that I am more than prepared to take on the added responsibility of winning during a rollover week. I hope this helps. And one last point — I’d be very grateful if you could sort this out in the next week or two, as I was recently made redundant.

Yours sincerely,

Mr C L Bollington

PS: It’s just been pointed out to me that it wasn’t Vivienne Westood who spent all her money, it was Viv Nicholson (and it was only a £152,319 pools win, so I can’t see what the fuss was about anyway). Apparently Vivienne Westwood is a humble seamstress, who probably also could do with a lottery win, so apologies for this slight error.

Even the tiniest of babies is not free from doom and gloom. The most widely-sung lullaby is:
‘Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top.
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall.
And down will come cradle and baby and all.’

So there was a baby in cradle up a tree, a bit of wind blows, the branch breaks and the cradle and the baby fall out of the tree and comes crashing down to earth. Who were the parents of this poor unfortunate child. What were they doing putting a cradle up a tree in a gale?  What were they thinking?

John: ‘I’m fed up with rocking the baby, he won’t go to sleep.’
Janet: ‘Tell me about it. I can’t do it I’m too busy. I’ve got to bake bread for tomorrow, milk the goat, put the chickens away…’
John: ‘OK, OK, don’t go on. I get the picture.’
Silence. John carries on rocking the cradle and stares out of the window at a tree swaying backwards and forwards in the wind.
John: ‘I’ve had an idea.’
Janet: ‘Here we go again…’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Your ideas — they always end in disaster.’
John: ‘That’s not very fair.’
Janet: ‘True though.’
John: ‘No it’s not. One day I’ll invent something and we’ll be rich — you’ll see. We’ll get out of this hovel. You won’t be so damning then!
Janet: ‘What kind of thing? Like the washing machine?’
John: ‘I knew you’d mention that! There was nothing wrong with it. It just needed tweaking.’
Janet: ‘Tweaking! What made you think a donkey pulling a barrel full of stones, water and clothes behind it was going to make your fortune?’
John: ‘It was labour-saving.’
Janet: ‘Labour saving! It took the best part of an hour to load the clothes in the barrel, find the right kind of stones — which, incidentally, you made me carry from the river, and fetch the water from the river, seal the whole thing up, strap it to that contraption you’d tied to the poor donkey, and then watch everything get destroyed: your breeches, my aprons, even my Sunday-best frock! And that barrel was all we had for collecting rainwater. And who is it that now has to walk to the river and carry all our water back in a bucket?’
John: ‘Steady lass, you’ve made your point! But one day, you’ll see. Anyway this  idea will work. It’s simple and will give us both a lot of time to do other things.’
Janet: ‘What other things? I don’t want to do other things! I like doing the things I do and the way I do them.’
John: ‘You could relax a bit more.’
Janet: ‘Relax! Why would I want to relax? What do think I am — a man! Anyway, I’ve been standing here talking long enough. I’ve got work to do. I’m going out to the barn. Keep an eye on the little ‘un.’
Janet wraps her shawl around her shoulders and leaves the room.
John sits for a few moments, staring out of the window at the swaying trees. Then he rises from his seat picks up the cradle and carries it outside. The baby has been crying continuously. John walks over to the tree and puts the cradle down. He picks up a ladder and props it against the tree, takes a length of rope that was lying nearby, then picks up the cradle and climbs. He wedges the cradle in the crook of a branch and secures it with the rope, using the kind of knot only a man who thinks he knows about stuff would tie. He then climbs down the ladder and sits on the ground against a nearby tree stump.
The tree sways gently. The cradle sways gently. And for the first time in what seems like an age, the baby stops crying. John realises how exhausted he is. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for months. He watches the tree sway rhythmically back and forth, and drifts into a deep slumber, the luxury of which can only be truly appreciated by someone comparatively new to fatherhood.
Janet finishes her chores, the last of which is locking the chickens away for the night. The wind is building gust by gust. She’s worried about how secure the chicken coop would be during the night if the wind got any stronger. She went back into the house, and as John and the baby weren’t there, she presumed John had put the cradle in the handcart and gone for a walk. He’d done it before as the little ‘un seemed to like it, and it helped him go to sleep. Exhausted, she flopped into a chair, and stoked some life into the red embers of the fire with a few twigs. She sat back on the chair and dozed off.
The wind grew. It whistled through the branches of the trees, turning the gentle swaying into violent rocking. The branch creaked under the weight of the cradle and the pressure of the wind. John, still sleeping, drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs to keep snug. A large gust ripped the roof off the hen-house and twisted the branch of the tree on which the cradle sat. The canon-shot sound it made as it cracked away from the trunk awoke John with a start. His instincts made him look up towards the cradle, which still tied to the branch, was now crashing down through the lower limbs of the tree.
John had tied the cradle to a stout branch. But its weight, and the weight of the cradle were too heavy to withstand the added pressure of the wind. Fortunately, because the branch was so heavy, it dragged the cradle down through the tree and landed on the ground with the cradle still on top. John was already on his feet and running towards it. His heart was in his mouth, he would have cried out but his mouth was as dry as sawdust. He scrambled though the twigs and leaves of the fallen branch and reached the cradle. He didn’t want to look inside at his precious son, but had no choice. He wondered what he would say to Janet. How could he explain.
The baby was still, his eyes closed. John reached into the cradle and picked him up. Upset at being stirred from its slumber, the baby started to cry. John had never experienced such a flood of relief. He hugged his son to his chest and cried like a baby. After a few minutes, he put the boy back in the cradle, which he then untied from the branch, before carrying it back into the house. Janet heard the baby crying as they came in.
Janet: ‘Still not settled then? The handcart usually works?’
John: ‘What? Oh, er, no. It must be the wind.’
Janet: ‘Oh yes, it must be, they never settle when it’s blowin’.’
Janet looked quizzically towards the window. ‘Can you hear that?’
John looked toward the window and listened.
John: ‘What? The chickens?
Janet: ‘Yes, it sounds like they’re out. The roof must have blown off.’
John: ‘Probably, it’s a strong wind tonight. Brought a branch down from that big Horsechestnut.
Janet: ‘Oh well. At least we’ll have some more firewood. Here, pass me the little ‘un, I’ll rock him for a bit. What was your idea, by the way?’
John: ‘What?’
Janet: ‘Earlier — you said you had an idea.’
John: ‘Oh that! On nothing, nothing. Just another stupid thought. I’d better go and sort out the hens and see if I can do anything about that roof.’
Janet: ‘Be careful, it’s blowing a gale out there.’
John: ‘Don’t worry.’
John left the room. Janet absentmindedly picked a small piece of twig caught in the baby’s clothes and tossed it into the fire.

It’s no wonder the British are generally so pessimistic. It’s instilled into us from birth. Maybe we should write a whole new set of optimistic, upbeat nursery rhymes, where good things happen to the characters. Such as:

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
But as they’d climbed, a voice behind said:
“Wait! Came back! Please don’t do that,
I’ll come right round and fit a tap.
There’s no need now to climb that hill.
I’ll sort you out, I’m plumber Bill!
I’ll fit a tap for you for free!
Just brew me up a mug of tea.
A tap for free would save a crown,
Thought Jack — and so they turned around,
And down they got, and off they trot
As fast as they could caper.
Plumber Bill was drinking tea,
From Jack’s tap two hours later.

Mind you, a plumber fitting a tap for free is more like a fairy tale than a nursery rhyme. Feel free to have a go.