Aaah, the French. I know, I know, I haven’t blogged for a bit, Christmas and the New Year have passed, the telly was rubbish, the weather was cold enough to snap dogs… but first I was with the French. They threw me off beam, got me all relaxed.

It’s ages since I’ve met the French and I’d missed them. I’d missed looking at Paris after dark – which was about the only time I could look at it because I was working all the daylight hours for my very lovely French publishers. Very shiny. That’s Paris – not the publishers – they were simply generous with nuclear strength French coffee and macaroons, which is almost as good as being shiny.

I’d also missed the ridiculously attractive Parisian gentlemen, the flirting and the hand-waving conversations and even the irregular verbs. Get me caffeined up enough and arcane usages of venir and questions which expect the answer “No”. (Are there any other kinds ?) are all magically rendered simple. (At least in my head.) And I’d missed their food – all of it, even their sandwiches – and their ability to manage the run up to Christmas in a controlled way that doesn’t make you want to beat reindeer to death with strangled elves by the 2nd of December.

Of course Christmas did inevitably arrive with the Queen telling us all – rather incongruously, I thought – about the way that having no money can make you happy and how she joins with us during the Credit Crunch in appreciating acts of generosity… all this delivered from her own personal palace.

But she was wearing a dress which was apparently made of recycled Elastoplasts, so a nod to economising there. And she was almost the television highlight of the season. Without Wallace and Gromit and the Doctor (and the new Doctor – what is the official title for Matt Smith at the moment: the Locum? - Jeeze, they span that out for long enough…) there would have been no reason to turn the hideous device on.

We can now rest easy in the knowledge that plasticine can emote much more beautifully that Rupert Penry-Jones - who knew The 39 Steps could be that dull? I’d rather have watched him sweep them - and eight year olds all over the country will watch the next set of Dr Who specials in a weird kind of bereaved/excited pre-decease/rebirth wince, which will probably do them no end of psychological good.

Not that I spent the holidays lolling and ambling towards the remote control. I was mainly locked upstairs in a frenzy of typing, because I had to produce three hours of overdue radio drama for a German broadcaster. I had chosen – I no longer recall why – to set the whole thing aboard a schooner and much looking-up of nautical terms and the proper names of bits and widgets ensued. I now know more about gaff rigging than I ever wished to.

And now it’s 2009, the New Year having passed and been modestly celebrated with pie and ice cream, black bun and mackerel pate. (It’s not traditional yet, but we’re working on it.) I do always wonder why we choose to make a big fuss about passing from one arbitrary collection of 365 days into another. And it’s odd, but perhaps not surprising, that we Scots have appropriated the UK’s one big pointless/pagan festival of joy and despair. The joy comes with the dancing, singing, drinking and promising ourselves that we will be entirely different people as soon as midnight has struck. The despair comes with the dancing, singing, drinking, realising – at ten past twelve – that we are exactly the same and then experiencing that sudden Hogmanay inrush of all the negative events and thoughts we have ever had, before we retire to a darkened corner and weep until dawn. New Year – it’s the Bi-Polar Holiday.

And the New Year shindig does take our minds off the dark and the cold and the oncoming Depression. (Yes, that’s Depression - or if you like, Recession – not the Credit Crunch. A Credit Crunch is just some kind of half-arsed pudding. We’re not going to get through this by reverting to baby talk. We’re going to get through it by enjoying generosity and sharing simple pleasures, just like the good old Queen said. Or by punching each other in the throat over scraps and boiling toddlers for food.) And celebrating distracts us from the notion that bombing civilians around Christmas always seems to go relatively unnoticed in the wider world. Or, at least, in the Oval Office – which seems to be the only place that counts.

In conclusion, dear reader, let’s hope that you spend the next year being exactly who you would like, let’s hope that I get through all the work I have lined up and let’s hope that humanity, just every now and then, manages to do something other than murder, maim, steal, screw up and generally disappoint

www.newstatesman.com - Queen's Elastoplast dress

Well, that’s the next book done, then… It’s always a complete anti-climax when a book’s finished. You’ll pootle about your flat afterwards with a numb/emptied feeling, then send if off before beginning the enormous wait for anyone to get back to you.

The pause left at this point always being far too long – even if it’s only a few hours (not that it ever is only a few hours, you’ll understand – despite that fact that it is physically possible to read a book in a few hours…)

Sadly, even though your new volume has been pressing on your brain like a venomous tumour for months and months, no one else is really that bothered about it – even if they’ve been expecting it, have paid a bit in advance for it and made mumbly nearly interested noises when you’ve ranted on about it. (That’s what your agent and editor are for – to provide mumbly noises.) The level of caring about my books tends to drop off from

ME – 347 per cent

My readers – between 100 per cent and 102 per cent - but there are only 12 of them. And some of them scare me. And some of them only touch/stroke the books, they don’t actually read them…

My agent and Editor – between 75 per cent and 76 per cent apportioned in rotation between authors according to alphabetical arrangement, height and availability of biscuits.

Other readers – 6 per cent

My pals – 4 per cent (They have a lot of other things on their minds.)

Other comics in clubs – 2 per cent (And they’re faking that.)

Other people I meet as I go about my life – 0.8 per cent

Other people in the world – 0.0 per cent

As it happens, I hammered the book’s last sentence into place while an Austrian camera crew fiddled with lights, set up for an interview and then looked on politely as I growled into my laptop and waggled my head twitches in combination with a hearty – I’LL BE WITH YOU IN A MINUTE, YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS BUT I AM ACTUALLY JUST NOW FINISHING A BOOK, EXACTLY AS I SPEAK – AM I SPEAKING ? – ANYWAY, I’LL JUST DO THIS – AND THIS - AND THEN THAT. DEAR GOD, WHAT WAS I THINKING ? I MEANT THIS ! OH, JUST AT LEAST LOOK INTERESTED COULD YOU ? THIS IS THE CULMINATION OF THREE YEAR’S WORK, YOU KNOW. AND KEEP WELL BACK, I MAY CRY.

To celebrate, I purchased – through the interweb – a pair of splendid electric blue and black suede shoes. I’m not generally much of a shoe person, but performing shoes are a good thing to have and these got two outings of comedy this week and managed to propel me across the stage with ease and stylishness.

This was a more than usually miraculous achievement given that my ear infection has returned (my body really does want me to just lie down for a while) and I am now on industrial strength antibiotics which are causing my digestive system, shall we say some distress. Suddenly doing a 20 minute set had to be carefully coordinated with the onceeveryfortyminute episodes of gastric distress. Ah, me – showbiz is so dandy.

And now I am waiting to hear about a book, a film and any number of BBC thingies – which is more waiting than my frame can stand. Frankly, my regular sprints to the bathroom are proving a healthy distraction. And there’s always the telly,,, which I rarely get to see unless I’m both at home and exhausted. I continue to enjoy the bewilderment and gallopy shouting which is The Devil’s Whore – although I fail to see how viewers could be expected to believe in a heroine who wouldn’t fall immediately for a man with a large facial scar, several mental difficulties and a metal hand.

Of course, many people in the days before thermoplastics, grafting and Hello had to settle for prosthetics made out of slightly unsuitable materials. George Washington had wooden teeth and Tycho Brahe had a metal nose. A potentially helpful mobility aid like a walking stick might be rendered attractive and yet dangerous by being made of glass. I imagine many period conversations running thusly:

“Why are you lying down there, my good man ?”

“Oh, you know… first I snapped my walking stick and now my toffee legs have melted. D’you think you could carry me home ?”

“I’d love to, sirrah, but my spine has been replaced with these bottle tops and strips of gingham so I’m not really up to heavy lifting.”

“I quite understand. Give my last regards to my lady wife – you can’t miss her, she’s the one with the paraffin ear and the woollen face.”

www.newstatesman.com - Gastric distress

Those of you who read this blog with any kind of regularity will know that I’m currently locked in a potentially unsafe spiral of typing and more typing with food, sanity, sleep and all of that other being alive stuff removed to a safe distance so that it can’t interfere – which isn’t really a spiral, now I think of it, more like being trapped in a lift in an abandoned building with - well, with me, in fact. How dreadful.

The disadvantages of this heady and artistic lifestyle have recently involved my developing an exhaustion- and anxiety-induced ear infection and going all wobbly for a few days before the antibiotics kicked in.

And this was the perfect preparation for a week spent talking to creative writing students at Warwick University. It meant I could sit in a borrowed office, facing a succession of bright-eyed and hopeful typists, waving manuscript pages (that seemed to have been both savaged by a dog and copulated-upon by some sort of red-ink-secreting insect) and simultaneously yelling, “LOOK AT THIS ! SOME OF THESE HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED ! WHAT WAS I THINKING ! ? WE NONE OF US KNOW WHAT WE’RE UP TO, YOU KNOW ! SCARED ? OF COURSE YOU’RE SCARED. I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF NIGHT, BLOODY TERRIFIED – BEEN LIKE THAT FOR DECADES. THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION - IT LEAVES YOU MAD-EYED AND WAVERING ! NO. I MEAN, IT WRECKS YOUR HEALTH AND RENDERS YOU FRIENDLESS ! NO. I MEANT TO SAY – IT’S A VERY GOOD THING. MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY !”

Actually, we have another dandy crop of students this year and very few of them are scared of me. Given that all the other lecturers have spent weeks portraying A.L.Kennedy as some kind of Godawful combination of Elizabeth Bathory, Simon Cowell and Bird Flu, I have turned out to be a terrible anti-climax.

Puppies have been mentioned, there have been gifts of baking… my ability to appear even remotely evil seems to have been sapped by rewriting all night and tutoring all day. Appearing unhinged is, obviously, much easier under these (and any other) circumstances – so I’ve aimed for that. Plus, a number of undergraduates seem to have encountered me first as a stand up, so I am settling into my usual role as Temporary Village Idiot.

I did take an evening off to watch the first episode of “The Devil’s Whore” and see a variety of folk in big hair galloping about South Africa. I kept expecting a scene where someone asked Cromwell, “Isn’t that an impala ?”

“No. That’s a typically English sheep.”

“It looks like an impala to me.”

“It’s a sheep. An Edgehill, long-horned sheep.”

“I thought this bit was in Newbury.”

“Well, anyway, that’s not an impala and the thing chasing it isn’t a leopard. It’s a peasant – in a special hat.”

“God, the Civil War’s complicated.”

“Not to worry, that Andrea Riseborough will show you her knees again in a minute and then John Simm will take his shirt off – fun for all the family. And remember the old verse - When Adam delved and Eve span – we had parliamentarians who were willing to die for democracy. You wouldn’t even joke about that now, would you ? ”

There’s nothing like a bit of historical drama. That’s why I loved “Eistein and Paddington” so much – very well-crafted piece about the forbidden love of a remarkable physicist for a small Peruvian bear. This, of course, led to the discovery that God has a moustache. I was moved.

And meanwhile I’m recovering from a big double dunt of Shakespeare and that lovely feeling he leaves you with which runs along the lines of – you’re a hack, you’re a dreadful, weasely hack, you shouldn’t be allowed to touch a pencil, why do you even bother with your unmelodious and stringy bits of syllables and nonsense, you ought to be ashamed and then a bit more ashamed than that and then you might want to nail your tongue to an upper window frame, wrap it round your neck and fling yourself out into the morning - or whatever time of day would be relevant, but I’d suggest morning, that would get it over with.

Of course, low self-esteem and brooding are a narcissistic waste of energy and imagination when you’re engaged in professional typing, but I have to say that a healthy bit of awe and a good, attractive mountain top to aim at are often very useful. And I can report, to the four or five of you who are in any way interested, that I am perilously close to having finished the next book. Huzzah ! Watch this space – by the next blog I should be on to the next whateveritis I said I’d do.

www.newstatesman.com - Scotland's Simon Cowell?

I'm at home. This doesn't happen. I'm never at home. I never have time to look in all my cupboards and dust. (As it turns out, there's quite a lot stored in my dust.) I've been in my own flat for almost two weeks. Good God, this is unheard of and had I not been strapped into my big black typing chair and imaginary places for almost all of this - I did have an outing to Perth for a reading - I would probably be deep into cabin fever by now.

Then again, I may have just spent the small and larger hours of every day battering out allworkandnoplaymakesJackadullboy over and over. I'm not really in a position to judge. I have an impossible amount of work to do and in order to finish the short stories, the newspaper bits, the emails, the drama fragments and treatments and films to which I have committed myself (quite possibly to no avail) I have to behave impossibly - which is to say, by not sleeping, typing, eating toast, typing, doing Tai Chi and (I didn't know people genuinely did this) pulling my hair out and typing. My chair is surrounded by a ring of fallen hair, scribbled-over manuscripts and discarded mugs. And, strangely, I'm having the time of my life. It's exhilarating: all this pacing and typing and puzzling and skin-of-the-teeth deadlines and shouting at my walls - and when I meet real live people in the streets on the way to buy more toasting bread I TEND TO SPEAK VERY LOUDLY AND FAST BECAUSE OF THE CAFFEINE. I may have a stroke quite soon.

And, of course, I'm entirely pleased by the election results in the US. For the first time in three presidential races, a majority of the American states has voted for a Democrat and actually ended up getting one. Who knows by what margin he really won, given the shameless voter purges and rigged ballot machines?

The senate race has also been dirty and dodgy: for example - oops - 50,000 suspected Democrat voters have been reported as blocked from voting in Georgia. Ain't democracy a grand thing? But I'm still cheery - despite the possibilities of Republican philibusters to come - any man who mentions giving a puppy to children in his presidential acceptance speech is okay by me. And if I see that puppy crapping on the Whitehouse lawn I will believe those campaign promises and good feelings for at least a month or two. And I will be able to ignore the never-ending references to the Kennedy brothers whenever Obama appears. We all know these are just mediaspeak for "We think you're going to be shoot in the head soon. Sorry. And sorry for unsubtly suggesting this so very, very often. But it will be a great story. For us. Not so good for you, or your kids, or your wife, or that puppy. Is the puppy cute ? Will it be in the funeral cortege?"

Oddly a UK pal of mine wrote me an email on Wednesday morning that mentioned being "exhausted by hope" after watching Obama's victory. How appalling is it that we should find hope exhausting - even when it's second-hand?

Less of a big huzzah when I found out that my local Scottish politicians have just decided to bend over and let Donald Trump do whatever he wants with a huge and rather lovely chunk of Aberdeenshire.

I'm amazed that an SNP government would be so intent on turning our country into some kind of heathery play park for the super rich and plausible. Not that Trump is that plausible - if we wanted to get into bed with a millionaire couldn't we have picked one the other millionaires didn't laugh at? - one whose millions were a little more, shall we say, convincing and whose current business schemes were not rumoured to be quite so dependent on future business schemes in what looks horribly like an over-leveraged and apocalyptic chain of fiscal dominos. And what have we just learned about those, boys and girls ? Nothing apparently. So, well done, Mr. Salmond. Next time I see your noble visage and melting brown eyes I shall hear the delicious and perfectly sane Mel Gibson's voice yelling,"They will never take our freedom!" Yeah, right. We'll just sell it them for pocket change and promises and a couple of photo ops. Can I see that puppy now, please? - I'm getting depressed.

www.newstatesman.com - Selling off Scotland

It was bound to happen – the final twangy bit holding my mental compartments together (or, indeed, apart) was eventually bound to go ping and leave me. I think that happened in Blackpool. Not sure. I have, since we last spoke, been flinging myself into the joys of a writer’s autumn: festivals, festivals and then some touring and more festivals. So Wigtown was followed by Blackpool, by London, by Stockholm, by Cheltenham and by I no longer even care where I am now: wherever it is has food and a bed - I therefore like it. And most evenings I will be up on my hooves doing comedy, or reading, or inconversationing, or perhaps all three. Of course, there is other work to do during the moderately endless hours of travelling. These hours being extended vastly by my plane phobia. For example, I went to Stockholm by train. Or rather, eleven trains and two ferries – my, how I laughed, cried, hallucinated, collected spare change in multiple currencies and drank too much coffee – well, who needs to sleep ? There are things to do.

The things would currently involve rewriting a book of short stories to prevent its shades of misery from being so utterly repetitive that it causes people to die simply from holding it while still in the bookshop. (At this point my publisher would want me to insert some kind of disclaimer to point out that it’s actually a lovely volume full of kittens and sunshine, but you’re hardly going to swallow that, are you? It’s by me.) So my hands are covered in red ink and my loathing for every word is increasing exponentially. I also, for at least two very pressing reasons, have a film I need to hit with a hammer until it works – plus, autumn is the time when writers have to release damp-eyed, gangle-legged young projects into the maze of razor blades and paperwork which is the BBC offers round… off they go, often to fall into the first water hazard, sometimes to trot blithely on towards the next levels of risk, torment and origami. I am sustaining myself with a new CD of music from the Tower Ballroom’s Mighty Wurlitzer – genuinely, the first unremittingly jaunty sound you’ll hear as the demons haul you under to your just deserts

Still, I do quite like the travel – Wigtown had lobsters and cake, Blackpool was Blackpooly and allowed me to learn from various palmists that I am married, divorced, due to have twins and going out with a man who has one bad knee and the letter t, l, a, d, m, n, or c in his name. So that was reassuring. And Stockholm was a treat – always wanted to go there in case they had any Syndrome left. Given my busy schedule and cosmetic disadvantages Stockholm Syndrome represents one of the few ways I would realistically get a gentleman (with or without working knees) to commit himself fully to being fond of me. Four or five weeks in my fundungeon and I feel almost anyone would be able to convert their fear, pain and outrage into sincere and lasting affection.

No. Actually, after more than a month of hostage maintenance – the first aid, the dry cleaning, dealing with the whining and the blood – I don’t know if I wouldn’t be terminally jaded about the whole business. So that’s another option gone.

One benefit of my journeying has been that it keeps me from brooding about the sixteen grand I’ve apparently given to a wunch of bankers for shagging my economy by balancing it on funny money and a house price bubble. I would just mention that their plodding brand of duplicitous charlatanism was exactly what we were told would bring new life to the NHS, our schools, our public transport… Can we just stop pretending we believe that shit now? If we want to know about health care could we, for example, just ask doctors and nurses, maybe focus on keeping people alive in the most convenient and pleasant ways possible? Maybe we could chuck money at the systems which will help us survive when everything topples into the pit we have dug for ourselves and are currently still dancing round pretending that consumer debt and singing lalalalala will sort everything out? And, dear God, could no one else tell me that controlling the actions and bonuses of these weasels would drive them to other countries and that this would be a bad thing. That’s like suggesting the prosecution of burglars should be suspended in case it causes them to use their housebreaking skills on Johnny Foreigner. If our financial vampires want to go and knacker someone else’s banks – let them try. I’d even conjure up a poem to commemorate their departure – I’m busy, but I’d make the time for that.

www.newstatesman.com - Begone, financial vampires

Oh, those poor, innocent bankers and traders. Especially at Lloyds/TSB –they didn’t in anyway blight 10 years of my life. I’m sending love to them. I think it’s love – something that makes my ears bleed, anyway.

I’ve spent three days distracting myself from their plight by painting my mother’s house (located in what are now the rice paddies of Warwickshire) with a damp-repelling liquid that comes in an extra-large tin to accommodate all the health warnings about noxious vapours and instructions to wear a hazmat suit, goggles and a flannel vest.

Possessing none of the above, I have been – to use a complex medical term - poisoned. I also appear to have finished two new short stories - this leads me to suspect I am trapped in a brain-damage-induced delusion. At least that’s what I deeply and sincerely hope. Otherwise, I’ve assaulted a complete stranger in a shop.

Allow me, for the good of my soul, to explain. There I was in momentarily-sunny Stratford-Upon-Avon, waiting for my mother to finish purchasing a bushel of spring bulbs, or some such, when I turn round, see someone I know and begin the standard manoeuvres associated with Hiyahowareyoudoing. It is only at this point – which is to say, much too late – that I realise I have warmly greeted someone I do not know at all and who does not at all know me – the internal dialogue running roughly as follows…

Hang on , whoa… don’t know him. Shitshitshitshit, just touched the arm of someone I don’t know. That’s assault. I’ve assaulted a stranger.

Oh fuckingshitbolloxnononononono I do know him.

No, you don’t.

We’re not going to get out of this with denial.

We are if I say we are.

That’s-

Shut up.

That’s David Tennant. Right there. Right here, in fact.

I said shut up. Do you think he noticed ?

Is there anything about his performance style that suggests he has one lifeless arm ?

Shitshitshitshit. We’ve just assaulted David Tennant.

We’re sure that’s who it is ?

Oh, gimme a break.

He’s looking at us.

Well, wouldn’t you ? Is he immensely pissed off ?

More like he’s guessing – inaccurately – that we’re not wholly unhinged and is suggesting strongly that we shouldn’t draw a crowd.

I’m rubbish at drawing.

If you can’t say something useful... Look normal, apologetic and reassuring.

You want me to look three things at once ? You are joking. If anybody here can look three things at once it’s not me. I’m nodding, is that reassuring ?

No, that’s our head twitch. But it might help. Can we explain ourselves ?

“Trust me, I’m a novelist.” Yeah, that always works. Especially when we look more like the cover of a colour supplement with a special feature inside on mental health care failures. Anyway, to explain our extremely rude intrusion we’d have to make him stop listening to his personal stereo which is more of an intrusion still.

Hope it’s a nice tune. Bugger. Just mouth something sensible and go away, disappear, attempt never to have been.

VERY GOOD.

Did you just mouth VERY GOOD ? VERY GOOD ? How many awards do you have for word-slinging and all you can come up with is VERY GOOD ? VERY GOOD is what you say to someone who is five and has eaten all his crusts. VERY GOOD is not what you tell a very grown up you have only recently seen take Hamlet, shake it, turn it inside out and use it as a fetching hat. Jeezuz.

If we just run for the Avon… we’re wearing a big coat. It’ll weigh us down. We could be bobbing peacefully against the weir in no time.

As usual, I can only hope to be forgotten as soon as possible and try not to resurrect my last attempt to congratulate an actor I admire: to whit, “Excuse me Mr. Holm, if I could just say how much I’ve enjoyed all your work.” Which isn’t too shit a start and I was in a helpful context and therefore credible. Naturally, Ian Holm then asks what in particular I’ve enjoyed and I suddenly can remember nothing, nothing, nothing except for “From Hell” – an abortion of a movie in which he was, nevertheless, splendid, but even so. Dear God, there are occasions when my levels of self-loathing are shamefully inadequate. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Lord, give me people I’ve made up earlier any day. Amen.

www.newstatesman.com - Noxious vapours

Once again I am hunched in the only office I may ever know – a train - my own lovely home being a distant memory filled with housework and DVD’s I haven’t watched for ages. On this occasion I’m in a Birmingham-bound diesel office which has managed to sneak out of Edinburgh Waverly without being – thus far – stymied by all of the apocalyptic and mysterious things that happen to the rail network on Sundays. Yes, dear reader, I am mad enough to attempt Sunday travel.

Sitting opposite me in a kind of smiley coma is Gill Dennis the splendid creature responsible for writing, among other things, the screenplay for “Walk The Line”. We have just tutored a screen writing course and, having talked and thought almost continuously for five days we now find it challenging to organise complex tasks like blinking. Occasionally we cry. I may even be crying now.

Tutoring residential courses represents a delicious kind of community-based Russian roulette for writers. There you will be, trapped in a remote location with a number of complete strangers in order to Teach Something About Something, perhaps with another writer who may or may not turn out to be going through a drug-induced internal soap opera, or a sex-induced external soap opera, or a typing-induced grand opera.

Expecting typists to respond warmly to group experiences always seems odd to me. We are not naturally hugging, sharing, orderly folk. We have the power to transform The Walton Family Eats Dinner into The Manson Family Gets Even. Before arriving at one of these things – on a train – I am always assailed by similar questions. Will there be more than one nutter? Will inappropriate sexual behaviour in thin-walled bedrooms cause conflict/envy/bootleg recordings? Will we end up building a rudimentary altar and sacrificing the weakest participant? And, most importantly, will all the writing be shit?

Happily – miraculously – this course involved 100 per cent charming and co-operative people who could also write like the stars I hope they become. All sixteen of them - no duffers, no loons, they could cook, they were funny and twisted and many of them had nice mums. Plus, Mr. Dennis is one of nature’s gentlemen and a joy to be around. Much fun was had, much work was done – and I got to enjoy being slightly teary on the final evening as work was presented and everyone found out how good everyone else was.

If only there was a British film industry it would all have had a point. If only there was a Scottish film industry and the powers that be weren’t more interested in rebranding themselves than making watchable, unique films that would entertain, enlighten and delight. If only they were interested in the arts at all – we could be another Ireland. But we’re not.

Lately, I’ve also managed to lie in a couple of pals’ spare bedroom and finish the first draft of a short story. (I will commence serious rewriting once I have finished this.) As said pals were away for the weekend and left me in charge of their children – no, that’s not arrestable, I am in fact a competent warder/baby sitter – I had the incalculably wonderful experience of introducing two ankle-biters who don’t have a telly at home to the full glory that can be squashed into three box sets of Dr Who.

They are excellent young people – partly because their parents love them and they have not been accosted by television and partly because they have gone to a school that treats them like human beings and has equipment and proper teachers and lots of running about and mild risk – they just didn’t have the doctor.

And now they do. Ah, the flinching, the giggling, the looking away, the being surprised when tricky situations are not resolved by murder, the gentle exploration of a world that loves adventure and intelligence and curiosity and human potential. A television show that respects the viewer. They have only a vague idea of how rare that is. But they now do know how good the doctor is. I growed up with him around and they can, too. He’s where the BBC keeps what’s left of it’s soul.

www.newstatesman.com - Locked up with writers

I am writing this on a train – to be precise, the train that I had to buy a ticket for when it turned out that the train I had a ticket for didn’t exist as a result of obscure and perhaps satanic influences – or simply because it’s a British train and therefore one small, but highly effective, part of a multi-layered plan to make travelling by public transport impossible.

So I spent two hours of this afternoon huddled in a hot corner of Kings Cross, eking out a soda water and lime and waiting to climb aboard what these days constitutes my office. No one phones me on trains, no one faxes me, no one can email me (because the advertised wi fi doesn’t work) I can drink cups of appalling and vaguely stimulating milky tea (my intolerance to both caffeine and dairy making this a heart-racing and phlegmy thrill) I cannot distract myself with household chores, or minor acts of self-harm (except for the tea) and I can actually get some work done.

The only story I’ve ever had accepted by the New Yorker was written on a train, the short story I am currently writing is being written on a train, this is being written on a train – dear God, I had exactly one day to deal with my washing, ironing and post after returning from the Fringe and then I was off again – on a train - and now I’m heading back – on a train. Before being off some more. I may never find out what’s in my own freezer again. If I had enough time, I might find it alarming that spending a month surrounded by showpersons, comics and diseases while performing at least once a day constituted a restful burst of sanity and a chance to bond and chat with people I hadn’t made up earlier out of my head.

The lunacy of my current existence was recently brought home to me when I considered speed dating. Not as a thing I would have to be drugged, handcuffed and forced to take part in at gunpoint – just as a concept.

My innate shyness, alarming sense of humour, twitches and ridiculously high boredom threshold effectively prevent me from dating, even at a moderate pace, and should I suffer a personality-transforming head injury that makes me want to sit at a table opposite a succession of sad-eyed Brians and Dereks, my being semi-permanently on a train would prove a grave obstacle to nervous glances and whatever “small talk” might turn out to be.

It occurred to me the other night that my personal equivalent is, in fact, the hotel fire scare. In many ways, piling into a damp car park at 3am with a load of strangers is an ideal way to meet new chums. There you are, united by adversity, with plenty of amusing grumbles to share and ample opportunity to check out the night attire of potential mates – will you nod enticingly to the flannel pyjamas and anorak, or the bare feet, jeans and pullover, or go for the mysteriously rakish overcoat and ankle boot combination?

Being more that a little paranoid, I’m comforted by knowing how someone will react in a crisis. And, being a night owl, I do tend to shine in the small hours - especially if I’m the only woman present who doesn’t look as if she’s been regurgitated by a killer whale – even more especially if I happen to be in a sharp suit and my lucky shoes. Not that my state of enviable readiness would in any way suggest that I might have left some smouldering leaves in a vestibule for some reason and forgotten to smother them with sand.

www.newstatesman.com - Speed dating

One of the many interesting chance elements which always enters into the Edinburgh Festival mix, is disease. Not to be too graphic, you spend your semi-waking days watching, or working in various warm, moist venues full of strangers who breathe, cough, giggle, guffaw, sigh, yawn and generally spread the usually very private and intimate contents of their lungs all over the shop, you utilise extremely well-used conveniences (with much less-used hand washing facilities) and handle microphones that have probably not been boiled in bleach since they were bought in the late 1970’s – you are eventually going to get Festival Flu, Festival Tummy, Festival Leprosy, or something else genuinely unpleasant. The fact that many venues smell like oldmantrousers, or deadnun is also unnerving. And a good deal of unhygienic hugging, patting and touching takes place. This year I’ve been enjoying a range of aches, snuffles, rasping strangulations and eye throbbings – as has pretty much everyone else I’ve been meeting from a distance with gloves and mask in place.

Given that I occupy a slightly peculiar cross-media position I have been bouncing between club comedy gigs, my show, the Westport Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival and deargodknowswhat else in a nether world of high-fat and previously-fingered free food and what I can only really describe as chatting. This can seem simply pleasant, if not puerile at one level, but it’s a joy to spend a month being reminded that British people and people in general are brighter, faster, more civilised and more pleasant to be around than any of our media or politicians might suggest. There are, of course, insistently insane and peculiar exceptions (and I have no idea what bowel of hell my audience came from on the 13th) but it is truly exhilarating to get down to telling stories and being told stories with no monkeying about, or muffling/critical/literary/buzz killing interventions.

This year there have already been some genuinely grand moments – the invention of lime tea as a refreshing alternative to lemon, seeing the Tiger Lillies do their twisted and wonderful stuff, the lady who took her socks off in my gig, the chap who was “good at being submissive” and the splendid couple who came all the way from Orkney to say hello. This year I have been proud to go on after a stripper – not necessarily a good thing, then again everyone is going to be pleased if I promise not to take off my clothes, so it all balances out – and have been given a lollipop and a balloon by two different kind gentlemen – not exactly the brand affection one might hope for in the heady world of notreallyshowbiz, but it has to be said that I do love a balloon.

Meanwhile, a pal of mine has managed to run up a £30 overdraft in the midst of the festival chaos. His bank is attempting to charge him £120 for the money he didn’t arrange for them to advance him in the first place… he should have gone to a loan shark, or just sold one of his legs for sandwich meat. We set aside a little time each day to meditate on the fact that greedy and utterly mindless banks have been entirely happy to bring our economy to the brink of meltdown by shifting fake money faster and faster round the globe and taking on impossible risks for the joy of short term blood-letting and with no thought for the implications of the word impossible – and no one in government is going to do anything other than bail them out. With our money. Until it’s too late. This does not improve our combined symptoms.

www.newstatesman.com - Festival Leprosy

Something of an eventful fortnight behind me. The weekend before last I had to pick up the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. This involved flying to Salzburg – cue much head twitching and feeble attempts at self-hypnosis in various bits of Gatwick. Eventually my imagination simply became so exhausted by picturing smiley things and projection screens and giving air gunners encouraging hugs that it could no longer picture my mangled remains dangling from a tree, ready to traumatise a passing rescue worker. At least not clearly enough to prevent me from boarding the plane and then carrying out every single obsessive-compulsive safety ritual I have – along with a few I invented as we bounced along. I’m sure I was a joy to all observers – tapping, nodding, shuddering and humming away like a shouldn’t-ever-be-out-patient.

Salzburg itself is lovely – delightful graveyard. The prize business involved wearing evening dress at most times of day, staring at canapés and being regularly assailed by classical music. All of which was so cultured, civilised and frankly unbelievable that it became pleasant, rather than nerve-wracking. The Austrian Minister for Culture is charming and actually cares about culture and the Austrian Prime Minister gave me cake – while I tried to assure him my own Prime Minister would have taken my cake and told me it would be given to the destitute and cake-needy before sneaking it into the cake trough of a cake-spattered man in a mink cake-eating suit. Poor Gordon, though - perhaps soon to be replaced by one or another Miliband. They’re twins, after all. What happens if we get the evil twin? I’ve watched more than enough Hammer horror films to know this is surely a risk.

Of course, the day after landing back from Salzburg (and being almost delighted enough by my continued existence to stay in the Ibis Euston without feeling nauseous – honestly, a sign in the foyer says it’s all about European values and “the breath of France” – France has serious internal problems if its breath smells of Ibis, that’s all I can say.. sorry that’s far too long a parenthesis and this is simply adding to it) I had to jump into my first preview performance for the Fringe.

And I’ve been running the show ever since – which is what I now choose to call a lovely holiday. I work one hour a day (unless I’m doing some other bit of funny stuff, which might bring that up to a whole hour and a half) and potter for the rest of the time, grinning like a Muppet. Thus far the ladies and gentlemen have been splendid, the venue has been only just hot enough to melt bronze and nothing apocalyptic has happened with any wiring.

I have now passed into that very special state of tiredness that only the Fringe produces – the sort where you can endlessly perform magic tricks on yourself. For example, approximately eight times a day I open my travel wallet with its central panel flipped left instead of right and then wonder pathetically where all my money and cards have gone. My show this year involves a mug of tea which I managed to put in my bag yesterday when I left The Stand. I then opened said bag on the train going home, noticed the tea – still, amazingly, in the mug – lifted it out of my bag and drank it. Which allowed fellow passengers to assume that a) I am unhinged b) I am a bad, beverage-related mime c) I am an unhinged and bad children’s entertainer. Things can only get odder and I can hardly wait.

You can see AL Kennedy at the Edinburgh Fringe

www.newstatesman.com - Evil twin?