John Wilkes and resisting being rude.

I feel much better after having drinks in Blacks. It was my first trip there, I've been meaning to go for ages but every time something has been arranged I've been either distracted by a woman or the pub.

Now I've been to Blacks I must say that the experience of drinking a very decent bottle of plonk in front of a roaring fire in a secret boudoir with a chum is one I will definitely want to repeat. I may even go so far as to become a member.

It was a very agreeable evening and I even managed to resist the lure of going on to a separate even more exclusive club because I had to be back in time for the curfew. It wasn't just the curfew that was dragging me away from the fun, in the morning I had to help a friend through a photo shoot.

It was for a deeply silly piece I've been working on and as part of it some photographs of this friend had to be taken. She is a retired porn star, but through-out the shoot she kept striking poses that were inspired by her previous employment, she couldn't help but touch things she shouldn't really in a public place because that is what she did for years.

A man walked into a bench because he was so distracted by the way she was licking her coffee cup, which if you had seen it you would have understood. I was in fits of giggles the whole time but eventually we managed to get some photos that weren't filthy and I cooked her breakfast as a reward.

The rest of the morning has been spent reading about John Wilkes who is a marvellous sort and I think he may become one of my heroes. Also I've been involved in the planning of a new Operation, as part of Operation New Life.

This one is going to require daring do, outrageous audacity, colossal cunning and the luck of the devil. I bet Wilkes would have approved.

Roxanne

I've been recruited to help the ex-porn star find a new chap. She is currently on a website which is specially designed to allow very rich chaps to meet pretty girls. I'm sure you can guess the name but I won't mention it. Anyway it appears that while the chaps on this website are (apparently) wealthy they aren't very glib, you wouldn't believe the sort of nonsense that my friend has been sent by this chaps in an attempt to seduce her.

Anyway, just put aside the thoughts of how ghastly this website is (and it is horrible) and concentrate on the matter in hand - the poor quality of chaps bothering my friend. In an attempt to try and improve the level of chap messaging her I re-wrote her profile to make it a bit more pithy. Don't ask why, it seemed like a good idea after two bottles of wine.

It seemed to have worked as she has more chaps messaging her now. And they are at least trying to engage in a conversation with her, but she is at a loss over what to say back to them. For some reason she has managed to rope me into helping write her replies.

It's a very strange situation to be in, akin to the situation in Cyrano De bergerac except I don't have a big nose and I'm not secretly in love with chaps my friend is talking to. So I suppose it's not that close really, I just wanted to have a post titled Roxanne because.

1) It's a bit like that film with Steve Martin (which is based on Cyrano De bergerac)
2) The person I'm helping used to be a porn star, so it's a bit like that song by Sting
3) The stage name of my friend was a bit like Roxanne.

Anyway, I must dash because I've got to write an email to someone called Pete who goes by the name 'LoveMachine' about the sort of bands I see in London, or to be exact the sort of bands my friend would like to see if she was really the sort of person who went to see live music but she isn't.

This would all be a bit much if I hadn't had such a splendid lunch with a friend. It was a perfect lunch, I wish I was back there now having lunch right now.

Volauvents and the nude lady.

Can an adult actress throw a decent supper party? This is the question I will be finding the answer to tonight. I'll be going to the new house of an ex-girlfriend. I remember her from her 'wild days' when she was an actress of some renoun. We dated for a while - when she was taking a career break - and although things didn't really work out we have stayed friends.

She wasn't the most domestic of people, she lived in a strange world of sports cars and properties around the globe. You find a lot of adult actors and actresses invest in property (the ones who don't get messed up by the experience) because they earn so much in a short time and then the place you buy can provide a steady income when you retire.

I have very fond memories of our dates, we always had some sort of adventure. Some slightly worrying but others very entertaining. Once ended up doing a photoshoot with her, by accident but that is a story for another time.

I'm glad that she has completely got out of that world before she got to messed up by it and she has found a nice chap who clearly adores her. I still can't imagine her making volauvents but perhaps there is a happy ending for us all?

Wanted: A killer first page

I'm trying to write a first page for a book I'm working on. It's got to be so gripping that anyone who reads it can't help but read on, desperate to know more. In what could be described as a 'ground breaking web experiment' I'm going to post the first page and see what the people of the Internet think, all 4 and a half of you who read this blog.

If you like it, it stays. If not I will start again.

So here it is.

**************************

I looked down the cliff, and realised I was going to die.

“So how fucked are the brakes Henry?” I asked.

“Gone,” replied Henry “we’ve got nothing.”

“Just to confirm, we are both knackered, it’s starting to get dark and we have to drive down one of the most dangerous mountain passes in the Alps in a Volvo that’s older than I am and we don’t have any brakes?”

“It’s foggy too, oh and I think the offside wheel bearing is going.”

I was going to die, and what made it worse, I kept thinking of that woman.

To clear my head I looked behind us; the ancient Volvo was burbling away happily and occasionally plinking to itself. Over the last few days the car’s strange mechanical failings had been a constant source of amusement and now it was going to kill us. The skull and crossbones we had painted on it seemed a bit ironic now.

I caught myself wondering what she would be doing right now and that made me angry. I wanted my last thoughts to be at least of someone I liked, not of her.

“Well I’m going to change my shirt,” I said to Henry and the mountain side. We hadn’t seen another car for hours so it felt like we were the only people on the planet.

“Why?”

“If I’m going to die, there doesn’t seem like much point in saving my best shirt for later.”

As I put on the shirt I thought about how I had ended up here. I tried to think back through the events to find the one that led to me facing a really stupid death. Where did it all start? Was it the fake Nazis, the Transvestite builder or the porn star? No, it was further back then that. Before I became any sort of womaniser, and way before I met her.

No it all started a long while ago, on another hillside, in Scotland.