May 27th 2009

There you are.

Sorry I’ve been longer than usual, but I fell into the trap. I could see it coming but I couldn’t stop myself. I had managed to avoid it for a few years now, but in a weak moment I was caught and I succumbed and agreed. You see, I have always boasted that the queen can have anything she wants. And she can. She’s already got everything (everything that can be bought with money, that is), so it wasn’t a difficult commitment to make. But she thought of something she said we needed and, at first, I didn’t know what it could possibly be. She was of course referring to DDD, the Dreaded Disease of Decorating. And of all places, she wanting doing, was the kitchen. Yes, the kitchen ... the hub of domestic comfort and organization of the house.
Well, I wished I had emigrated.
For a start, we had quotes from all over the place and, of course, finished up with the dearest!
She had me running up and down looking for wallpaper. Not that colour, not that with roses. I like that Italian style with a jug and plate on it, she said. Not that. It looks old fashioned. That one is too modern. Who wants paper designed using a motif of squares and triangles? That cream one. Might as well get white, it’ll be cream soon enough! Too cheap, she said. How much is it a roll?
Fifty pence? Eighty pence? Oh no. Surely not a pound?
More than a pound?
Twenty pounds? she said.
For the whole room?
No. A roll. Twenty pounds a roll!
It has to be waterproof you see.
Yes, but does it have to keep out the North Sea? I asked
And it didn’t finish there, did it? We had to have plasterers in to tidy up a damp corner and while they were here, they replastered an entire wall in the pantry.
There’s more.
The queen said that the big kitchen cupboards screwed to the wall are a bit too high. A bit too high. After 38 years, a bit too high?
Could they be lowered?
Could they be lowered?
Lucky old Roger. They couldn’t be lowered because there was an electric socket in the way. And no, the electric socket could not be moved.
Well, you’ve got to put your foot down somewhere.

Anyway, the decorators came and went like a barium enema.
The kitchen looks lovely and clean. They’ve broken the TV aerial and banged the kitchen TV about that much so that I can’t get a picture anymore. And the new DAB radio is all spotted with white Dulux. And they’ve hidden the wall clock. I think they’ve papered over it.

What's more important to me is that they’ve also put a stop to my book. I can’t write with people running in and out like MPs at the Fees Office. Also I can’t stand the distraction of the smell of paint and a big bill hovering over my head, like that. This happened to me last year, I remember. I can’t recall what it was, but it took me a month to get my mind back into the right atmosphere and pick up the plot.
If the queen has a rush of blood and this daft idea comes up again, I have threatened to leave home, and stay in a posh hotel on a warm tropical island to write until the agony is over.

Moving on ...
I got an email from Jack Lindsey who lives near Stratford-On-Avon. He was a copper in Mexborough. (That’s about ten miles from here). I know Mexborough as having a great hospital there, the Montague, which relieved me of great pain in my back a couple of years ago. A surgeon used a specialised technique incorporating X ray and pain relieving injections. It is absolute magic.

Jack began criticising some of the things I had the pathologist do in IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. Also he pointed out that police cars now have blue lights flashing on their tops in emergency conditions not amber, as I had written. I’m sure he’s quite correct. Also he doesn’t have much of a good opinion of people from Barnsley. But he sugared the pill by saying, ‘My wife Mary and I are both avid readers of yours and find it difficult to discover an author that we both enjoy. Inspector Angel is a real gem and Mary sits there chuckling at your descriptive phrases.’

That’s nice, isn’t it? I shall tell Angel next time I see him.

Enjoy the rain, and come back soon.