The Well-Tempered Clavier

The story so far: Bill is trying to turn his novel The Well-Tempered Clavier into a bestseller - and his publisher Idle Tom is trying to help him …

The man from Legend calls again - for ever a harbinger of evil deeds and facile thoughts …

He was crowing again. I could sense him dry-washing his hands over the phone. "She rides!" said Idle Tom the publisher. "She rides!"

"Who is riding what?"

"Daisy Dooley is riding all over you again!"

"What are you talking about now?" I hadn’t read the papers for a couple of days.

"She’s taking chunks out of Jamie Prattlock! I knew that one bite wouldn’t be nearly enough. I mean she did that great article about you and that was fine, but now you’re back in the column again - centre stage!"

"Ahhh." I said. How very unpleasant. Just briefly by way of explanation: The Clavier novel has a "Perfect Partner" on Amazon - my ex-wife’s book Daisy Dooley Does Divorce. This book is pretty much the story of her life since our split, and has been serialised every Monday in the Mail for the past three years. And, just to complete the briefing, Daisy’s numbskull ex-husband Jamie Prattlock occasionally makes an appearance.

"Yep!" said that little tinker of a publisher. "Jamie is back! Big time! He’s knocked on her door!"

"You mean Jamie Prattlock is now actually making a proper appearance in the column? He’s actually featured, rather than receiving his usual monthly side-swipe?"

"Give that man a cigar! Jamie and Daisy are now face to face! They’re sitting down and having a little chat!"

"I’m sure she was very complimentary."

"Not really, no. I think she must have had a peek at your Clavier video, because she had your looks down to a T -"

"Yes?" It felt rather like being in the dentist’s chair - only with a dentist who was just loving the fact that he was about to give embark on a root canal. Without anaesthetic.

"Yeah. She was spot on. Said you had big puffy eyes, that you drank too much, and that your hair was a kind of gingery colour - "

"Could have been worse - "

"Oh it gets a lot worse, I can tell you. Anyway - enough of that. I’ve got an idea!"

"Oh God."

"No this is really good one, Bill. In fact it’s a great idea. You are just going to love this little puppy, I know you are!"

"Why am I suddenly feeling so queasy?"

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Well-Tempered Clavier. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.