Well, they are, aren’t they? Cucumber sandwiches tell you to be quiet and behave, that you’re in polite company and it’s business, they’re asking if you’ve polished your shoes and they’re warning you not to drink too much. Bacon sandwiches are much better, they’re all about slamming a mug of tea on the table, they’re saying ravenous and parched and that you’ve worked for these.

Here’s the thing. There is a way to see this thought, the whole bacon-sandwiches-are-loud bit, as poetic. I understand, it’s a reach. You’re a generous soul but even you would need to really like me, probably for us to be related closely and very definitely for me to have recently loaned you an awful lot of money, but it could happen, you could say this, it is possible.

Obviously I’m only saying this to you while we’re chatting, I wouldn’t go saying it in public. And I recognise completely that it isn’t full-on poetic poetry as I am unfortunately not at home to Mr Rhyme and it remains true that Ms Meter won’t take my calls.

It’s also not poetry up there with, oh, say, Emily Dickinson. I’d quote ‘hope is the thing with feathers’ to you now but I would weep.

Bugger.

Anyway.

Something in my eye.

It’s fine.

It’s fine.

Gone now.

I am obsessed with words and I’ve long been conscious that this ought to mean obsessed with poetry: there is no stronger use of text, I think. Instead, I’m rather scared of it and I come a long way around via incessant noodling and now a bath in a poetry workshop.

I’ve talked to you about the noodling before. I get all hung up on writers who use the wrong words and yet in doing so create something better, richer than the strictly accurate or grammatically correct lines would. Dar Williams’ “I am the others”, for instance, or the peculiar tale of how Suzanne Vega and I collaborated on a song lyric without her knowing it. (Mondegreen with envy.)

She still doesn’t have a clue about this and let’s keep it that way. If she came up to us now and overheard, if I went into shuffling my feet and trying to smile weakly, I’d be stumbling off into how she’s written this incredible ouevre that I love and admire and cherish but that I’ve also spent twenty years or more thinking about one word that isn’t in it.

That’s being seriously obsessed with words. Quick aside? BBC 7, as BBC Radio 4 Extra once was, long ago did a series of straight poetry readings: just one poem after another, no big embellishments, no introductions, just poem after poem. It was quite mesmerising and I realised during one episode that some of the poems I was hearing were actually Suzanne Vega lyrics. Just recited instead of sung. And they worked. They worked marvellously. Switch off the music in your head, give yourself up to the text, and you heard a new rhythm, a new power in the undertow.

I write prose and fiction and drama for a living but I obsess about poetry like a sports fan. It’s been this thing that I cheer and that maybe I know I could do better than that, come on ref, you’re blind, Ee Aye Addio, skin him, skin him. But I’ve never played.

Not quite true. I wrote a song lyric in a script once and it killed the script, but it was a lyric.

A friend, Laura Cousins – you’d like her, I must introduce you – once challenged me to write a song after seeing something in my twitter style that doesn’t exist. I failed. Officially we’re still talking, but we started it eight thousand years ago now so our first album may be a ways off just yet.

But a few months ago I was interviewed on BBC Radio WM by Charlie Jordan. And around the same time I met Laura Yates. And kind of around the same time ish, I met Gary Longden. These are three people deeply involved in poetry in the West Midlands: all these years I’ve been living on the M1 to London, this is the kind of people I’ve been missing out on both in Birmingham and in London.

Laura Yates sent me a Facebook invitation to a poetry event. I scan-read it on the run and saw that she was organising it, that Gary and Charlie were (I thought) performing at it, and of course I fancied that. I’ve seen Gary perform, I’ve not heard Charlie’s poetry but I’ve heard her perform on radio, I’m there. Except it’s not them performing, it’s them running a poetry workshop.

I must’ve known this before I signed up but there was this long period where consciously I knew what I was getting into but unconsciously I was still thinking it was these fine folk performing a show. So I didn’t get the tight-throat worry until a few days before. I checked but nobody close enough to me had died, my hair was untidy and needed a cut but it was unquestionably already washed, I had to go.

I did not ask them to be gentle with me.

I did not.

Stop it.

Anyway, by odd, random coincidence, they were gentle with me.

Was it fifteen people? I’m not sure now, I just saw them at first as this wall of people who were at the very least experienced poets if they weren’t also professional, if they weren’t already making their living from poetry. I put away a verse I’d been working on about a young man from Nantucket and listened.

Alan Plater said once that poets write about themselves, dramatists write about everybody else. I was conscious during the workshop that I probably belong heart and soul to drama, then, as I find it incredibly hard and worthless to focus on myself and what I’m seeing, what I’m feeling, in order to write something that can convey anything to anyone else. I don’t really care about me, it’s like I know all about me, I was there at the time, I saw me do it, whereas, come on, you’re new, I don’t know what you’ve been doing, you’re much more interesting.

Now, I do write a blog, I’m obviously not shy about expressing myself, but I’ll say it again: I write to you, I don’t go around trying to write to the world. And these poets were instead finding immensely personal thoughts that came from far within themselves yet somehow also chimed universally.

I say somehow but the how that some of them did was work and thought and talent and skill. It was so impressive that you would long for them to all be bastards.

They let me down there.

Over lunch, bacon from a nearby café called to a few of us. At first, I’d say that these poets were quiet and reserved, I’d say that the bacon sandwiches were noticeably louder, but poetry and food and amazingly cold weather brought us together into a right huddle of nattering and sharing. I liked being with them, I liked visiting this world where people are as obsessed with words as I am but are actually doing something with their obsession. It’s a place where I feel like a tourist but the natives were so friendly I noodled about buying a timeshare there one day.

Back at the workshop, Charlie was particularly encouraging about my now deeply personal Nantucket poem. Laura Yates has since half-encouraged, half-goaded and all-challenged me to write more. (You’re wanted too, you’re not getting out of this: have a look at Write Down, Speak Up on Facebook.)

And because of them, because of the workshop, I’ve spent the last week thinking and thinking and obsessing. I have a poem. I have an actual poem.

Well, I say an actual poem. For once I will claim without any fear of disagreement that it has the finest rhyme I have ever done. Because so far it’s one line. There is nothing to rhyme with it yet.

It’s also currently three words long.

I do believe that it can take a week to write three words. I do believe that words can take that work, that they can be worth that work, that three words can be stronger than a thousand.

But unfortunately what I’m supposed to be doing this week is writing a book and my target was 10,000 words.

So, excuse me, it’s 5am on Friday morning and I have to go write 9,997 words really, really, really quickly.

Well. I might get breakfast first. You know what I want to eat now, don’t you?

Last Sunday I spoke at Birmingham’s Tell Me on a Sunday storytelling event at the Ikon Gallery. Eight speakers, 120-odd in the audience and Cat Weatherill specifying only that we had to tell a story, that it had to be a true one, and that it had to be a true story about a Strange Encounter.

I had such a good night. I wish you’d been there. Well, I do now: I was so nervous before it that I specifically wished you wouldn’t. But now it’s done and it went so well, I’m burning to tell you my tale.

Are you sitting down? Do you have a biscuit?

Photo by Joanne Penn, Writing West Midlands

Hello.

I need to tell you about a Strange Encounter… of the Third Kind. My true story has aliens in it. It’s the story of a night that has stayed with me – well, it would, wouldn’t it? It has aliens in it.

I was 16 years old in 1981. I don’t think that when you’re 16 you actually make choices but it’s that time in your life when choices come together so if you’re going to be a sporting person, you are, you will be then. If you’re going to go Goth, there’s no better time. In 1981, there weren’t a lot of choices. I rejected sport, rejected Goth, considered New Romantic. What I went for, what I chose to be was… a fan of science fiction.

It wasn’t the most fashionable thing at the time.

But what we had here in 1981, we had the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Actually, it’s still running. It’s big now, websites, conventions I think, and even when I was there it had been going ten years and it was very serious, very respectable. And it used to have meetings in the Ivy Bush pub on Hagley Road.

Now, there’s one thing you have to allow me some licence with. I am a journalist and I have got to be accurate but I’ve not been back in that pub since this night and while I promise you this is a true story, the one thing I can’t quite hold in my head is the geography of this pub. It’s a small corner one, I remember it feeling bigger on the inside. I just can’t remember and if you know that it’s smaller than I make it sound, just keep in mind that to a 16-year-old it was very daunting.

A black, icy-cold winter’s evening. Stepping into the very warm, very busy pub. So many people. All sitting in groups. And I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me until then but I had no idea what anybody from the Birmingham Science Fiction Group looked like. You wouldn’t. No websites, no Google image search. I think I’d written them a letter. Maybe they’d written back. Maybe I phoned one of them. But all I knew was the time and the pub.

This is one specific lesson I learnt that night: if you don’t know something, ask. I realise that sounds obvious, but an awful lot of men never learn it.

So I went right up to the nearest table. I was so young, I can feel the nervousness, but, really, what were they going to do?

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you the Birmingham Science Fiction Group?”

They raised their glasses to me and as one said “Sod off, geek.”

Okay.

Next table.

And this one, thank god, this one said “Yes”.

They budged up too, eight men at this table squeezed me on at the end. I can see every face to this day. They seemed so old. Looking at them now, closing my eyes and going round that table, I know there was nobody there over 19.

But they seemed so old, it seemed so serious and big. The world is a very different place now but then, 1981, being in a pub felt very adult. I’m in a pub meeting and I feel very big. Also worried that I’ll have to buy a round when I haven’t much money.

Lenny was talking. He wasn’t like a leader of the group but he was in the middle of telling them all a story.

No, actually, that’s the wrong word. He wasn’t telling them science fiction, he wasn’t telling them fiction at all. He was recounting something that actually happened to him the night before.

The night before. When he met aliens.

You were wondering when the aliens would come in to this. In 1981, I was wondering why aliens came into this.

But all these people, all these old men, whatever Lenny had said to them before I got there – whatever he’d shown them, maybe – they were sold. They believed. This was real. They were leaning in really intensely. So I leant in, really intensely.

And Lenny really quickly gave me a catch-up, a Previously. The night before, he’d left work  –

– Lenny had a job! I was so impressed –

He’d left work and driven –

– Lenny had a car!

He’d left work and driven up to the top of the Clent Hills

– I wasn’t that fussed about the Clent Hills

He’d left work and driven up to the top of the Clent Hills with his girlfriend.

– wow.

And they’d gone to do something. I wasn’t really clear what. But at some point during the… er… proceedings… the Earth moved.

The Earth moved and the car shook and where it had been a pitch-black, ice-cold winter evening, suddenly it was as if it were warm daylight.

They got out of the car. And overhead, over the Clent Hills, was this shining, glowing disc. It was spinning slightly and Lenny said that as it span you could feel it somehow. Feel it running through you. It felt like alien engines working to keep that spinning disc completely still and level right there in the very bottom of Earth’s gravity well.

– Lenny knew words like gravity well. This was so real.

He and his girlfriend held hands. And after a moment, she starts tugging at him, she wants to run away. You can’t run away from this, he’s thinking, why would you leave this? He angrily shakes her hand free. But she wasn’t trying to pull him away.

She was holding on to him as something was pulling her up.

And when he let go, she started zooming up into the air.

He should have grabbed her hand.

Her waist.

Her ankle.

He should have done something. But he let his girlfriend be abducted.

And I think he deserved the fact that she had the car keys.

So he’s got no choice now, he’s got to run. Now, I don’t know if you know the Clent Hills but they’re not very steep, at the top there it’s quite a gentle long slope. But it’s not as if he’s running, it’s more as if he’s falling forward, scrabbling, tumbling and he’s going down faster and faster when – whump. There’s a fist-sized punch in the centre of his back.

It should have sent him flying. But instead it held him. Grabbed him. And began pulling him back.

He’s reaching out for branches to grab onto but this is the roadway, there are no branches.  Nothing to hold on to. He’s trying to scrabble in the dirt and all the little stones are being kicked up – until suddenly they’re not. His feet aren’t connecting with the ground at all. He’s been picked up into the air and he’s being pulled back up the hill.

As he gets back up there, tugged back to the very top of the hill, this thing, this thing that had grabbed him, wrenches his body around so that he’s facing the glowing, floating alien ship. Where a small black square opened.

Now, the next night in the pub, he’s trying to explain what that was and the best he can tell us is that it was like it was a speaker. But it wasn’t making sound, that wasn’t where the sound was coming from. Somehow the sound was coming out of him. Alien voices were coming out of him. Trying to come out of him. It was as if aliens had read all about vocal chords and the larynx but it was their first time trying to use them. Lenny said blood came out alongside the rasp of words.

Sitting in the pub, he’s gone pale, he’s started to sweat. Forget all the other groups in the Ivy Bush that night, every single person in that crowded pub was listening to Lenny. Riveted.

His hand went to his throat as he described the feeling of it being used, being taken over by alien forces.

And Lenny started to rise.

Right there in the pub, right there in front of us, he starts to rise.

And suddenly his eyes roll back in his head.

This isn’t Lenny anymore.

This was alien.

And it spoke.

It spoke.

That rasping, horrible, agonising voice.

It spoke to us.

And it said.

“William. You’re at the wrong table. The geeks are over there.”

You’ve got this image of me as the rogueishly handsome, witty, athletic sort and I don’t blame you, that’s just the way it is. But for me, I really don’t like mentally slotting anyone into a type. In fact, I don’t even like to think that there are types of people.

But there are.

I used to work at Radio Times magazine and on their website. Until a couple of years ago, Radio Times was part of the BBC. And I don’t know what it is but the BBC attracts an awful lot of intense young women who are always named Charlotte.

They’re always very clever, very quick, tend to have good broadcasting voices, just really smart people who are very switched on and aware of their whole careers. They’re also always poorly paid so they pull off a very inexpensive fashion style, making a lot out of a little. Very arty.

Clever, arty, talented. This is exactly why I pursued Angela for so long. Um. I’m starting to regret where this story is going now. If you’re reading, Angela, we’ll talk it through later.

So.

Charlotte.

There was this woman named Charlotte.

Look, she was in the Art Department at Radio Times, okay? Arty, clever, so clever. Art and talent and cleverness, very sexy. And I am a man, it helped that Charlotte looked very good.

Now, it’s not like I was hoping to do something. I was very luckily married. But there are just people who you would like to like you. You feel great when someone smart likes you. And talented and sexy.

And Charlotte seemed to like me. Let’s be really clear here, you know she didn’t fancy me, I want you to know that I knew that. Nothing like that, stop thinking that. This is a family show.

But we met in some production meeting, shook hands, I was actually a little knocked back by her. I mean, yes, I’ll say it. Beauty. Kind of a verve, a vibrance. And I can’t remember what the meeting was but I went in thinking some particular thing and I came out thinking another. She’d changed my mind about something. I love that. Inexpressibly great.

So the next day, I’m in the kitchen. At this point Radio Times was in a long, modern building. Did you watch The Thick of It? That was filmed in the Radio Times offices.

Open plan, long lines. If I stood up at my desk I could see one way up through the whole magazine, I could see right into the kitchen the other way.

So the next day, I’m in the kitchen.

And she comes in.

I start telling her how much I enjoyed the meeting.

And she said it.

It’s not like I was asking her out, but she acted as if I were and – this was no act, this was heartfelt – as if that would be a shudderingly upsetting concept. Please remember that this is the day after I’d first met her and the day after she’d made such an impression me. And injecting disgust into every syllable, she said: “Who are you?”

I mumbled something, I don’t know what, I was very stung. Slapped, actually.

A month goes by.

We’re in the same office but we haven’t had another meeting, thank god, and without any effort on my part, we’ve just not happened to cross paths.

Until…

I’m back in the kitchen.

And she comes in.

Smiles at me.

Asks me something.

I have no idea what.

I just remember blinking.

Okay.

Okay.

Don’t understand.

But it’s better.

Except, I must’ve said something really stupid then because later that same week, she was coming down a corridor toward me and stepped into an office rather than meet me.

I wasn’t imagining this. Really, wasn’t.

Remember the meeting? And the thing I was supposed to have an opinion about? That she changed? She’d still changed my mind, she was right, I was wrong, but now I was actually having to do whatever it was. Really can’t remember. Something on the website. Something big. No clue. I’ve forgotten the work, I just remember the people.

And the last day of me and Charlotte. I remember the last day really well.

Mid-afternoon.

I finish. I hit the Publish button on the website.

And I stood up. Stood up at my desk to stretch. Looked up the room. And there she was. Charlotte. It was like that Pizza Hut advert or maybe Stardust Memories when all the Good People are over there, having a great time, and you’re outside it all, watching. forever separated.

And I thought, bollocks to this. I don’t understand how she’s making me feel like a schoolboy, but she is and it ends today. Let it go, William, forget it. Enough is enough.

I took a breath, I looked at Charlotte one last time, and then I turned my back on her.

Turned my back on her, turned my back on the Art Department, turned my back on the whole thing.

And I stood there, facing the kitchen instead.

Where Charlotte was making tea.

A friend calls this ‘The William Gallagher Method’ and I have yet to forgive her. She called it that to my face and she called it that when she sent notes to someone who had missed my talk at the Birmingham PowWow LitFest last year.

Her notes state that I get up at 5am to work every day.

And she bases that claim solely on the tiny fact that I said so on stage.

But, look, I was asked what my writing schedule was and at that time I’d just finished a Doctor Who (which comes out later this month, by the way). It’d had a short deadline, I was already doing other things, I just meant that every now and again I’d had to be up that early to get this finished.

But this friend – let’s call her Anna Lawrence Pietroni and mention that she has a rather beautiful and absorbing novel available now on Amazon – what was I saying? This friend Anna wrote down my 5am lark, told people about it and, worst of all, gave it a title. And it has crippled me with guilt that the one person you would reasonably imagine would use The William Gallagher Method has been doing anything but.

Until.

Entirely because of this guilt and not at all because I’ve so much work to do, I now follow The William Gallagher Method faithfully. I get up every day at 5am and with a banana in my hand, a pint of water on my desk and a song in my headphones, I work through to 7am or maybe 8am before stopping for breakfast. I’ve been doing this for five or six weeks now and it is with the very greatest of regrets that I have to tell you that it sodding works. I write better, I write more, when I do this. For God’s sake, why? Why is my 5am writing better than when I start at 7am? Or I’m freelance, why isn’t my noon writing good enough?

There is some trickery involved.

Every weekday morning that I do get up at 5am, I put a one pound coin in a pot.

So far, so what?

That’s not the trick of it.

The trick is if I don’t get up at 5am.

You’re thinking that I don’t put a pound coin in or maybe, if you’re very cruel, that I have to take one pound coin out as a kind of punishment. You’re very harsh.

But not, as it happens, harsh enough.

If I fail to get up and be working at 5am on a weekday, I take out all of the coins I’ve ever put in. Empty that pot completely and start again from nothing.

It hasn’t happened yet.

Every weekday, the pot grows and makes the thought of giving it all up for one lie-in just harder and harder.

Do you know, I have only this very instant thought to wonder: did Anna only write down The William Gallagher Method or does she actually do it?

Sorry, that popped into my head there and distracted me. Did you ever see Up? There’s that moment when the dog thinks there’s a squirrel and its concentration is snapped to the left.

Hello. That was me, a moment ago.

So what was I saying? I get up at 5am, yeah, yeah, brutal, show off, who cares. There. That’s a kind of ‘previously on this blog entry’ description.

Here’s the thing. As you can imagine, I don’t see midnight much any more. (This kills me. Going to bed before midnight is just wrong. Wrong.) But sometimes I do. Such as Thursday last week when I nipped to London for a thing and nipped back, getting home around maybe 1am. That was a 5am to 1am working day. Fine.

But I couldn’t sleep. Time was ticking by.

And I was really tempted.

Not to put the alarm back a few hours, this had nothing to do with getting up: I was still going to get up at 5am, no question, no doubt, surprisingly little hesitation, but I was seriously tempted to stay up longer to hear about the debut of OmniFocus 2.  That was coming at 6pm Eastern Standard or 2am William Standard Time.

Notice I said the debut. Not the launch. Not the sale. Just the first unveiling of what this software will look a bit like. Not even a lot like: this was the first viewing of a software you’ve never heard of and which will be released later this year looking at least a bit like this and with these features but many more.

And, god, I was tempted. I did a blog about the original OmniFocus last year and it was surprisingly popular. I thought I was the only one who got excited about this To Do application. Or any To Do applications. My one thimble of an excuse is that I wrote about them for a Mac magazine a while ago. And I recommended OmniFocus. I said something like “First it will destroy your mind, then it will own your soul”.

If you have an iPad, just go get OmniFocus. If you have an iPhone, just have a very good think about getting OmniFocus. If you have a Mac, wait a second. (Find out about them all at the Omni Group site.)

I have and use all three and they are transformative. My wife Angela says I am lighter because of this software. And that’s despite my taking on far more work than before.

But it’s fair to say that the iPad one is gorgeously powerful and easy to use, the iPhone one is powerful enough and good to use, but the Mac one is sock-knockingly powerful yet hard to grasp. OmniFocus 2 is promised to take a lot of the gorgeousness of the iPad version and bring it back to the Mac. It’s not that there is going to be a lot of new functionality but there will be bits and it should all be easier to work with.

It is ridiculous how tempted I was to stay up to find out.

And it’s not at all ridiculous that even as I was in bed, thinking about all this, it was suddenly 5am and I had to get up.

I’m glad now that I didn’t stay up because while the event was at 2am WG Standard time, actual news from it didn’t start surfacing for a good six to eight hours afterwards. And the video of the event was released last night, exactly a week later. I’ve been watching for it, now I’ve been watching it.

But two things. First, just because I really like this: Omni Group makes a lot of software that I have no use for, things like OmniOutliner, OmniPlanner, OmniGraffle. (Every now and again I look up what in the world OmniGraffle does, then I go oh, right, and seconds later have forgotten again.) But now the company is launching a product called OmniPresence.

I don’t care what it does. I just like the name.

Here’s the other thing. I thought I was alone in this and I’m looking at you now thinking you’re looking at me like that and maybe I should’ve shut up when I still sounded all virtuous and righteous for getting up early. But when one particular feature of OmniFocus 2 for Mac was revealed at the debut, writer David Sparks was there and says on the video that it made him pee a little. And I understood. Yes.

There’s not enough time. Getting up at 5am helps, living in OmniFocus helps a lot. And do you know what it helps with most? Not the working, not the getting everything done on time, but with the relaxing afterwards. Right this moment, I know where I am with everything, I know exactly what I’ll have to attend to next and I also know that I can relax here with you, that we can talk.

Mind you, it is 5:30am and getting up this morning was especially easy since I haven’t been to bed yet.

Maybe I should write about falling asleep at 5:31am.

Maybe I could’ve picked a better topic than peeing about software, but.

Anyway. Join me. Join me. And start here with the firm’s news blog about OmniFocus 2 for Mac.

LONDON, UK – In the greatest single transformation of the British political system since its inception, the country’s government is to become a charity run by volunteers. Current Prime Minister David Cameron announced what would previously have been called a green paper but he insists be referred to instead as a “done deal”.

“Decentralisation, devolution and empowerment are naturally part of a Conservative approach to government,” he said. “We’re replacing the military with brave volunteers in the Territorial Army, we’re encouraging more unpaid special constables in the police by a vigorous programme of cutting back on all forces and services. I’m personally determined to get rid of all social workers, retail staff, doctors and other scroungers who are pulling our nation down. To all the sports people who were so great at the Olympics I say thank you, done that, we don’t need to fund you anymore, look at the games makers. They didn’t whinge.

“This government will now become a charity. This is the natural next step in bringing power back to the people, it is the next step in securing Britain’s bright future, it is the ultimate step in our Big Society.”

Work on transitioning to volunteer charity status has reportedly already begun and the entire system will be in place by May 6, 2015. “I know that cynics will be looking for some significance in the timing of what I am calling the Great British Charity, but it is simply and only because this is a vital process and we want to help people to be ready for it, to know when it is happening. So purely to help, I have set the final switchover for the day before what would have been the next general election.

“There will be no more general elections. We know because the people have told us that general elections are a waste of time, that you can vote for the party you want but nobody wants the one that gets in. Completely inefficient system. I mean, there have been periods when we were not in power. Clearly that’s not a democratic political system working the way it should. So, from now on, nobody in the cabinet will be voted in and everyone in the cabinet will be a volunteer.

“I freely admit that mistakes have been made by the previous government. It’s time to move forward. Britain is great and what makes it great is its people so that’s who should be in charge. Now, I accept completely that this is a huge change and that it will take time to get used to. I accept that it raises questions. And of course I accept that it has never been done before and is certain to be disastrous for the country. I accept all of this but to you doubters with your evidence and your irrefutable statistical economic proof, I say “Same old, same old, tell me something I don’t know.”

“What I am going to do, what I promise today to each and every person in the British Isles, is that your new charity government will be formed with great care. Yes, we have to avoid women and yes, of course the British government cannot be run by people who have chosen to be gay or who happen to be black through no fault of their own.

“But these security issues, as important as they are, are already done for us. They’re already done by the boarding schools that every one of us went to. And I tell you now, if you went to a good school and you are independently wealthy enough to be able to survive in London just on MP’s expenses, you are the kind of volunteer this nation needs. You are the kind of open-minded volunteer with a diverse range of experience right the way from Eton to Harrow that our nation will get.”

Acknowledging the concerns of journalists at the announcement, Cameron concluded his speech by saying: “I vow to you, as a Conservative, that the public can be assured: there will be no change to frontline services. The Great British Charity government will continue to provide smugness, ignorant disregard for the effects of policies on anyone not actually in the cabinet and there will be no decrease in any of our periodic scandals. You can trust me on that one at least.”

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was at the press conference, probably, and would’ve been saying something about how the Liberal Democrats were ready to form a coalition with the Great British Charity volunteers or something.

ENDS

Downton Abbey beat Doctor Who and Sherlock to the prize of Best Drama at the National Television Awards this week and the odds are that you know that. Skyfall was snubbed at this year’s Baftas and that made the news too. Lincoln looks a shoo-in for a Best Picture Oscar even though Les Mis probably deserves it.

But name last year’s NTA drama winner. Or Bafta. Or Oscar.

I used to know this stuff. I worked for Radio Times, I worked for BBC News Online’s entertainment section, I had this stuff at my fingertips and it was important. Today I can’t tell you without cheating – and I don’t only mean searching Google for last year’s winners. I just had to search for this year’s nominees too.

In 2010 or 2011, I cut a short promo video for Radio Times that had Dermot O’Leary calling for us all to vote in the NTA Awards. The script was funny and clever, he delivered it very well but I knew I wouldn’t vote. I studied that video almost frame by frame: it was the first time I’d replaced green screen with a new background and the studio’s green backdrop was crinkly, sometimes a shard of green poked through the video. So even now I can bring to mind every gesticulation, every beaming smile, every joke of that video. But I still wasn’t persuaded to even watch that year’s NTA.

I’ve stopped watching the Baftas. Haven’t seen the Oscars in a century. For a while I did regularly take part in a twitter fashion critique where a huge number of people and this one straight man discussed the Oscar frocks in the red-carpet coverage. But I’d switch off after that, only partly driven away by how the banality of the red-carpet presenters make you ashamed for your species.

It’s not as if presenters of the main awards shows are all that much better, except when they are: I would’ve stayed up for the Golden Globes this year if I’d realised how great Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were going to be.

But this is the good stuff you can check out on YouTube the day after. Someone else does the watching of the show and someone else does the compiling of the good bits. Everyone else, absolutely everyone else lists the winners and talks about what a significant and great result it is or isn’t for Britain, about how it does or doesn’t send a signal about what will do well at the Oscars.

I’m not exactly on my own in awards disinterest: ratings for TV coverage is trending lower each year. But you wouldn’t know that from the number and length of news reports so I feel as if I stand alone.

I can’t help that. Maybe it’s because the voting is always the same. I wasn’t very keen on Skyfall but you knew its Oscar buzz was nonsense: no Bond film will ever win Best Picture. I am very keen on Safety Not Guaranteed but even as it moved me and I’d surely call it tremendous, it didn’t even occur to me that it would be in with a chance at a Best Picture Oscar. It wasn’t.

Maybe it’s because the voting can never be anything else. Even among the type of films that tend to get nominated, the winners feel the same each time. Our culture does laud actors but an acting performance stands on the shoulders of the script, the direction and the whole production. So comparing Denzel Washington with Bradley Cooper (I cheated and looked it up) is as much comparing their films, Flight and Silver Linings Playbook.

You do suspect that the Academy and maybe all awards organisers have yet to twig that. Otherwise you’d never get the ridiculous situation where a film wins Best Picture but the script isn’t even nominated. Actors make it all up, plainly, and for me that undermines the whole concept of awards being a genuine celebration of film and TV.

You can’t compare two actors beyond whether you enjoyed one film more than another. Maybe if you had two actors playing the same role in two otherwise identical films you could actually measure and rank acting skill. We might be able to compare Michael J Fox with Eric Stoltz if the latter’s Back to the Future performance were released. But otherwise, it doesn’t happen because it won’t happen because it can’t happen.

Equally, you can’t really compare Citizen Kane with The Maltese Falcon but the Academy tried to in 1941. (I relished them both but the Academy preferred How Green Was My Valley. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

So when a ceremony declares this film or that actor to be the best, the actual best, the really best of the whole year, it simply is not true. It simply can’t ever be actually true. You can’t measure so you can’t rank so there can’t be a winner. Best Picture, Best Actor and the rest are only We Really Liked This. You’re thinking now about voting bias and favouritism and giving a director an award for this film because he didn’t get one when he or she should have. You’re wrong: it’s never a she.

Even if voting was always pure, the kicker for me is that winning an Oscar has no bearing on whether I’ll enjoy the film. It used to have a bearing on whether I’d go see a film but I’m afraid now I doubt I’ll even remember to watch a movie called Silver Linings Playbook regardless of how it fares.

No award makes me see a film. Actually, no actor makes me see one either: I think Jodie Foster is a fascinating talent – listen to her on the commentary track for Contact where she is just so interesting – but that doesn’t guarantee I’ll go see her every movie. Writers might do it to me: I will eventually check out all Aaron Sorkin movies and for a long time I used to go see see every Woody Allen one.

But I’m persuaded more by the story than who’s in it. Until there’s an Oscar for Best Interesting Story or Supporting Idea for a Film, awards won’t mean a thing to me anymore. Best Trailer, that’d be a good one: trailer-making is an enormous and fascinating skill but of course it never gets any time in the spotlight.

Whereas it’s all spotlight for the Oscar winners even though there is truly only a finite amount of genuine news you can get from one film being picked for an Oscar out of nine nominees.

But you wouldn’t know that from how much news coverage the winner will get.

Until next year when it’s forgotten by the news and by you. Join me ahead of the curve: get in early and forget them before you ever knew them. Ignore what wins and what’s nominated and instead ask your friends what’s good instead. Go see Safety Not Guaranteed, would you? Got any recommendations for me?

Nobody liked Annabel. But that was okay because she didn’t like anybody. They were all stuck up and so what if she whistled a lot? Didn’t hurt anyone. Gran liked her whistling, she always said so.

But gran had died. Annabel sat in class, quietly whistling while Mrs Sawbones told her off for not paying attention. She got sent to the headmaster – but as she walked out of class, she decided to keep on walking. She walked out of school.

She walked out of town. Passed her housing estate, passed the train station, out as far as she’d ever been.

It was cold and a bit scary. She tried whistling to keep her spirits up but she couldn’t hear herself over the sound of lorries on the main road.

So she kept on walking.

Her phone rang but she ignored it and its whistling ringtone.

She walked on.

It was much further than she’d thought. She’d been in her mum’s car last time and was sure it wasn’t as far then.

Hours and hours went by. Annabel was tired and her dad kept phoning but she didn’t want to talk to him. She wanted to talk to her gran.

By late afternoon, she found somewhere she recognised. The car had turned here. She was sure.

So she turned too and began to walk down a hill and away from all the traffic. Soon all the sound of cars seemed to vanish behind her and she could hear only birds. They sounded like they were whistling and she whistled back.

The sun came out exactly as Annabel saw the big tree at the far end of the cemetery. And saw her gran’s grave with the cross on it.

Annabel sat at the grave. She pulled away at some weeds that had already begun growing by it. She tidied away some litter that the wind had blown. And she talked to her gran. And talked and talked.

She talked about rotten Mrs Sawbones. She talked about how horrible everyone was at school and how she had no friends.

Her gran listened.

And when Annabel had finished, her gran just kept listening. Waiting. Until Annabel said “Alright, well, maybe they’re not all completely bad. There’s Sydney. She asked about you. And Paul in the year above me, I like him.”

Her gran listened some more.

“But it’s not the same. Nobody listens like you do.”

“I do,” said her mum.

Annabel’s mother stood behind her. “If I don’t listen, how did I know where you’d go?”

Annabel tried to whistle a kind of shrugging I-don’t-care whistle but her mum kept talking and the birds kept whistling so much better than she did.

“Annabel.” Her mum knelt down by the grave. “Your gran is my mum. I come here every week but I was sure you weren’t interested. I’ll bring you. Okay?”

“Okay,” smiled Annabel.

“But next time, we drive. Promise?”

“Yes, mum.”

“And next time you never skip school again, okay?”

It’s hard to believe now but we started this journey with eight terrific contestants, any one of whom could’ve been standing here tonight in our hunt for Britain’s favourite writing instrument 2013. Tonight is decision time in Strictly Come Writing with the Stars on Ice Factor.

I know we say this every time but, seriously, this year’s entrants truly were the best we’ve ever had and before we get down to the Moment of Truth, let’s look back at the highlights of this incredible journey.

I mean, who can forget the drama of week 1? Despite a perfect score from the judges, once the public vote was tallied, Quill Pen had to write again to survive.

“I tried to keep it light and fluffy, you know?” said Quill. “It’s been an amazing journey for me and I think I’ve become a bit of a icon for all the old writing instruments out there. We can still do it, you know. Don’t rule us out just yet.”

Unfortunately, our judges did. So Quill Pen’s dreams were over before they really began.

Barely had we got over that shock when it was Week 2 and the speed test which saw Morse Code telegraph machine stumble.

“.. – .—-. … / -… . . -. / .- -. / .- — .- –.. .. -. –. / .— — ..- .-. -. . -.–,” said Morse. Which, while a bit slow, must be the most moving thing we’ve heard here on Strictly Writing. Morse is a real pro, I’m sure we’ve not heard the last of him.

But the contest presses on and barely had we got over that shock when it was Week 3 and the controversial wardrobe malfunction that saw everyone rushing to the stage to mop up ink.

“What can I say? These things happen,” said brave Fountain Pen. “The judges and the public praised me for the elegance of my lines and that’s what I’m going to take away from this, that’s the memory I’ll keep with me. Thanks for having me on the show.”

Barely had we got over that shock when we faced the Halloween Horror Special in week 4. Hopes were especially very high for one of our contestants in week 4 which made this exit all the more devastating. Yes, we all were all so certain that this was going to be Blood’s week, but no.

“Ow,” said Blood.

Barely had we got over that shock when things really hotted up for the semi-finals.

“At this stage, it’s really anyone’s game,” said head judge Alesha Dixon. “I think Biro has a lot more to give: it’s been a steady contender rather than a standout yet and maybe it has to pick up the pace now, maybe it has to show us what it can really do.

“But then I actually think that Pencil is the dark horse of the competition. It has had all that experience in space, that’s not to be discounted, and I really think it still has a point to prove. The only question for me is whether Pencil can really last the distance. I’m sorry to say but at times it does look worn down.

“Whereas our last two contenders, Typewriter and Computer Keyboard, I have to say they look the same to me. I can’t call it.”

Wasn’t it the most dramatic semi-final we’ve ever had? You have to take risks at the semis, you can’t play it safe, but risks are a risk and Typewriter paid the ultimate price when it tried to introduce music into its routine and things just went horribly wrong. “What can I say?” said Typewriter. “I just like jammin’.”

Of course, that wasn’t the only drama in this year’s semi-finals as for the first time ever, we literally lost one of the contestants. We could’ve sworn Biro was right there where we left it.

Barely had we got over that shock when we reached tonight. And our two finalists have done their very best.

Pencil, Keyboard, it’s been an amazing journey for both of you, but now you’ve done all you can. You’ve written for the last time and tonight one of you is going home, one of you is going to be crowned Britain’s Favourite Writing Instrument for 2013. Do either of you have anything you want to say to the judges and the millions watching at home?

“I’d just like to say what a privilege it’s been being on this incredible show,” said Keyboard. “And I’d just like to take this chance to say thanks to my lovely husband Qwerty and gorgeous daughter Azerty who’ve had to put up with my being away all this time.”

“That’s lovely,” said Alesha.

“Is it bollocks,” said Pencil, who unfortunately had to be immediately disqualified for snapping.

I thought this was you and me. But I just went to see what we’d talked about most for the last year and there are, like, thousands of people reading. You’re very nice but, seriously, I only get in enough biscuits for the two of us.

We need to talk this through. I’ll put the kettle on.

And in the meantime, happy new year – and here’s what was most popular on this Self Distract blog in 2012. I am truly surprised but you know it’s nice really.

One thought. Where a blog was about a particular thing, I’ve included a link straight out to that so you can skip my nattering and go there. Most of it has no connection to me but where it’s one of my books or dramas, I could conceivably get a few pennies from your buying. I promise to spend foolishly.

Done To Do, what’s next? (23/1/2012)
If I thought I was alone in looking for better To Do apps, I am an eejit. This was a piece that ultimately evangelised the one I’d just moved to, a whole series of apps called OmniFocus. I look back at it now and think… yep, that was right. OmniFocus transformed me. I lost my biggest single journalism client this year and replaced it with a mass of complicated projects and I seriously wonder how I’d have handled all that without OmniFocus. No kidding. 

I did recently find an Anonymous comment about this one. Actually, I’m always finding Anonymous comments: they get sent to a penalty box if they look like spam and I get bored because they always are. Except this one. I should answer that. Maybe when the new version of OmniFocus comes out shortly.

Just one more thing (1/6/2012)
You like Columbo too? I knew we’d get along. You don’t have to do much to get me talking about this show but the leak of Columbo scripts online forty years after they were written made talking about it an absolute requirement. Stuff my enthusing, go straight to the scripts.

Indicing with Death (15/6/2012)
Oh, I am so happy that this made the cut. I bounce in this one. It’s about how years ago I wrote an article about software that helps you build an index for books and how minutes ago I finished doing one for real. I’d that minute finished the index for my book BFI TV Classics: The Beiderbecke Affair. If you haven’t spent your life reading indexes, you’ll think my excitement is very strange. You might be right, but.

What’s it about? Uh-huh. And what’s it really about? (22/6/2012)
Self Distract may look like us nattering about Strictly Come Dancing and I can’t pretend it isn’t, but I can pretend it has a format: it’s meant to be about what we write and what we write with, when we get around to writing. This entry was a serious bit of writin’. It was about the difference between a plot and a story. And I can tell you now that the script I mention in it is Doctor Who: Spaceport Fear, which came out rather well in the end and comes out in February.

Sandy Glasser owns a cheese shop (27/7/2012)
Nobody commented on the title, a quote from Grosse Pointe Blank, but an awful lot of people seemed to share the sentiment: this was about finding an old school photograph online and trying to spot the person you’d asked out and who smashed your heart like a lollipop right before double maths.

Is this why actors claim to rewrite their scripts? No. (24/8/2012)
Far and away the most popular thing I’ve written on here – and you can be sure that was because Graham Linehan (@Glinner) tweeted a link to it. The cast-to-die-for of New Tricks had just revealed that they think their show is dreadful and that they save it by rewriting the scripts themselves. Everybody bar the real writers enjoyed laughing at them and I wondered about how you get to that level of disconnection from reality. 

J’queues Apple (21/9/2012)
This one was so popular it got reprinted in a Mac magazine. The only thing that could be better than that is if they’d kept my headline: the piece was about queuing to buy an iPhone 5 and I was – and am again today – preposterously proud of the headline pun. Small things make me happy. Like my iPhone 5.

The News Cycle (26/10/2012)
You name an event and this blog details every news story that will ever happen about it, in sequence. It’d be funny if it weren’t true. I hope it’s at least a little funny anyway.

The Prince and the Spinning Wheel’s Angular Momentum (16/11/2012)
This year I started working with writer Maeve Clarke, helping out at a Writing Squad she runs for school-age children in Walsall. (Writing Squads run all over the place: here’s what the fine Writing West Midlands people have to tell you about them.) It’s a terrific group and I wish there had been something like it when I was in school: it would have changed my career. Or at least got it on the right track dramatically faster. In one session, Maeve got the group to write a fairy tale – and I did one too. I would not have thought of trying one and yet I so enjoyed it, I wanted to share it with you. I did a sequel, too: The Princess and the Li-On. Just between us, there’s at least one more coming your way.

Live blogging Doctor Who at Christmas (21/12/2012)
The joke’s not so obvious now but this came out before the Christmas Doctor Who episode aired and though some fans believed I had seen it in advance and was out to spoil it, I was of course really trying to spoil all live blogs everywhere. If I could spoil them enough that they went away, job done. It looks like I’m not alone: this last entry of the year got shared all over the place and I got a nice note from Steven Moffat. 

—

It’s a silly thing to say, but I didn’t realise I’d talked so much. It’s especially silly because I set out to: I very much enjoy the weekly blog by Ken Armstrong and I decided last year to try emulating him at least in volume and regularity. He posted a rather moving piece about time travel last week that’ll give you a taste of what he can do. 

I’m obsessed with time, which may account for all that wibbling on about To Do apps and you have to think it may just play a little bit into how I write Doctor Who dramas. It is also what is making me think you are a pal for reading all this today and over the year.

Thanks for 2012: I had a time, I hope you did too, and now what are we going to talk about next?

William

Hey,

Sorry it’s so late but here’s the live blog for Christmas Day’s Doctor Who. What poor sod’s got to check the site on the day? Make sure they keep an eye out for when it actually TXs: I’ve done all the timings from 6:15pm but last year BBC ran it two minutes late and we looked right prats.

Also, the BBC preview doesn’t include the ending so I’ve just finessed that a bit.

I’m off until the 4th now but you’ve got my number. Phone any time except Tuesday: I’ll be stuffed rigid with the worst Christmas dinner you’ve ever imagined.

Have a good one and thanks for putting this into the CMS for me,
William

PS I’ve put in as many Google Adsense words as I can but could you add our Amazon affiliate links before it goes live? I’m below my quota for monetising this month.

—-

DOCTOR WHO/LIVE BLOG/GALLAGHER

*****RUN FROM 18:14 ON 25/12/2012*****

18:14 Who’d have thought that pair would win Strictly? Well deserved, mind.

18:15 And we’re off, this is what we’re here for. Doctor Who at Christmas. Does it get any better than this?

18:16 That’s rubbish.

18:16 Oh, pardon me, did you hear that? I belched. Just had the most delicious Christmas dinner of all time. I wish you could’ve been here for it. Bit drowsy after it, if I’m honest.

18:20 What? Missed that bit.

18:21 Oh-hoh, here we go, here we go. New title sequence! New arrangement of the theme music! I love that they do this, it’s so exciting.

18:22 Hate it. What was your favourite Doctor Who title sequence? Bring back Delia Derbyshire. (Did you know that there’s a Delia Derbyshire Day on 4 January?)  The story goes that Ron Grainer penned the Doctor Who theme music and when he heard how the Radiophonic Workshop had realised it, asked if he’d really written it. Delia says: “Kinda.” Or something.

18:23 I’m not following this plot at all. Typical Stephen Moffat. [XXXXXX EDITOR TO CHECK: is it Stephen or Steven? XXXXXXX]

18:24 I do like this new look for the Doctor. What do you call that hat he’s wearing? Top hat, topper, black silk/fur melusine top hat, grey silk/fur felt/melusine top hat, black cloth/silk opera hat, black silk/fur melusine top hat with mourning band. Something like that.

18:24 Hang on, I’ve got a mince pie left somewhere. Just have some nice Bell’s Whisky to wash it down.

18:25 I love Doctor Who. We don’t need this bit, this is just running around.

18:27 Still running around.

18:28 What’s great about live blogging is that we’re doing it together. I’m here, you’re there, the telly’s on. We can talk all the way through the show.

18:29 Didn’t see that coming. As I was saying, I’ve nipped in from the family to see this as it airs. BBC has a previews site now where journalists can download programmes in advance, we don’t get tapes or DVDs anymore but there is just nothing like the real deal, on the TV, on the night. I’m your Doctor Who expert in the corner, pointing out what you need to know to enjoy this properly.

18:30 Oh, come on. The Doctor did exactly the same thing in that other episode. See for yourself right here [XXXXX ADD AMAZON AFFILIATE SEARCH FOR ANY OLD DOCTOR WHO DVDS WE CAN SELL XXXXXX]   Moffat just can’t write anything original.

18:31 I think we’re supposed to get that the Doctor’s upset over losing Rory and Amy. I think he’s just twigged that the Statue of Liberty can’t be a stone Weeping Angel as it’s made of copper. I went to New York last year, you know. Got a very good deal with Virgin flights.

18:32 Finally, some action. That was a good bit.

18:35 What’s happening there is that the Doctor has realised.

18:40 Now we’re in trouble.

18:45 And a corridor.

18:46 Hate this. Bring back Patrick Troughton.

18:47 While you’re watching this, have a look at the many, many galleries of photographs we’ve done on the site from this episode.

18:48 We’ve also got my preview of what all the rumours said would be in this episode and my take on what makes a great Doctor Who Christmas.

18:49 I said they’d do that. It’s so predictable.

18:51 The new companion is rather good. [XXXXX ADD IN HER NAME XXXXX] Of course, I knew how they’d get her in after that Dalek thing.

18:52 Aren’t you glad you’ve got me to explain these things to you? It doesn’t say a lot about a show that I’ve got to tell you what’s going on.

18:55 What’s going on?

18:56 Matt Smith should do Strictly Come Dancing.

18:59 Heading for the endgame now. This is what us professional writers call the third act on the hero’s journey from the inciting incident to the last-beat reversal on the story mountain. I could do better than this Moffat.

19:00 [DID MOFFAT WRITE THIS OR WAS IT GATISS AGAIN? CHECK]

19:02 That was good.

19:04 The problem is that it’s just not setting up the scene correctly. Back at the start, it should’ve told us that these snowmen were dangerous so we’d understand it now. Not everybody’s concentrating as much as I am. Amateur stuff, it really is.

19:05 That was good.

19:06 I see where this is going

19:08 Oh. Didn’t see that coming.

19:11 Listen, I’ve worked out the ending now, but I won’t spoil it for you. You just watch the rest and then get straight on the comments page afterwards. That includes you, Mr Moffat, though I bet you won’t. You never come on comments pages, you just keep writing the next episodes like that’s what’s important.

19:12 Christ, my mum just came in with more mince pies. I’M TRYING TO WATCH DOCTOR WHO! What’s the matter with people?