Don't mention the book

Been sending the book to agents for two months now and half my friends don’t ask how it’s going anymore. Either they think its too painful for me to keep being reminded about or I’ve bored them all rigid about my book for the last two years and they daren’t risk starting me up again.

With the other half I tend to have the JK Rowling Conversation. Variants of this I’ve had at least ten times and it runs along the lines of:

'So, Rob, have you got an agent yet?'
'Not yet. I’m still working on it.'
'Good for you. JK Rowling kept getting rejected at the beginning too. And now she’s richer than the Queen.'
'Yes.'
'And did you know she had to write her first book in a café because she couldn’t afford to turn the heating on at home?'
'Yes, I’d heard that.'
'It just goes to show.'

I'm a super-shaker

Off to Dorking to be cocktail barman at a friend’s wedding. All going well until I mix my second Cosmopolitan, put my fingers on the wrong bit of the shaker and chuck pink cosmo mix all over my white shirt. Very classy, especially with seven hours work to go.

“You’re not Tom Cruise, are you?” says the lady waiting for her drink.

A bad day #2

Another weird one.
Finished teaching at 1pm. Was planning lessons for the next day when I got a text from my brother. He's staying with me until he gets his house back. He said he was off to Brighton and sorry the flat was a mess. I left work and was walking home when I passed Bar Italia and saw the TV in the window. "Nail Bomb at Warren Street."
(They didn't know it hadn't gone off at that point. Just lots of smoke)
Warren Street is the station my brother would have used to get the tube to Victoria. And he'd texted half an hour before which made it about the right time.
No answer from his mobile for ten minutes but eventually he called back. He'd got to Warren St a few moments after the station had closed and was now on a bus.
Don't want to be dramatic but that wasn't a nice feeling.

Bearer of bad tidings

Starting to hate the noise of my letterbox clanging.
I've decided that post is bad because only rejections come by post. Good news arrives by e-mail or mobile. I'm pretty sure that when an agent wants to read more he or she won't write a letter.

This theory will, of course, be tested very soon.

A bad day

Bombs. What can you say. Two of my Italian students were late (they’re always late) and I bollocked them, ignoring their usual lame excuses about the tube. Fifteen minutes later our Director calls everyone into the student lounge and tries to explain to a hundred foreign students that there has been a number of bombs, people have died, there is no transport anywhere and we should all remain calm. Their English level ranges from very good to non-existent.
We watch TV. Very subdued. Two Japanese girls giggle a lot to each other and I’m sure it’s just a nervous reaction but it’s totally fucking inappropriate and I shoot them a death glare. They look like they don’t understand what’s wrong with me (These are advanced students- they can understand the TV so they know exactly what’s going on). Five minutes later they’re giggling again because someone said people might have to walk home and apparently that’s really funny. Want to strangle them. (Note: the two other Japanese students in the class seem to understand the seriousness of what’s happened.)
Go home and watch news channel all afternoon. At 5pm I decide to go to the gym. All the cafes and shops in town are closed so staff can get home, it feels like a ghost town. In Frith Street I bump into Rupert Everett.

'Hi,' I say.
'Hi.'
We both seem spacey.
'It’s all a bit fucked up, isn’t it?'
'Yeah,' he says.
‘I’m going to the gym. I need to exercise.'
'It’s closed. I’ve just been.'
I hadn’t thought of that.
'Oh. OK.'
We say goodbye. I don't ask if he wants to pretend to be my boyfriend so I can get a book deal.

2012

Herded my students into the TV lounge to watch the Olympics decision live from Singapore. The whole class wanted London to get it (apart from one recalcitrant French-speaking Swiss girl) because I'd promised them an easy test on Friday if we won.

We were studying comparatives and superlatives so they had to finish these sentences for homework:

'London is the best city in the world because...'

'London is better than Paris because...'

'Madrid, New York, Moscow and Paris are not as good as London because...'

I love London

On the bus today and the man opposite was reading a leaflet called “Looking after your Oesophageal Tube.” Two teenage girls next to me were talking:

‘I’d rather die than be fat.’
‘Would you be my friend if I was fat?’
‘No. But if I was fat when I met you, would you have wanted to be my friend?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t be you if you were fat.’
‘I weigh myself every day.’

Sex with famous people

Rejection. Today is Monday. I only sent it on Thursday. By second class post. That’ll have been read well then :)

The slush pile is useless and and I have to get my book off it and directly onto people’s desks. Gabriella thinks I need a celebrity connection because the only people getting book deals are famous.

Apart from hitting Brad Pitt in the face with a toilet door or asking Patsy Kensit how you cook cod in an LA supermarket my celeb connections are all pretty low grade.

‘We need someone famous,’ she says. ‘Think.’
‘I almost got beaten up by Jimmy Nail.’
‘Who?’
‘OK.’
‘What about that porn star you went out with?’
'No.'
'Wasn’t there two of them? That’s a story right there.'
'No.'
'Or that fashion designer? He’s got millions of celebrity clients.'
'That was one date.'
'OK. So who do you know?
'No-one. (thinks) I go to the same gym as Rupert Everett and we say "Hi."'
‘That’s it?’
'Yes.'
'Well. We can work with that. Sleep with him. Rupert Everett is properly famous, even in America.'
'And that’s going to get me signed?'
'Not if no-one knows about it. You have to invite him for a coffee, sit outside, give him a snog and I’ll be on the other side of the road with a camera. Then we send the pictures to the papers.'
'That’s kind of deceitful.'
'Alright, do it the honest way. Go up to him at the gym and say you’re a struggling writer and would he pretend to be your boyfriend for a month so you can get an agent.'
'I can’t see him going for that.'
'How badly do you want to sell this book?'
'Badly. But I want to sell it because it’s a good book.'
She rolls her eyes.
'For now. If I get really, really desperate then I’ll go to Chinawhites and shag the first person off Hollyoakes that’ll have me.'
'You could be there a long time,' says Gabriella.

Saving paper

Rejection. Not even a standard letter. Instead I got my own letter sent back again with “Sorry we did not feel confident of placing this. Good Luck.” scribbled on the bottom. A friend said it looked like she was in a real hurry to get down the pub last Friday.
To add insult to injury she’d paper clipped a postcard to the top of the letter, promoting a new book by one of her clients. “A dark star is born!” said someone I’ve never heard of.

No job

School is closing. We're losing too much money so the US parent company has decided to close us down. Last day is September 9. No more work. I have to sell the book now.