I’ve blogged before about the general standard of driving where I live. It really is remarkably bad. Not in the teenagers racing on every straight kind of bad, but in the older driver who think they’re BRILLIANT at driving sort of way. Because these people are BRILLIANT, they can take corners in graceful, lane-crossing arcs, stay exactly ten miles below the speed limit and not bother at all with indicators because, obviously, you should know they’re going to turn because they’re so BRILLIANT.

Well, it wasn’t one of those who drove into the missus yesterday. This one had his eyes firmly locked on the car in front of her when he hit the go-faster pedal. It would have been a great manoeuvre if it wasn’t for out Volvo being in the way. It was enough of a knock to make Mel take the baby up to casualty for a once over. Fortunately she’s OK. Mel has some whiplash, but the painkillers are helping. The damage to the car looks superficial, but judging by the comedy angle the lower part of the boot’s now sitting at, I certain the chassis’s damaged. Oh well, nobody hurt and that’s the main thing.

The driver of the van that hit them was in his late teens/early 20s. According to his dad, who rang us later that day, it was his son’s second accident in wet weather within twelve months. Apart from his premium, which will now be so far off the fucking scale it’ll reach the moon, it begs the question – should he really be driving?

Well, given that his insurance will know cost more than his van, he probably won’t be. I do feel sorry for him, it’s his livelihood – he’s just a really, really bad driver who’s a risk to himself as well as others. If I were his dad I’d book him a whole bunch of lessons before I allowed back out on the road by himself.

n.b. - I'll be posting chapter one of the new book next week undedited and full of typos. You know you love it you slags :)

One of these days, when the alarm clock starts screaming at me at 5:50am, I’m going to leap out of bed, feeling great and skip to work with a broad smile on face.

Today was not that day.

Instead I slithered out of bed, had to grab the banister for support on the way down stairs and fell into the bathroom. Something deep down in the primitive bit of my brain that has more to do with monkeys than homo sapiens felt troubled. Not least of all by the fact I remembered I have client meetings today, which means I have to shave, iron a shirt and attempt to look less like a gentleman of the road and more like a business professional.

Everything went broadly well for the next few minutes. I showered and was halfway through shaving when I heard a buzzing sound.

I need to set a bit of background here.

This summer we had a wasps nest removed from the side of the house. I say removed, but that’s a bit like your mum telling you your dog's gone to live on a farm. No he hasn’t. His body’s being fricasseed at a thousand degrees prior to his bones going in the grinder. What was actually removed from the wasps was their life.

Since they we’ve been haunted by little waspy ghosts. At least once every two days there’s a wasp floating around somewhere. I thought the buggers were supposed to die or hibernate or something this time of year?

The buzzing wasn’t the usual happy buzzing you associate with bees poking around your roses. This was a creature that sounded like it smoked 80 Gitanes a day and breakfasted on Courvoisier. I saw it just as it bounced of my head. The stripy fucker was as big as my thumb. Now, I can’t remember what I was told when I was a wee lad about wasps being angry when cold, or if it was that they get angry after getting pissed on rotten apples. I doubt wasps can even get angry – although karma dictates that this summer’s wasp genocide meant it was going to get me. Whatever the case, I wasn't up for a fight with something that makes that kind of noise and has a pointy end. It strafed my head a few more times while I planned the make a break for the door (which would have left me half-stubbly, a look that not even the trendiest Soho type would attempt).

Then the dumb bastard flew into the shower.

Aha! I thought. I slammed the shower door shut, intending to trap the thing in a glassy prison. It would have worked too, if the shower door hadn’t left its rails, fallen in and crushed the fucker.

Now, I don’t kill animals. Anything. Not even ants. There’s a long story behind this, but it’s part of the reason why I’m a vegetarian. If I were a Buddhist, I’d be putting up flags and spinning a prayer wheel until it took off. My guilt at the death of my dive-bombing foe was total.

But, after all, it was only a wasp and not someone's kid I'd just caused to have a major life malfunction, so I finished shaving and set about brushing my teeth. I have one of those electric tooth brush deelies that, ironically, make you feel like you’re brushing with a tube of bees. So imagine my surprise when I finish, switch the brush off, and can’t work out why I’m still hearing a buzzing noise.

Cue giant wasp-bastard two. If anything, this one looked even bigger. Christ, it could take on Mothra and win. So I made an executive decision. Much like Robert Carlyle in 28 Weeks Later, I shut the bathroom door and left my family to deal with the mega wasp. And the broken shower. And the ex-wasp inside the broken shower.

I don’t think I’ll be phoning home this morning.

Slightly hung-over this morning, so excuse typos etc. Here goes...

I managed to kick out 500 words on the train today while listening to Bouncing Souls at near full-volume. So apologies to anyone who drowned in my audio leakage on the train today.

One of the interesting challenges I’m tackling in my latest story is writing in first-person perspective. I usually shy away from this as a point-of-view because I find I have more scope writing the story from the position of narrator rather than character. For example, one recent scene is set at night time at a London landmark would usually have a strong narrative behind it, showing how the characters experience the cold and damp of the early morning riverside. Instead, because this is from my main character’s PoV, I ended up with this:

“...but the main difference between me and everyone else on the planet is that I appear to be the only mug freezing my bollocks off on Blackfriars Bridge at three in the sodding morning.”

Hardly flowery literature. Later, in the same scene, I needed an high-impact description of another character. Again, I can’t put words in my character’s mouth, so he comes out with:

“I’m get ready to go when Jackie finally shows up. Only she's different. Jackie was kind of small even before the crank, but always cute, especially her little nose.

That nose is now spread across her face. One of her ears doesn't seem to be properly attached to her head anymore and when she speaks it’s with a split tongue and through shattered teeth.”

The first part of that doesn’t seem to make much sense out of context – people don’t usually just appear like that. Trust me, it all makes sense in the narrative.

And later...

“I've seen people die before, but never this close up. Even holding her I can't tell exactly when she goes. Her eyes still look into mine. Blood from a wound somewhere on her head or back continues to soak into my jeans. But Jackie, well, she's gone.”

Writing in the first-person does make it easier to establish the main character, but it also means you need to be damn sure the reader can connect with them – because that’s the voice they’re going to be living with for the rest of the story.