‘She’s so old she’s still using email,’ she said.

She was about fourteen and trying to make a fashion statement out of a Catholic school uniform by rolling up the skirt to somewhere around her breakfast. She had something sticking out of her ear. It was either a stereo system or a cappuccino machine. I would have needed a magnifying glass to be certain. Her friend had something sticking out of her ears too. She wasn’t listening to breakfast skirt. She was talking into a bump in a piece of string that hung from her neck. Observation point, one here is that they weren’t communicating with each other. The importance of this wouldn’t hit me until several months later when we got back to Thailand.

I was in the local newsagents at the time looking at the front page of the biggest selling paper in England. There were tits on the cover – big ones. They didn’t seem to have any relevance to the lead story. The editor had taken a huge risk of losing low-concentration readers by putting in a three-word headline with punctuation; UP YOURS, FRANZ. I got the feeling that most readers wouldn’t make it past UP YOURS. Britain’s top seller is ninety percent pictures. The longest article – once you took the naughty photos out – was two inches long and the print was BIG. I wondered whether anyone would notice if they left the text out.

I pondered both the email comment and the broadsheet revolution on my way home. It occurred to me that it’s the cool guy, the one who sits back and observes the trends who ends up with a private jet and en-suite plastic surgery. But you have to be first.

Ten years ago, a friend and I sat in a bar one night and came up with this idea for a hand-held electronic device that would allow you to read books on a screen. We drew up plans for it until the bar shut. Neither of us could sleep as we visualized all the money we’d make out of it. We were ten years too late. So you need to be that cool, observer type AND quick. And the internet is definitely the way to go. I have something at home which explains all the intricacies of the internet in clear, almost remedial terminology. It’s called a wife. Jess gave me a quick rundown of the rapid evolution of on-line communication. While I was still learning which button to press for my email not to vanish into thin air, the modern world was already leaping and bounding ahead of me.

Cool guy sits back and examines the trend. We go from hand written letters that take a week to arrive – to email which is instantaneous but still bulky. People seem to think they can write as much as they like because there’s no end to the page. But, to its credit, email did introduce cute abbreviations like NIGYYSOAB (Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch) all of which took longer to find and peck than writing the actual words – and emoticons which did away with the need to make words altogether. But, excuse me, it was still all so then, and it had the word ‘mail’ in it. SYICP (So yesterday I could puke). Blogs arrived and survived only in the cobwebbed cyberspace of the over forties because, look out, here comes chatting. Chatting had a brief (three week) popular spell, but then social networking was on us. And, whoa, now we’re really getting down to the nitty-gritty. It’s all about ME. Come one and all, normal and weird and enter my most intimate space. But after a while it started to get a little disconcerting to know that a drooling postal worker with a criminal record in Gdansk knew what brand of moisturizer you had beside your bed. Sharing was icky. But at least there was a new ‘not exactly sharing’ instant communication fast food on the block; Twitter. As much depth and meaning as you can squeeze into a hundred and forty letters. If only published fiction were that bite-sized everyone would be reading. And here we arrived at a trend I knew I’d be able to milk. Fewer and fewer words. Sentences and grammar optional. All about self. No need to reply. No need to reply to reply. Basically, although putting up a brave social front, people didn’t want to communicate at all. They just wanted to be left alone and not troubled by annoying distractions like nuances and opinions. They wanted to do all their chatting and social networking with the person they loved the most. Which is when I came up with TWIDDLe: the unsocial network for people who have lost the ability to process words.

It all started in 2009 with a single operator (me) in an old garage at the back of my dad’s place. Fast forward a year and Forbes has us down as one of the IT companies to watch for 2011. Here at TWIDDLe HQ we’ve put together a package which will make you the only person in your universe. And as we’re only just embarking along this lonely road together, I’m offering membership to readers of ICWRC (You don’t have to work that one out. It’s at the top of the page) at the reduced rate of $150 a week. Forget Paypal. Just put it in a brown paper bag and mail it to me here. In fact, know what I’ll do? The first fifty readers – assuming you can struggle to the end of this blob – get signed in to TWIDDLe absolutely free. Yup. You heard it here, folks. Here’s what you do. Once I send you your personal IDRMA (It doesn’t really mean anything) code number, highlight all your networks and chat sites and communications over the past year. Somewhere on the right (that’s the side your mouse is on) of your keyboard is a button called ‘delete’. If you’re lucky it’ll just say DEL. Press that and you’ll notice that everything’s gone apart from solitaire and the recycle bin. You’re alone now. Unplug the computer, draw the curtains, get yourself a drink, and play with yourself.

Welcome to TWIDDLe.

I was five minutes into writing a heated open riposte in response to the ludicrous, scandalous, slanderous blob posted by the Moore bloke on Friday. Of course I had to clear it with the dogs. You can’t leap into a lawsuit without consulting the injured parties. Every coconut monkey knows that. But, after a two-hour video conference (Gogo’s on a lecture tour in Malaysia), they won me around. As they said, perpetuating the myth that dogs have no memory, conscience, social skills, minds, logic or political standpoint, might not be such a bad thing come the revolution. Sticky pointed out quite succinctly that those who think they’re in control are the easiest to pull from their pedestals. He demonstrated how to get a good jaw hold around the left ankle.

But that leaves me short of a blob for this week. So I have no choice but to tell you of another disturbing event. If anybody’s actually reading these blobs, he and/or she may recall that two weeks yonder I was forced to become a feature for a rather hunky internationally-known newspaper. Despite the fact that the journalist had a perfectly functional camera embedded in his cell-phone, he insisted on flying a photographer down to take a few snaps. (You need a pretty good parachute to get to our place by plane.) Now, I happen to know that due to great strides in technology over the past few years, a squid could take a photograph that, ten years ago would have won the Pulitzer for feature photography. With my little Kodak, I personally have taken several excellently artistic pictures for my ‘Yucky Things I Find on the Beach’ gallery which caused quite a stir in Flotsam and Jetsam monthly. So why send a real photographer? I tell you. The UNION. The professional photographer’s union is second only to the Teamsters in the bodies in concrete boots league. They look after their own and I got the feeling the journalist might have had a little accident if he’d gone ahead and snapped me with his cell-phone. KnowwhadImean?

Because of his obvious mob connections I was determined not to like Justin. Yeah, ‘Justin’. Name like that, gotta be gay, right? Nothing worse than a gay mobster. I still have nightmares about that scene in Fame where Irene Cara’s lured into the bedroom by a sleazy photographer/videographer.

“Colin, sweetie. Just slip off that shoulder strap, will you? Super. Teensy bit lower. Lovely.”

There’d be erotic pictures of me posted all over the web. I’d be humiliated over and over again like Paris. So, it came as a surprise to learn that Justin was 7ft 2 and hairy. He drank beer and the dogs liked him. (They discussed Faust deep into the night). But all that made his mob connections even more ominous. How could I refuse his ‘suggestions’? Tell me how many of the following I would have considered if my photographer didn’t have a baseball bat in his camera bag:

Up to my waist in jellyfish infested water? Covered in red ants as I dangled from a tree? Beating my way through jungle using my teeth as a machete? ‘Just one quickie’ up against a factory wall surrounded by armed Burmese? Right, National Geographic photo spread, you say. Justin took 805 photographs of me. That’s eight more than they took at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. And, do you know how many they’ll use? One. And you just know that’ll be the one of me at my desk writing with my Nobel prize slightly out of focus in the background. Eight hours of extreme posing and nothing but insect bites and second-degree sunburn to show for it.

We considered locking him in the cellar with the others but we decided Justin was just following orders. In fact he was a nice guy…for a 7ft 2 gay mobster.

‘Why are you standing at the foot of my bed holding a sledgehammer?’ he asked. It was a fair question considering not an hour before we’d been eating squid and drinking cold Leo on the veranda together. What had bought me to this point of madness? To the accompaniment of concert harps played by lithe middle-aged women in knitted cardigans I flashed back two weeks hence to a day when the sky was still azure and the bougainvilleas were bleating forth their gaudy colours. The email rose majestically on the screen like a second sunrise.

‘I represent a major newspaper with a readership of 11.2 billion and I’d like to drive down to Pak Nam Lang Suan to do a feature on you.’

‘Man, these Nigerians,’ I thought. ‘They stop at nothing. Not satisfied with robbing desperate widows of their life savings, now they claim to be journalists. ‘Mbagwe,’ I wrote back, ‘I’m not falling for that one, son. Go take a running jump off a tall giraffe.’ But, after several security checks which included me speaking to the journalist’s mother in New York, it turned out Mgamwe was legit.

‘So, do I come down or not?’ he asked.

‘You paying for the petrol?’

‘Jesus! I could always do John Burdett, you know?’

‘Okay. Don’t get shirty. Yeah, you can come.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

We haven’t got a spare room so I booked him and his personal assistant into the Salt Water View Short Term Beachfront motel just down the coast. I’d never actually seen anyone stay there overnight but you never know if a tour bus is going to break down out front on the very night you’ve got VIP guests. It occurred to me that if all this wasn’t a scam, it was a pretty cool thing so I started to phone around.

‘This big newspaper’s doing a feature on me, with photos. Using my actual name.’

I called all my friends and living relatives, then a couple of dead ones. One call was to Bobby Bristol. Now, Bobby’s a nice chap but it’s rumoured they based Mel Gibson’s role in Conspiracy Theory on Bobby’s actual life.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Why what?’

‘Why you?’

‘I guess they want to know about my books and understand the man behind the stories.’

‘Oh, come on, CC. Be real. No offense intended here but do you honestly think a serious newspaper’s gonna be interested in your dumb books?’

He’d said, “No offense intended,” but that did little to alleviate the offensiveness.

‘Yes?’

‘CC, CC, sometimes I can’t believe how naïve you can be. They’re not interested in you as a writer. They’ve got other agendas. They’ve got something deeper in mind.’

‘I haven’t got anything deeper.’

‘I know that and you know that, but that’s not gonna stop them. Oh no. These investigative journalists, they’ll find it even if it isn’t there. They’ll dig up dirt on you and plaster it all over the front page. Bye bye reputation. Nobody’ll ever buy one of your books again. Dead.’

I had a week to let all this ferment. There were omens. It rained every day. Two of the dogs got diarrhea. My favourite hibiscus died. Then they arrived in a big black car like the politburo. They were friendly and funny like serial killers. They asked a lot of questions like the IRS. They didn’t complain about the Salt Water short term like people who knew they wouldn’t have to fill in the guest register. Like people who could be in and out with nobody knowing who they really were. He matched me drink for drink and those sinister questions just kept popping out of him. By the seventh beer I knew Bobby Bristol was right. I couldn’t possibly let these people go home.

And so we come to him asking me why I was standing at the foot of his bed holding a sledgehammer. Luckily, it was then that I snapped out of my paranoia. He’s just doing his job. It’s been a slow news week. Let him live.

‘Cockroach,’ I said and proceeded to smash the floor tiles to buggery.

‘Big one?’ he asked. (Another damned question)

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But they’re tough little sods.’

‘Well, gee. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

I bade him sweet dreams and returned to my room and thought, ‘Whew. That was a near thing’. Before everybody in the world started saying it, my Auntie Rene used to tell me that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. Except Auntie Rene had a trick ending. Her version went, If something seems too good to be true, it probably is…unless it isn’t.

I was at my lowest ebb. The book I thought I was writing suddenly started to write me and I had no control over it. I was suicidal. All those Shakespeare impersonators had it right. They used a quill. If the writing didn’t work out you just span it round and impaled yourself on it. But how do you even begin to kill yourself with a keyboard? I tried smashing myself over the head with it but all I got was a headache and ‘qwerty’ engraved down my forehead. Where would my next idea come from? Where could I go for inspiration? And, as always, the answer was, Laos.

The Director General of the Ministry of Information and Culture’s Publishing Department, who shall remain nameless because it’s got more letters in it than Paris Hilton’s mail box, gave an inspirational talk on the occasion of Lao Printing Day. I usually send a card but this year I’ve been a little tangled up with a bloody book that wouldn’t let me write it. The director general should know how to get us stuck writers over the hump because he’s written over fifty poems some of which became songs. (I imagine any poem could become a song if you sang it.) His key points were;

1. “Reading is one of the many ways in which we can improve our knowledge, but books containing useless information are a waste of readers’ time.”

There you go. Right off the bat he got the nib square in the solar plexus. The DG was talking about me. He was killing me softly with his song which had originally been a poem. I wasn’t writing anything to improve anyone’s knowledge. I WAS MAKING IT UP. Nobody could trust me. I wrote it down. ‘write knowledge.’

2. “In addition, they (writers) should be clear on their own standpoint and national policy when they write a book.”

Oh my word. Got me again. Where was my standpoint? I tell you, it was in the ideology toilet. MAKE ENOUGH MONEY FROM THIS BOOK TO PAY FOR DOG FOOD. I didn’t have a point, either erect or reclining. And I hadn’t even considered my national policy. I wasn’t even sure where my nation was. I wrote, ‘write to conservative party.’

3. “One way to support the Party’s strategy on national development and economic policy is to write more human interest pieces, especially profiles of successful businesspeople, which would act as an example for others to follow.”

Exactly. Where has my head been all this time? The public doesn’t want to read about losers. People who spend all their time reading novels are already losers. THEY WANT TO READ ABOUT STINKING RICH PEOPLE. It’s just like all those country people addicted to TV soaps about hi-so philanderers in Bangkok. I wrote, ‘forget everything the Lao communist Party used to believe in. It’s so passé.’

4. “A good book should make readers laugh or cry while they are reading it.”

There you have it in a nutshell. It’s the readers who are supposed to be crying. Not me. The only time I ever got sobs out of my readers was when they reached the end of a book and referred back to the price they’d paid for it. I discovered that in 1968, the DG had written a book entitled, It’s Very Easy to Learn the Lao Language. And I bet you generations of readers have been laughing and crying through it ever since. But DG’s point here is quite simple. Don’t take it personally. IT’S THE STORY THEY’RE LAUGHING AT, NOT THE AUTHOR. I wrote, ‘Stick in a few jokes.’

I thought I had all the inspiration I needed, but the greatest uplift to my saggy self-esteem goolies was yet to come. And it arrived, not from the Ministry of Information and Culture, but from the Ministry of Education. Somebody had decided that Lao university graduates compared unfavourably with those from neighbouring countries. So, what did they do? THEY CANCELLED UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE. Really. All the kids who’d forked out for a corsage for this year will have to put it back in the freezer cause they all have to do another year of high school. That’ll teach ‘em. And, you know? It taught me the best lesson of all.

IF IT DOESN’T GO RIGHT – START ALL OVER AGAIN.

If you’re on the flight from Bangkok to Surat around now and you look down and see a rather large bonfire, fear not. That’s just my first draft. Kop jai, Lao.

I’m constantly being asked by fans whether all the crime investigation research I … All right, I was asked several times…twice…by the same person, whether all the crime investigation research I do for my books makes me a better crime fighter myself. Well, I can honestly say, unequivocally, I’m not sure. Take last Friday for example. I was working in the garden laying sheets of plastic under the gravel path so the weeds wouldn’t keep poking up through it. (Word of warning here, if you use transparent plastic it acts like a sort of super undergravel greenhouse and creates a strain of malignant uberweeds with lead tips that are able to pierce even three layers of plastic and are unpullupable. But I divest.) It was a sunny day and the birds were singing and throwing each other out of the nests as they do a lot around here, when there was a loud scream. I looked around with what’s left of my heart palpitating ugroriously. All I could see were the dogs looking around to find out what had happened. All seemed normal there except…one of the dogs, Nong Beer, was standing on three legs. Her rear left leg was held aloft and was gushing blood. Now use of the word ‘gush’ here is not a Cotterillism. It was a Monty Python severed jugular gush that left a spreading pond of blood around her.

I abandoned my hoe and rushed to her side to find that she had a deep wound at the back of her ankle, which, I suppose technically, if you adhere to the ‘dogs’ legs could just as well be called arms’ theory, might be her wrist. And we all know what happens when we slash our wrists. The blood was clearly pumping out of an artery. As I didn’t have a cork handy I squeezed my hand around the leak and called for Jess to bring the accident supplies. She arrived with the entire cabinet and we cleaned Nong Beer up and wrapped her in bandage and threw her in the truck and headed off to the vet. The vet is a new addition to our nearest town which used to have just the one livestock specialist with a clinic after five PM. This vet is available 24 hours and has real veterinarian equipment like darling little scalpels and reflex hammers and their vaccination needles are not twenty-eight inches long.

The young fella confirmed for us the fact that if we hadn’t been home and acted as swiftly as we did, Nong Beer would have drained out like a truck in a sump pit. We would have returned to find her calcified remains standing there on the driveway on three legs (arms) dead as a garden ornament. We saved her life but we don’t want to dwell on it. Nong Beer was not one of those dogs blessed by the Lord Dog at birth. She has carried a potent cocktail of mange mites around with her since she was rescued and has to have monthly shots so they don’t take over her body. And then there was the time that Jess drove the truck over her. Google wasn’t able to tell me how many lives, dogs have but she’s clearly used up three. The doc sewed her artery back together and plugged the gap and we took her home.

Now, here we come to the CSI bit. I wanted to find out what had caused the wound. I expected to uncover a broken bottle or length of wire in the dirt where she’d been digging but there were none. Plus, she digs with her front paws (hands). Plus, she’d been sleeping under the gazebo on concrete until a few seconds before. When I first saw her run out from under the platform I’d assumed she’d been bitten by a snake, which isn’t uncommon around here. She looked back with that, ‘look what that snake did to me,’ expression. But the wound was a clean slice, not a snake fang or rat bite. I counted out suicide as she seems like a healthy, well-adjusted dog. The only logical hypothesis we’re left with is stigmata. I wish I’d installed those CCTV cameras around the yard when they were on special at Tesco Lotus. Because, I tell you, criminal research or no, I’m flummoxed. Real life is really not nearly as satisfying as fiction. I want to turn over the page and get the dénouement right now.

Nong Beer is still alive and hobbling around on three legs (arms) and seems indifferent to the fact that she almost drained to death. And, if she knows what happened to her, she ain’t saying nothing.

‘What gender would you prefer?’ she asked.

I walked back to the reception area to make sure I hadn’t stumbled into the organ realignment clinic by mistake. No, it was clearly written on the door, HEALTH CHECKUP. I returned to my nurse.

‘What choices do I have?’ I asked. She gave me one of those looks.

‘Male or female,’ she snarled. I guess she could tell I’d missed something so she started again, slowly. ‘Do you want a male or a female doctor?’

‘Yes. Most certainly,’ I said. 8 am on a Saturday obviously wasn’t her optimum humour zone.

‘Which?’

‘Male.’ I find male doctors generally have warmer hands than female. Too bad they didn’t give me the ‘age’ option. If they had I would certainly have ticked the 50 to 60 box rather than 12 to 17. My doctor was barely old enough to ride a bicycle without a training wheel. His voice reminded me of Gwyneth Paltrow pretending to be a man in Shakespeare in Love. (It was in-flight. I don’t usually…well, you know.)

I was in Bangkok on a stopover after a conference in Khon Kaen. I’d decided to take advantage of the Male Over Fifty package of Twenty-Seven Greatest medical tests with free luncheon voucher as offered in the popular press by a reputable hospital. I felt it was ironic that I send my truck for a complete check up once a year but don’t afford my own ageing chassis the same courtesy. I’d always had a soft spot for women in white ankle socks so I thought a couple of hours of prodding and poking and having gel applied to my abdomen might be fun.

It started badly. Even before they got under my bonnet I was in for a shock. I’m a centimeter shorter than I used to be. Where did it go? And despite losing that substantial piece of myself, I was two kilos heavier than our smiley face digital bathroom scale told me I was. It hurt to think that smiley has been lying to me all this time. The conclusion of this initial test was that I am officially overweight. I tried to argue that my feet are heavier than those of the average person but it was too late to stop the woman committing it to computer. And it got worse. I don’t know about you, but I get a sinking feeling when the ultrasound technician says, “Uh oh!”

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘You’ve got a sister in your kidney.’

In Thailand you find that people perched on certain echelons of society refuse point blank to speak to their foreign clients in Thai, even when their own English is less than comprehendible. Lawyers, high-class escorts with MBAs from Berkley and medical personnel are good examples of this. So I had a sister in my kidney.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she said.

In my book, nothing to worry about is…nothing. If I had nothing that wasn’t there when I rolled off the production line I’d be a happy little Morris Minor. But to find that I had a close relative living in my kidney left me feeling overcrowded.

‘A lot of people have them,’ she said.

‘Well, yes,’ I thought. ‘But not living in an organ.’

‘Why is she there?’ I asked.

‘Nobody really knows,’ she said.

So, if a lot of people have them and they’re nothing to worry about, what cruel vindictive spirit possessed this woman to tell me I had one? Of course it makes a difference.

That afternoon I played pool. Whenever I missed a shot I told my opponent, David, that it was because I have a sister in my kidney. That the doctor said it wouldn’t be long before I have a couple of cousins and an aunt in there with her. ‘It affects my balance,’ I told him.

‘I’ve heard of that,’ said David. ‘A doctor once told me I had a herniated dick in my spine. I couldn’t pot anything for a month after that.’

Apart from slightly elevated blood sugar levels which I can put down to the fact that we ate every chocolate in Germany when we were away, everyone agreed I’m in remarkable shape for a man of sixty-nine. Irrelevant that I’m only fifty-eight. Yet all the good news didn’t do a thing to compensate for the fact that I have a sister I didn’t know I had. All I can do is play loud rock music and replace her toothpaste with hemorrhoid ointment and hope that by the time I go for my next check up in a year, that she’s moved in with a boyfriend.

I attended a conference this past week. A conference is a three-dimensional, marginally more animated, bizarrely cast version of reading a couple of books. In fact, for the acquisition of actual knowledge and the ability to stop and have a glass of red when you’ve had enough, a book is infinitely better. I have to assume therefore that conference participants have ulterior motives. From my observations, these are the top twelve reasons why people go to conferences.

1. If you’re somebody in your small shrubbery of expertise, that is to say if you’ve written books or edited journals, it gives you the opportunity to be felt. Fans may step up and give you a quick adulation and ask you to pose while their cousin Brenda photographs you together. At the very least they’ll point at you and whisper things about you under their breaths. This is your Paris Hilton fix for the year.

2. It gets you out of the home/office/doghouse for a few days.

3. Even if you have a dodgy personality and/or an awful accent, you still get fifteen minutes with a captive audience to expound on some baffling nonsense that only you know or care about.

4. You get to stay in a hotel which, although it never actually happens, is an environment with huge potential for extra-marital activities.

5. You get coupons for food and beverage which gives you the false impression that it’s all free.

6. You get to mingle and exchange name cards with people you have nothing in common with and overstate your importance.

7. You receive an actual printed invitation to an opening reception which makes you feel special despite the fact that everyone got the same invitation. Once there, you realize that all the drinks on the tray are non-alcoholic but by then the doors are locked and you have to sit through two hours of ‘humorous’ speeches and ‘entertainments’ that you could only really enjoy if the coke and fizzy orange contained hard liquor.

8. You get to listen to a ‘keynote’ address. Keynote is Latvian for excruciating. The keynote is just like any other long boring speech but it’s given by a shrubbery celebrity. The success of this event is assessed by exactly how many people fall asleep despite this being the first day and everyone being still fresh and excited. Even though, in all honesty, nobody has understood the keynote address, they all refer to it during the week as if it were a late-discovered Dead Sea monologue.

9. You get a conference goody bag which contains tourism leaflets, inedible boiled sweets, insurance offers, invitations to things you really don’t want to go to, an out-of-date conference program that you have to go through by hand and change, a book they couldn’t sell, something made/molded/crafted or dug up in or around the town where the conference is held, and a pen with just enough ink in it to fill half of one of the twenty sheets of blank paper with a bank logo in the bottom corner.

10. You get to stand up at the end of a paper, grab a live microphone and speak about something totally unconnected to the topic. This is called karaoke for failed academics.

11. You have the unique opportunity to sample Antarctic conditions without forking out on a plane ticket to Faz. Like loudspeakers, air-conditioners in Thailand do have control buttons that contain a range of settings. But, ‘If you’ve got it, Max it’ (contemporary Thai saying)

12. You get to go home. This is my personal favourite. There you can open a couple of books and find out what it was really all about.

As a one-time educator, I have attended numerous conferences. I was told that the perfect conference is one that leaves you asking questions at the end of it. That’s good to know because I always have a question after a conference. Why do I continue to attend the bloody things?

Secondary school biology was a major let down in an already disappointing period of my life. It had all the potential for a rip snorting giggle fest: human reproduction, lady’s naughty bits…breasts. I went to an all-boys school and these were the days before click-of-the-mouse porn. How could it not be the type of course you’d beg to do homework for?

‘Colin, what are you doing up there?’

‘My biology homework, mum.’

‘Well, then move the headboard away from the wall. We can’t hear the telly.’

But the British education system had a knack for turning silk purses into pigs’ ears. Unless I blinked at the wrong time, ‘reproduction’ apparently jumped from the amoeba to the sperm whale (we did have a little snicker at the word ‘sperm’) without so much as a flash of human flesh. So it was that I lost all interest in whatever goes on inside the human body and perhaps this explains my naivety when it comes to some fundamental medical knowledge. I remember asking my Uncle George when I was little, ‘How does the antibiotic know where to go?’

‘What?’

‘Well, if you’ve got a septic cut on your knee and you take an antibiotic, how does it know which knee? I mean, what if it starts off going down the wrong leg and has to turn round and begin all over again?’

I was a subscriber to Beezer Comic in those days and I gleaned a great deal of my anatomical expertise from a feature called Numskulls. These were the little people who live inside all of our bodies and perform the functions that doctors laughingly think happen all by themselves. For example, the Numskulls’ own Captain Kirk would sit up in the cockpit (brain) and coordinate the activities. If, for example, the workers in the hand department got a rose prick on a finger, the captain would arrange for the blood factory to rush a pint down to the finger and pump it out through the hole. You see? It was all very logical and simple to understand. I could visualize the Numskulls loading the antibiotic capsule on a rocket dolly and wheeling it down the tracks to the injury. That mechanism was still in my mind while a watched Uncle George chew over the conundrum.

‘The doctor makes sure you’re leaning to that side when you take the capsule’, he said. I thought that was a perfectly satisfying answer but I was seven and he was forty-two. I grew up, as young boys are prone to do, and had various ailments. But not once did the doctor tell me to lean to this or that side before I took a pill. In fact, gravity wasn’t mentioned at all. I began to doubt the ‘leaning’ theory.

Jump forward several years. At one stage in my development, I found myself dating a doctor. It was a tempestuous relationship and I now wonder whether I set sail into it merely for the opportunity of sorting out the antibiotic puzzle. I remember broaching the subject with her one evening in front of a blazing fire. The neighbours had set fire to their house again and we were on the pavement watching it burn. She laughed when I asked and didn’t say anything else. It was obvious she thought I was joking, I was a mischievous imp even back then, so I put on a straight face and tried again. She turned to look at me the way you’d look at a goldfish who thinks the stone is his friend.

‘You’re not that stupid,’ she said.

We’d been together for a month so I was surprised she hadn’t noticed.

‘I am.’

She sighed and shook her head.

‘The capsule breaks up in your stomach and the medicine goes everywhere,’ she said.

I tell you, huh! And she was supposed to be a doctor. That answer was so much worse than the ‘leaning theory’. That one little capsule was supposed to send its antibiotics far and wide in search of an injury? Give me a break. By the time they found their way to the knee they’d be so depleted they’d hardly have the gumption to knit. (The Numskulls’ auntie used to knit new skin. Is that cool or what?). Is it any wonder that me and the doc went our own separate ways even before the house embers had cooled?

So here I sit looking at my shin in the mirror. My shin is quite far from my head and I can’t bend that far. I had another gardening accident last week and laughed it off. What’s a little blood to an extreme gardener? A week later and it’s infected and the doctor gave me antibiotics. So, I’ve come all this way, I have degrees and certificates and diplomas, but none of them involved looking inside the human body. And I still don’t know how the antibiotic knows where to go.

I have a wife.

I stand back and listen to the sounds of thousands of broken-hearted women hitting the ground at great speed. Self-defenestration, it’s called. Death by window jumping. A tragedy both of human life and of damage caused to ornamental borders as favoured by high-class condominium owners. But it had to be said. They wanted me to keep it quiet, ‘It will do your book sales no harm, no harm at all (wink) if they think you’re single.’ That’s what they told me. And it certainly worked for a while. Your interesting self in black and white loitering in the shadows of the book jacket. Your seductive words in a dimly lit bedroom with a lonely woman. A shared wry moment. A self-conscious pulse flutter. The languid lick of a finger to turn to the next experience. ‘More, Colin. More.’ Crocheted hearts arriving through the post. Complete strangers at book readings throwing their underwear onto the dais. (And not always short-sighted old gentlemen who didn’t realize the Laundromat was next door.) Last minute fleeing to the train station chased by flocks of wild, screaming, autograph-wielding, high-heel clopping, mascara-running, coronary-inducing book groupies. How could I give up all that?

I could empathize with poor Charlene Choi the Taiwanese pop singer who had to live a secret domestic life with husband-entertainer Ronald Cheng. Not only did she have to deny she was married to him, her agent had her give frequent press conferences saying they weren’t in any kind of relationship at all. The ignominy.

Press: ‘Who was that man in pyjamas getting the newspaper off your door step at six this morning, Charlene?’

Charlene: ‘Ah? Yeah? The police are on it. It seems some guy’s been going around dressed like that stealing celebrity newspapers….the pervert. I think myself lucky I wasn’t, you know, touched in any way.’

When Janet Jackson announced she was getting a divorce in 2000 it was the first anyone knew she was married which makes you wonder why she bothered to announce the divorce. We mega-celebrities are constantly forced to hide secrets from our personal lives. Nobody knew Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. aka Rock Hudson was gay (all right, I guess one or two of the fellahs did) until he died of AIDS in 1985. He kept that cheek turned for over twenty years in the profession. It’s called ‘keeping the mystique’ and it’s a sad commentary on the state of the general public that they want their stars available for erotic fantasies of their own without some third party butting in.

I spent the first 51 years of my life denying I was married but that was mostly because I wasn’t married. I was a confirmed bachelor. I went to the confirmation ceremony and everything. But there comes a time when the gay bachelor and the ladies man and the Casanova just turn into the poor old sods who haven’t been lucky enough to find a woman. This is followed by a rapid decline into codgerism and coothood. I was plucked from the white water of those rapids by my Jess. I was fortunate in many ways. Firstly, Jess had a thing about old white guys. She had photos of Bill Nighy and David Carradine on her fridge door even before I came along. Secondly, she didn’t want me for my money cause I didn’t have any. I was living on my teaching salary and royalties from three books published in Thailand (averaging twenty-four dollars every four months). Of course these were the days before I became “THE HOTTEST NEW WRITER TO HIT THE BOOKSHOPS SINCE WALTER KLOSSIT.” (Wimbledon Borough News, October 2004 edited by W.G. Klossit) but she wasn’t to know that.

Of course there’s a thirdly, and all the other numbersly. She’s given purpose to my exciting but pointless life. She’s given me a new best friend and a companion and all those other clichés that the Love Actually people exhausted in three different languages. She’s given me – in her own unique understated way – love…actually. And for that I thank her and I accept and share and return that love. I’m not about to deny she exists just so I can sell another half-million books. Screw that new swimming pool. Forget the four acre paintball course I’ve had my heart on. I have a wife and you can’t get better than that.

This week I’d like to thank Todd Jensen from forensiccolleges.net for passing on my topic. I am indebted for two reasons, firstly because it’s Saturday already and I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Jetlag has a way of turning a boy’s mind to in-flight vegetarian lasagna. But mostly, I’d like to pass it on because of a blob I wrote before we left on our invasion of Europe. You might remember I asked for volunteers to come and look after our pack of (why on earth did we?) rescue dogs. As I expected, I got no responses whatsoever. So Jess and I decided to look into the possibility of recruiting a kindly person through the international network known as Craigslist. We’d already filled in the submission form and sent it off when Todd passed on the following:

1. Dubbed the “Craigslist Killer” in April 2009, Phillip Markoff, 24 was indicted on charges of First Degree Murder and armed robbery, amongst other charges. After responding to several different ads on the erotic services of Craigslist, Markoff allegedly met up with 3 different women in Boston and Rhode Island area hotels and robbed them at gunpoint; one of the women fought back and was murdered. After following up on hundreds of leads Markoff was arrested and despite the alarming amount of evidence against him has entered a not guilty plea; he is set to go to trial in June 2010.

2. In March of 2009, 50 year old radio reporter, George Weber was found dead in his apartment after being stabbed at least 50 times in the neck and upper body. After responding to a S & M sex Craigslist ad posted by 16 year old John Katehis, the two agreed to meet up and exchange sex for money. Katehis describes himself on his MySpace profile as “Extremist, an Anarchist, a Sadomasochist” and originally told police he killed him after Weber tried to stab him first.

3. In April 2010, a Washington couple agreed to meet a couple that responded to their Craigslist ad selling a ring for $1050. The two people who were posing as a couple interested in buying the ring for their mother-in-law, entered the home of James Sanders and tied up Sanders, his wife, and their two children. Two others then entered the home and began to beat one of the children and the father was shot and killed while trying to protect his son. All four people were arrested within a couple of days.

4. A Vancouver couple was arrested in May of 2008 after allegedly posting an ad on Craigslist to sell their 7 day old baby for $10,000 because they “can’t afford” her. After being alerted to the post, Vancouver police tracked the post to an apartment in Vancouver’s West End where the couple was arrested and the child placed in Child Protective Services. The couple has since told authorities that the posting was a joke.

5. Kennith Goodwin, a 51 year old U.S. Postmaster from Washington was arrested in May 2010 after he allegedly tried to solicit sex on Craigslist with detectives posing as a 13 year old girl. Federal investigators said that the computer he had been using to correspond with the detectives, while he was at work at the Winlock Post Office had been seized. Goodwin was later charged with patronizing prostitution.

6. Kissimmee Police arrested 24 year old Braves pitcher, Deunte Heath on March 26, 2010 for solicitation of prostitution and entering a dwelling for prostitution. The Braves pitcher who was in Florida for spring training agreed to pay $75 for a “sex act” he had found on Craigslist and was arrested as he entered the townhouse where it was supposed to take place. He was released from the Osceola County Jail after posting a $2000 bond that same day.

7. A “group sex” ad posted on Craigslist in April 2010 as a joke landed a 29 year old Connecticut man in jail charged with misdemeanor sexual assault and burglary, amongst other charges. The Craigslist ad stated that there was a soccer mom there ready to have sex with as many men as possible; however, Richard Zeh showed up at the wrong address and was told to leave. When he showed up at the correct address listed on the ad he was again turned away. Thinking the 18 year old woman in the first house was playing hard to get, he went back and sexually assaulted her and was arrested soon after.

8. Brandon and Amber Herbert, an Oregon couple were arrested in April 2008 for posting a fake ad on Craigslist to cover up a burglary that they had committed. After burglarizing a ranch they knew was unattended for a couple of days, they attempted to cover it up by posting an ad on Craigslist pretending to be the owner of the house saying that he had to leave town on an emergency and couldn’t get rid of all his stuff, therefore it was all up for grabs. The man returned to his home to see about 30 people taking off with loads of stuff from his home and it took officers about a week to track down the couple that had posted the ad.

9. In November 2005, a 22 year old California woman was taken into custody after posting an ad on Craigslist offering her 4 year old daughter for sex in exchange for $500. After someone responded to an ad posted by Shannon Nicole Woods they agreed to meet for sex and when the person brought up the sexual encounter with her 4 year old daughter Woods did not object. The person, who was not involved with law enforcement, alerted authorities and a warrant was issued to search Woods’ house and police confiscated her laptop along with several CD’s and placed her under arrest for suspicion of lewd conduct.

10. 22 year old Corey Jackson was arrested in Philadelphia for robbery and aggravated assault in September 2009. A 51 year old man from New Hope posted a Craigslist ad selling a $14,500 diamond ring. After corresponding and meeting, Jackson informed the man that he needed a ride to get the money and when they got there Jackson maced the man in the face and stole the ring. Determined to find him, the man placed phony ads on Craigslist hoping Jackson would try to sell the ring. It worked and when both men showed the police were ready to arrest him.

Thank you Todd. In fact we did get one reply before we withdrew the ad. It said, “Dear Colin, I know where you live now. Me and my pet cut-throat razor, Henry just can’t wait to meet your delicious looking dogs. You’d be surprised how much pain a mongrel can take. Lock your doors at night. I’m coming. (and there was some kind of a stain at the bottom. I’m sure the forensic colleges people are onto it.)