Ben Elton - Inconceivable

What had happened was this. As Sam and I had lain there together in the warm and spiritual afterglow of our lovemaking, a squirrel had found its way into Sam’s trousers, which Sam had left nearby along with his silk jocks, having stepped out of the whole lot in one. I don’t know what had led the squirrel into this dark territory. Perhaps it was after Sam’s nuts. What I do know is that the squirrels of Primrose Hill and Regent’s Park are incredibly cheeky on account of the manner in which they are indulged by all and sundry. Anyway, there Sam’s trousers lay in a state of sort of concertina’d readiness waiting for Sam to step back into them. As Sam stood bent and hovering above his trousers, one foot in and the waistband firmly gripped, the squirrel popped out its head to see what was what. There was of course a confrontation.

They faced each other in the night, Sam staring down at the squirrel, the squirrel staring up at Sam, or in fact at Sam’s bollocks, which it was situated directly underneath.

Amazingly, it was Sam who screamed first.

Lucy says it was a squirrel but if it was a squirrel then someone’s been feeding them steroids. This looked more like a ferret or a weasel to me, possibly an urban fox. I’d just risen to my feet, idly thinking of this and that, contentedly contemplating the large and joyful whisky I’d be treating myself to when we got home. I reached down to pull up my trousers and instantly I felt this hot breath upon my bollocks! Looking down between my legs I saw it, eyes blazing, teeth bared, talons poised. Whatever it was, it appeared to me to be getting ready to rip my scrotum off! Of course I screamed. Who wouldn’t have screamed with an alien creature hovering beneath his bollocks! Of course I know that Lucy is convinced it was a squirrel and it’s true that Primrose Hill is amply supplied with squirrels. It’s also true that these appallingly over-indulged tree rats tend to treat all humans as nothing more than sources of free food. Nonetheless I contend that what I saw fossicking around in my trousers tonight on Primrose Hill was like no squirrel I have ever seen. It was big and tough and toothy and wicked-looking and it will haunt my slumbers for many a night to come.

The police were upon us almost before we knew it. We did not hear them coming because Sam was leaping about beating his hands between his legs and shouting, “Ahh! Ahh! Get a stick! Ahh! It’s going for my bollocks!” I think that the squirrel must have seen the coppers first, actually, because by the time they arrived Sam’s trousers appeared to be empty (apart from him, of course). They were nonetheless still very much unhitched, which was all rather embarrassing. I was all right because I had only to shake my dress back down, but Sam got into an awful mess trying to pull his trousers up. I think that somehow he managed to get his foot through his belt loop and as the officers breasted the hill Sam was still bent double wrestling to free the whole thing up. He had his back to them and I regret to say that the sight that he must have presented to them in the torchlight could not have been pleasant. I should mention here that Sam’s Donald Duck pants were also round his knees so that there was a second full moon shining on Primrose Hill tonight. I think we were very lucky that they didn’t do us for indecency.

Anyway, as I say, had Sam not insanely attempted to give the police a false name I think they would have let us off there and then, but instead they took us in. I certainly think that Sam’s following up his false name debacle by warning them that he was an intimate of Downing Street made matters worse. I mean, you do not try and pull rank on the rozzers, particularly if you haven’t got your trousers on. I didn’t really mind getting run in, it sort of made me feel even more pagan and dangerous, like a witch or an outlaw, as if the forces of order had tried to constrain our tryst but had arrived too late! And anyway, I knew they’d let us off in the end. After all, it isn’t a crime to assume a pseudonym, is it? I don’t think it is, or what would they do about stage names? In the acting profession if you have the same name as somebody else, Equity actually make you change it, so it can’t be illegal, can it?

Well, anyway, we sat about a bit at the police station and after a cup of tea and one or two off-colour innuendos from the young constables they let us go. Sam got quite shirty about the jokes the coppers made, which I thought was stupid since they were no worse than the sort of rubbish he commissions every day. They even dropped us off back at our car, which I thought was nice of them.

Anyway, it’s all over now, for better or worse, and here I am, lying in bed. Sam’s already snoring, sleeping the sleep of the great and powerful lover, but I’m wide awake, clutching my crystals, humming Celtic hymns and praying to Gaia to deliver new life into my body. Let Mother Nature make me a mother too!

In my heart and my soul I truly believe she will.

Well, it’s now the evening following our Primrose Hill tryst and today has not gone well.

In fact, today has gone worse than I could have dreamt possible.

On the plus side Lucy is very happy about our success last night. She seems to have convinced herself that the power of positive thinking has been the missing factor in us getting pregnant. She has therefore decided to believe absolutely and fundamentally that Primrose Hill will work its magic. When I got home this afternoon I found her sitting in front of the fire watching a Saturday afternoon film on Channel Four and looking wistful, sipping camomile tea and gently trying to will her eggs to envelop my sperm. It’s a strange thing, but you know she did sort of look pregnant, I can’t really say why, but sort of serene and womanly and, well, fertile. I know it’s silly to say that, and particularly silly to get our hopes up, but then perhaps it’s not. Perhaps Lucy is right. Perhaps positive thinking is what we need. Anyway, if there’s any balance of fair play in the world we’ll be pregnant; because the rest of my life is double buggered squared.

I have not mentioned my inner torment to Lucy, of course. When she asked me how things had gone today I said, “Fine.” I did not feel that in her present state of self-induced mystical empowerment she would want to be told that her husband was an utter joke. I did not feel it fair to tell that sweet, trusting, potential nestbuilder that the career of her champion and protector now hangs by less than a single thread. That we are shortly to be paupers. I simply could not bring myself to tell her that the Prime Minister’s visit to Livin’ Large was the most right royal cock-up since Henry the Eighth discovered girls.

Therefore, Book, unable to seek support from my preoccupied wife, I am turning for solace to you. It happened like this.

Despite my late-night run-in with the law on the previous evening, I was up bright and early this morning. Livin’ Large goes out live at nine a.m. and I had promised to take my niece Kylie along, which meant going to the studio via Hackney to pick her up. Kylie is the daughter of my sister Emily and has apparently, of late, taken an interest in politics. My sister, anxious to encourage this new maturity in a girl who up until now has liked only ponies and Barbie, asked me to take her along. To add to the excitement, Grrrl Gang, a kind of post-post-Spice Girls group, are also appearing on the show and Emily says that Kylie worships the ground they walk on. Or, in fact, more accurately, given their ridiculous shoes, she worships the ground they walk seven inches above.

Kylie was something of a shock. I had last seen her about six months before at a family do and she had been a very sweet and pretty little eleven-year-old who had a picture of a horse in a locket round her neck. I’m afraid to have to report that the butterfly has reverted to a caterpillar and that Kylie or “K Grrrl”, as she now wishes to be known, is a horrid little pre-teen brat. Her nice blonde hair has red streaks inexpertly dyed into it. She has a nose stud (Emily says she got it done on a school trip to Blackpool and that Kylie has threatened to run away if it is removed). She wears enormously baggy army combat trousers into which eight or nine of her could be fitted. Her tummy is bare save for a tattoo of a rat holding a hypodermic needle (mercifully a transfer). Her crop-top T-shirt has the words “DROP DEAD” printed on it and her once-pretty face is now contorted into a permanent sulky scowl.