Ben Elton - Inconceivable

I always feel at such a loss at these times. So impotent. Whoops, wrong word there, but you know what I mean… I mean I know what I mean… for heaven’s sake, I think I’m going mad. Nobody’s going to read this but me and yet I’m beginning to address this pointless exercise to a third person. I must get a grip.

Anyway, as I was remarking, I feel so useless at period time. I watch Lucy groaning away and I really haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on with her. All I know is that her gut swells up like a football, which is doubly sad because it makes her look pregnant. I think all small boys should be given lessons about menstruation when they are eleven. I mean, we were never told anything about it when I was at school. I’ll bet they still gloss over it, and as you get older you don’t like to ask. I mean obviously I know the basics, but the details you have to pick up off the tampon ads on the telly and it’s most confusing. They use all this code language and imagery like “protection” and “freedom” and “all-over freshness” and there’s wings involved and the blood’s blue and frankly you just don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on at all.

Dear Penny

Felt better today, physically, anyway. Mentally I’m still feeling low. The brutal truth is that it is now sixty-one periods since Sam and I started trying for a baby. That’s five years and one month. What’s more, when I come to think about it, prior to that we weren’t exactly being careful. In fact we had at least a year of relying on withdrawal. I wanted to get preg even then and I remember thinking that if one night he didn’t get it out in time I wouldn’t mind a bit. I know now that he might as well have left it in until Christmas, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Because, basically, I have to face facts. I am Sad. I’m Barren. My womb is a prune.

There, I’ve said it. I don’t care, it’s how I feel. What’s the point of this book if I can’t be honest? Excuse me, Penny, got to get a tissue.

I’ve been crying, Penny, sorry. I tried reminding myself about the homeless and the starving people in Africa, but it didn’t work. Anyway, I’m back now. Don’t worry, I’m not about to collapse or have a breakdown or anything, it’s just that sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed, that’s all.

And, yes, I know that a lot of women wait a lot longer than five years and a month (actually six years and one month in my case, if you count the careless year) and then all of a sudden they start spraying sprogs about the place like a fish spawning. I’ve heard all the stories. Couples who gave up hope only to have eight kids in a week!

“ I know someone who waited decades!” people say.

“ My cousin had actually been dead for three years when she had her first. Dead of old age ! She was a shrivelled, sundried-tomato-like, cadaverous old corpse and what’s more her husband had no testicles, having lost them in the Crimean War. Yet once they’d had one they couldn’t stop . Ended up with enough for a football and a netball team plus a crowd of supporters!!”

I’ve heard them all.

Mum says that she’s sure it’s all in the mind. Everybody says that. She says I concentrate too much on my career. Everybody says that too. Besides which, career? Ha! Ha ha HA! One thing I do not have is a career. I am not a theatrical agent, I am a theatrical agent’s assistant. Negotiating residual repeat fees for cable broadcasts of ancient episodes of Emmerdale Farm (when it was still called Emmerdale Farm) is not what I call a career.

Melinda says I’ve got to relax. Everybody says that as well! In fact, that is the thing that everybody says most. They say, “Relax, the thing to do is put it out of your mind and then it will happen.” It is simply not possible to bloody well relax with your body clock ticking away in your ear at five million decibels, and your eggs getting more dry and ancient by the day.

Melinda and George brought Cuthbert round today, which was nice. No, really it was, I’m not so bloody sad that I can’t enjoy my friends and their babies. Sam still refers to Cuthbert as Scrotum, which is ridiculous because he’s beautiful. I held him for a while and just wanted to eat him. It’s pathetic, I hate myself, but all the time I was saying how lovely he was, all I could think was, “Wish I had one.”

Dear Sam

Scrotum may have improved slightly, difficult to say. I mean he no longer makes me want to hide behind the sofa like he was a monster from Doctor Who , but then that may just be because I’m getting used to him. George has overcome his initial qualms, I’m pleased to say, and given the lad the benefit of the doubt. The prospects of young Cuthbert ending up wrapped in a blanket outside a police station are receding. I mean it’s clear that he’s not going to be a male model, that’s for sure, but George thinks he could probably do something in the City or on the radio. Or a boxer, perhaps? We certainly wouldn’t have to worry about his looks getting ruined.

I’m probably being unfair here. I suppose all babies look this way in the very early stages, but I have to be honest and admit that they do absolutely nothing for me. I try to get clucky but no go, I don’t even want to hold them. I’m an arm’s-length man, thank you very much. That funny pulsating bit on their heads completely freaks me out. The first time I saw that I confidently expected the Alien to burst forth from it with Sigourney Weaver close behind. Of course Lucy went potty over the lad and had to hold him and I knew that all she could think was that she wished she had one.

I wish that she did too. I wish that we both did. I would love to be the father of Lucy’s child.

Sometimes, on the rare occasions when I go for my run in the park, I find myself fantasizing about us being a family. I imagine Lucy back home with the two cutest little toddlers ever and me getting back and having my bath with them and then we all have tea together and then a story.

I’ll stop writing now as I’m in danger of turning into a sad fuck.

Dear Penny

Drusilla has suggested aromatherapy. She’s given me some rose and geranium oils, which was nice of her. She says these oils are oestrogenic. Sam is of course completely dismissive. He says if women want to bathe in scented oils then that’s fine by him but they should not bloody well pretend there’s any further significance to it than that. I hate the way he does that. As if there’s some rational and obvious way of doing things and everything else is just self-indulgent claptrap. I mean it probably is self-indulgent claptrap, of course, but he doesn’t have to be so negative all the time. I said to him, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you cynical bastard!” which I must say I thought rather a clever riposte.

The thing about Sam is that he protects his feelings by pretending he doesn’t have any. I’m sure that’s why he suffers from writer’s block. I just don’t believe you can write anything worthwhile without putting a bit of yourself into it.

Dear Self

The house reeks! Stinks! I do wish Lucy would not talk to Drusilla. I mean I know that Drusilla has considered Lucy her soulmate since Lucy got her the part of a plum in a yogurt advert, but the woman is nuttier than squirrel shit. The aromatherapy business has got out of hand. As I write these very words Lucy, a normally rational person, is boiling up the bark of a hawthorn hedge with the roots of a herbaceous bush in order to make a tincture for her bath. I try not to be dismissive, but Lucy knows how I feel and takes it as evidence of a shallow cynicism on my part. She feels that this is at the root of my inability to write, saying that I live my emotional life at a glib surface level and that I won’t write anything worthwhile until I get in touch with my inner feelings. The truth of the matter is, of course, that I don’t have any inner feelings and the reason I can’t write anything decent is that I am a talent-free zone with the brain of a Brussels sprout.