Tuesday, January 19, 2010

An Ed Reardon moment

It’s almost enough to make me kick the cat – if I had a cat, that is, which I don’t, unlike Ed Reardon, the wonderful fictional hack writer, whom I heard yesterday on Radio 4. (http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/radio/ed_reardons_week)


Having waited patiently for my PLR statement – which used to earn me quite a few pounds in the days when my self help book was in print – I finally decided to register on line. Having already been ‘on the books’ so to speak, for many years, since the days of postal deliveries, in fact, before the internet was invented, I hadn’t bothered to update myself to new technology.


Tainted Tree has been borrowed a great deal from Surrey Libraries, recently, and I had been eagerly waiting my payment. But when I finally got through the password and favourite pet stage (perhaps I should have pinched Ed’s cat’s name, Elgar) and waited a day for my registration to go through, I found to my dismay that I had somehow failed to register Tainted Tree. A year and a half’s worth of loans have been wasted, as far as I’m concerned.


Note to all novelists. Please remember (as I obviously did not) that, unlike the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society Ltd, where it is the author who is registered for photocopying, library loans in other countries, etc., it is not the author who is registered for Public Lending Right, but the book itself. Please friends in Surrey, carry on borrowing Tainted Tree. I’m sure you’ll find it’s worth a read – have a look a Readers’ Comments on my website, if you don’t believe me. That’s at: http://freespace.virgin.net/jackie.luben/ and scroll down to ‘Tainted Tree.’


As if this was not enough angst for an Ed Reardon-like curmudgeon, the day continued to frustrate. As if it were not enough to have to fight a continuous daily battle to get the recycling and food waste collected by a team that is very reluctant to visit us, a man from gas services appeared and cheerfully informed me that he was going to disconnect us. Water in with the gas, or something. ‘How long?’ I queried. ‘A couple of hours,’ he said – well, this afternoon.’ So some four or five hours later, my neighbours and myself were on the blower again, this time chasing the gas reinstatement team.


When the OM arrived home, we were still waiting. By this time, I’d installed a fan heater in the hall, and set the oven to ‘self-clean’, and it was blasting out smelly fumes and lots of heat. The OM, who bought a chain saw last year, which alas failed to last out the season, lit the fire and started sawing at some timber outside with an angle grinder. The gas team, when they arrived at 7.00 p.m. thought this was hilarious. However, to their credit, they did get us going again, having arrived in an enormous tanker, which makes a nonsense of the excuses given to us by the recycling team, about us not being very accessible.

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