interview #4

interview with AN UNRELIABLE WITNESS

please write a very short review of the last book you read without saying the title or the author.

I love the smell of hardback books between ten o'clock at night and dawn, particularly when they're inhabited by dreamers and somebody sleeping off a severe case of social alienation. I wasn't so convinced by the sinister person hiding in the television. Or the Hall & Oates soundtrack.

who would win in a fight between the author of the last book you read and your boss at work?

A difficult choice, but a potentially fascinating non-celebrity deathmatch. My boss is blind, but owns a fearsome guide dog. The author listens to too much jazz for my liking, but this might distract him enough that he wouldn't notice the labrador about to leap for his neck with its teeth bared. So I'm going for my boss, with the assistance of his mobility aid. I don't care, really, just as long as I can stand in the corner holding their coats and screech like a big girl's blouse. "Leave him! He's not worth it! But knee him in the groin first!"

please describe your 'favourite cat'.

Saggy. Made of cloth. Has a plummy voice. Emily loves him. I love him too, because he doesn't need to write what he imagines, but can simply think about it in clouds above his head. He's very good company on Sunday morning over a croissant, coffee and cheese.

have you ever played the online interactive game 'Second Life'?

Twice. It scared the pants off me, because I had an all too believable glimpse of the future in which I became like the couple from Cornwall who divorced each other because he was chatting up members of the opposite sex in pixel form. I have enough reasons to stay indoors and avoid social interaction; I don't need any more.

how can i cure the mold on my bathroom ceiling (it keeps coming back)?

Don't cure. Accept it. Let it grow, spread, infect the whole ceiling. It will provide hours of fascination whilst you lie in the bath, seeing shapes forming in the mould. The silhouette of Bruce Forsyth here, the outline of the Indian subcontinent there. When the stench becomes unbearable, and you're sitting in green, fetid water wearing a gas mask in order to help yourself breathe, do a moonlight flit from your home without telling the landlord. There.