"But ... the um ... with your music thing. I mean, you'd've had to ..."
He makes a face like he's just sat on a drawing pin.
"Yeah, but that's different. So, did you carry on writing through your twenties?"
And that's how the afternoon proceeds. He's delighted to hear about me, and relatively comfortable talking about himself in the strict context of writing these "funny stories" (one of a few excessively quaint phrases he employs), but all my tentative turns down the musical avenue end abruptly in a series of cul-de-sacs. After a while I stop bothering and just try to keep him talking about anything, in the hope some nuggets will drop out.
"What made you think of having characters with superpowers?"
"They're not really superpowers," he states. "It's one particular power, telekinesis."
"Why that?"
"It's the most inconspicuous one. If you find one day you're able to fly, everyone's gonna see you and notice it-same with super-strength. With telekinesis, particularly this long-range one they've all got, they're not necessarily gonna be found out. You could stand in a crowd and control, say, a flying car, but as everyone's gonna be watching it, what's to say you're the one doing it? I reckon there's more comic potential. Invisibility didn't seem as much fun. Mind reading's cool but a bit too eerie. I didn't want it to be eerie, like some scary horror book or graphic novel."
"You don't like graphic novels."
He shakes his head vigorously, munching his last mouthful of toast.
"Me neither," I concur, the spectre of Billy Flushing's gurning mug momentarily appearing.
"So why does your guy need to be such a pisshead?" he asks, scooping up and scanning my papers again.
Ah. A nugget could be approaching. I take a large gulp of coffee and begin slowly.
"Well ... partly because I thought it'd be amusing to have an inventor who's always drunk, and invents things that either don't work or work differently to how they're meant to. I once went to these brandy cellars in France. The spiders down there are actually drunk on the booze fumes so they build these crazy spiderwebs. Maybe he'd be the inventor equivalent of that ... perhaps he builds a time machine that ends up being a nuclear vacuum cleaner or something, I dunno."
"Wouldn't that be funnier if it was drugs?"
"Yeah, but ... drugs don't really fit with him being a pissed old misanthropic bastard. I quite like him just hating the world and drinking himself into a void every night."
"Your kind of character?"
"Um ... yeah," I reply, not too sure what he's driving at.
"Do you drink a lot?"
Time for a strategic fib.
"No. I used to, but then it started affecting my life too much ... it almost messed things up for me at work."
"And then they sacked you anyway," he laughs.
"Yeah ... but it used to be pretty bad. I'd come back from lunch drunk and so on. What, um ... what about you?"
"Nah," he frowns. "I like a pint from time to time, but my hard-drinking days are long gone."
"You used to drink, um, hard?"
Then his fucking mobile phone rings. Damn. Two more questions and we'd have been at the Aylesbury Festival, I'm sure of it. He chats for a minute (some dull talk about the remixes), then dashes off to the loo. Just to make sure I can't repeat my question when he returns, he brings Marzy over to our table, smilingly introduces her as "my caterer" and me as "Alan, my editor." Two minutes of mindless banter follow, during which I grin like a moron and marvel at how strange it is to be addressed by a name that isn't my own. By the time we're alone again my nugget has long since disappeared.
"So, what exactly is this Universal Statistics Engine?" he beams, glugging the remnants of his coffee.
And on it goes, me babbling more claptrap about stupid, nonexistent Gavin Smith and his stupid, nonexistent invention; Webster asking more and more but revealing less and less, then ordering some cake and another coffee (I settle for a gluten-free lemonade, but in truth I'm having murderous thoughts about a beer), frequently parking his damn legs where mine are, and often agreeing so enthusiastically with all my useless, dreamed-up-on-the-spot philosophies about writing that organic cake crumbs come flying out of his mouth in my direction.
Finally, when I'm really beginning to wish I hadn't bothered and start to wonder what imaginary pressing engagement I could hurry off to, he sits back, smiles in a businesslike manner and exhales.
"Well, okay," he nods. "I really enjoyed that, Alan. How about another one of these next week? And I promise, I will not not forget to bring my stuff this time." forget to bring my stuff this time."
It's only then that it hits me. This has actually been an interview. No, an audition. For the role of Lord Highest Looker-at-Writing-Material to Grand Emperor Webster. And I appear to have got the part.
Great.
SUGGESTED LISTENING: Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left Five Leaves Left (Island, 1969) (Island, 1969) You can't just wander around with a drunken grin on your face [From Geoff Webster's writing ideas notebook.]
SAINSBURY SID"Oh, drat it!"Sid the fly sighed and moved quietly around the milk bottles and yoghurt. Here he was, at ten o'clock, shut in Sainsbury's. This was all he needed. He was just flying at full pelt towards the door when the manager closed and locked it. Sid was shut in, left for a whole night to ramble among the Fairy Liquid bottles and the oven-ready chickens. But hang on! This thought hadn't yet occurred to him."Food!" exclaimed Sid excitedly.He pulled himself together, took off from the yoghurt pot and flew up to the roof of the supermarket. There he could see the full scale of his lucky find. He looked at the signs. Biscuits. Crisps. Cakes. Fruit. Delicatessen. Fly swats. Fly swats? He had a sudden moment of panic, then he thought: Hang on! There was nobody there to use them. Suddenly, with a burst of excitement, he dived like a plane and soared into a packet of Dairylea."Delicious!"He had a few huge bites and moved on to the finer taste of a packet of French Brie. This was the life! He flew back up to the ceiling and looked at more signs. Meat. Frozen vegetables. Bags of soup. Off-licence. Then he took a look behind him, across the sea of Persil Automatic. What a huge shop! As he looked at all the words, one of them hit him smack across the eyes and stayed there for five seconds before he could see normally again.HONEY.He shot like the Concorde towards the Jam and Chutney section and rammed straight into a jar of honey with a paper lid. There he was, slurping and gulping his way through a huge pot of the sweet, sticky, glorious gunk.After a while, he got tired and squeezed his way out through the hole and flew in the direction of the fresh-bread counter. But he could only get as far as the cash registers, and then flopped out: tired, full, but happy.At about five o'clock in the morning Sid woke up, but not naturally. A baker had come in to make fresh bread for the day's customers. Sid quickly rose from the cash register and flew as quietly as he could towards the bread section to get a better look. But the baker instantly heard Sid buzzing around and, to Sid's horror, walked over to the fly-swat counter! Without further ado, Sid soared high into the air and zoomed over to the other end of the shop, far away from the fly-swat-waving baker. He spotted the pot of honey he had opened the night before, swooped down and soared into his breakfast.He was just about to leave the pot when he saw the huge face of the baker through the glass! But hang on! Sid had an idea. Where the baker had come in, he must go out. He shot out of the jar, making another hole, and zoomed towards the bakery, where he saw an open door. Just as the baker was about to smash down the fly swat, Sid flew out into the morning air."Phew!" he gasped, heading towards his nest in the gutter of the train station. But he would be back soon, for some more of that delicious food.
I stare at the lined page for a few moments longer. It's not the first time in my life I've had no idea what to say. But it is, perhaps, the first time I've had a grinning former hero of mine merely two feet away, his face practically bursting off its hinges in anticipation of my considered opinion. I've got, ooh, probably four more seconds to think of an opening comment, so I buy myself an extra two by taking a large gulp of tea. This, unfortunately, is the wrong thing to do.
"You didn't like it," Webster moans.
Shit. Now I have to do double-strength double-strength lying. lying.
"No!" I begin. "No, not at all. It's ... sorry, it's just not, um ... not what I was expecting."
"What were you expecting?"
"Well, a ... for a start, something for ..."
He frowns. Time's up.
"I didn't think it was going be a children's story," I admit.
He frowns some more. Oh God. Please say it is is meant to be a children's story. meant to be a children's story.
"I love children's stories," he mutters at last, in a tone an East End gangster might use to describe a favourite cuddly toy. "Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Michael Bond."
"Right."
"Penelope Lively, Astrid Lindgren."
I'm completely lost, and my face must be saying it rather loudly.
"Pippi Longstocking," he continues.
"Blimey, some of these pen names," I smile desperately.
"No, that's a character-one of Astrid Lindgren's characters."
"Ah." Glad he cleared that one up for me.
"Jill Murphy, Helen Cresswell."
"J.K. Rowling?" I suggest hopefully.
"Not my cup of tea," he shrugs. "Norman Hunter?"
"Sorry ... who?"
"You know ... Professor Branestawm?"
"Oh yeah, him! Fantastic!"
"Then you must also like Spike Milligan?"
"Yes!" I bark. "Genius!"
I'm so relieved, I bang my mug down and tea escapes all over the table. Everyone in the cafe looks round and Marzy comes running over with a cloth.
"Exciting stuff, this editing process," Webster quips as she wipes up the mess. He smiles at her, and for the first time I see a drop of the rock-star charisma that must have worked wonders with the ladies back in the day. Marzy goes all gooey for a second and it strikes me she may be doing more for him than just making his lunch.
"Thanks ... sorry," I mumble uselessly.
"Not a problem, Alan," Marzy replies, departing. Ugh! I'm sure people don't remember my name so readily when I'm using the real one. Perhaps "Clive" is eminently forgettable.
"Anyway," Webster resumes, "for some reason I've been reading nothing but children's stories lately. And when I wrote the other thing-the one about the people with the power-one of the publishers said it might actually make a cracking children's book. So I thought I'd have a go at a kid's yarn."
"Why not just make that other one into a ... um ... a kid's thing?"
"Wanted to do something new."
"Okay," I nod. "Well, in that case, it's ..."
"Go on. You can be honest. That's what we're here for."
So I launch into a timid examination of his piece, concentrating heavily on the few bits I thought were good ("slurping and gulping his way through a huge pot of the sweet, sticky, glorious gunk;" "across the sea of Persil Automatic"), and some harmless criticism about repeating words too often. I steer well clear of my true thoughts, i.e., that it's as exciting as a maths lesson and would bore the bib off any self-respecting child within three sentences. My jaw is already hurting from all the fake smiling, and the temptation to blurt out, "Fuck all this, let's talk about rock!" is daunting.
"Oh, and of course-it'll be accompanied by illustrations," Webster declares, fishing around in his bag. "Sorry, I should have shown you these already. One of my friends has done some mock-ups."
He passes over some decent pencil sketches of a smiling housefly in various states of honey-related bliss, and a fly-swat-brandishing baker who bears more than a passing resemblance to a career-peak Webster himself, goatee and all.
"Wow, these are great!" I enthuse. "It'll make so so much more sense with pictures." much more sense with pictures."
Webster glares at me.
"Better than the story, then, huh?"
"Well, er ..."
"Come on, Alan. It's obvious you don't like it. There's no point in us sitting here unless you tell me why."
"Uh ... well, it's just not really my thing ... It's a little bit ... um ..."
There's the glimmer of a smile on his face and it occurs to me he's actually enjoying making me squirm.
"A little bit what?"
"Unbelievable."
"What, a fly buzzing round a supermarket eating food is unbelievable?"
"No, but ... you know, the things he thinks, and the fact that he's able to read ..."
Webster almost spits his coffee out with incredulity.
"It's for kids! It's make-believe make-believe!"
"And there's a whole section of the shop devoted to fly swats."
"It's supposed to be funny!"
"And who says 'Drat it!' these days?"
"Yeah, well, you may have a point there," he concedes, grabbing his notebook and scribbling in the margin.
"And is 'Hang on' meant to be his catchphrase?"
"'Hang on'?"
"Yeah. He says 'hang on' about six times."
"Three times," corrects Webster.
"Well, maybe he should say it more often-turn it into a catch-phrase."
"Okay," he shrugs, jotting it down. "Fair enough. [BBC announcer voice] 'Hang on, with Sid the fly.' Anything else? You see-this is more like it!"
"Right," I reply dubiously. "Um ... well, there's heaps of product placement-Dairylea, Persil, Sainsbury's, of course ..."
"Which could be an advantage."
"What, get some of them on board?"
"Yeah," he smiles craftily. "In fact, my illustrator knows some of the Sainsbury's marketing team-they're interested in taking a look."
"Blimey."