Back In My Dark Place

I had lost my zest. My zip went missing. It’s pep that I needed, yet there was no pep to be found.

Blogging is serious work that pretends to be easy. Others can write their 200 words each day and then do a normal day’s work. I’m not like that. I tend to knock out 2000 words or I write nothing. So long as I have my mojo firing, it will carry me through. But when my spark isn’t there, I’m lost for things to say.

Encouragement. That’s all I needed. A few kind words from a friend will usually fill my tanks and send me raring along at a hundred miles an hour. Then it’s a straight road all the way to Productivity USA. The problem is that life tends to be discouraging. On the days when I don’t have the limo to carry me around London, I’m be loaded down with a laptop and books, suffering public transport and the crass and utterly rude British public who sneer at those of us in false noses, bowler hats, and pink earmuffs. Umbrellas also don’t like my company and will usually self-destruct as soon as I touch them. A combination of these took me to a dark place over the weekend. By Sunday lunchtime, I was sitting in the garage, smeared with engine oil and muttering ‘the horror, the horror’ as I was tattooing ‘exterminate all the brutes’ onto my right kneecap.

Which is where Bill Oddie comes into my life.

I know that if I introduce Bill into my day, he will do something that will help raise my mood above the basic threshold at which I begin to function. Beards have a compelling quality made all the more intoxicating when they stand no higher than four feet eight inches and have a working knowledge of owls.

‘Hello Dick,’ said Bill. He was framed in the doorway of the garage. How he’d managed to avoid tripping any of the booby traps I’d set, I really don’t know. ‘Judy says that you’re in a bad mood.’

‘The world is against me,’ I wailed. ‘I’m hindered in all my great projects. Nobody wants me! There are no visionaries out there willing to put their faith in this brain and these two magnificent hands of mine. Give me work to do and I’ll do it. But inspire me, Bill... Inspire me and I’ll raise you a cathedral or build you a dam!’

‘That’s very good of you,’ replied Oddie. ‘I have some logs I need chopping in my back garden. I want to make them into some bird boxes.’

I shrugged. It’s rare that you find somebody wanting cathedrals or dams. Bird boxes would have to do.

So I spent my Sunday afternoon in Bill’s back garden chopping and carving wood. It wasn’t work that inspired me but it was honest toil and saved me from having to return home where Judy was ensconced in Glastonbury. She has a thing about Neil Diamond that puts my fixation with Vanessa Feltz’s cleavage to shame.

Anyway, by the time Bill came out to see how I was doing at six o’clock, he plucked at his beard and nodded with great appreciation.

‘Excellent word, Dick,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen wooden logs cut with such skill. The way you split them is the work of genius but the way you’ve assembled them into a bird house that’s an exact scale replica of the Taj Mahal is simply quite stunning. My tits will be most pleased.’

I blushed as I felt a little bit of pep return to my body. ‘Why thank you Bill,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to show you that I was back.’

He looked at the bird box and nodded. ‘Oh, you’re back, Dick. You’re most definitely back.’