It had all started as a joke. I had never meant it to go so far. We’d just had so much fun reading A Surgeon in her Stocking that I had thought I’d try to write a send-up of it. For Dylan. And that’s how A Poet Up Her Chimney started. But, a few chapters in, I wondered whether there might be money to be made out of this. I was broke. And desperate. It didn’t take very long to write. It took me longer to come up with a nom de plume; Brian Bilston was never going to cut it as a writer of romance fiction. Delores Wildflower, on the other hand, had every chance – and she took it. Delores sent it off to a publisher of romantic fiction, who loved it so much that they offered her an advance for a whole series of titles, provisionally entitled Poets in Love.

It would seem that I’ve made it as a writer, after all.

But none of this could ever justify my rough behaviour towards you, my dear, beloved diary. I hope you can find it in your papery heart to forgive me.

Yours sincerely,

Brian

P.S. I would appreciate it if you could keep this information to yourself.

Thursday December 20th

I squeezed Grief is the Thing with Feathers into my coat pocket and headed off to book group. Liz was already there when I arrived and she introduced me to the rest of the group. They seemed like a good bunch and smiled sympathetically when I confessed that I hadn’t quite had time to finish reading it.

‘Never mind,’ one said. ‘Life gets so hectic at this time of year, doesn’t it? I’m sure you’d have finished it in any other month.’ I nodded vigorously and bought some wasabi peas for the table.

‘It was good to see you tonight,’ said Liz, as we exchanged our goodbyes outside the pub. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d turn up.’

‘Oh, you can always rely on me,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas.’

She raised an eyebrow, reached across and hugged me before we parted; she, striding off towards her bus stop and I, in search of mine.

Friday December 21st

Traits of the Artist as a Young Anagrammatist

When life gives me lemons, I see melons;

it sometimes makes me solemn, too.

Because when a word bores me sober,

and starts to wane, I shake it up anew.

I’m alerted to how words are related,

how, when altered, they might enmesh;

shuffling letters like a pack of cards,

then dealing them out, aligned afresh.

Faced with a poser and on the ropes,

I’ll make a poem from its prose.

An education to be cautioned against?

It’s character building, I suppose.

A gory orgy of words put to the sword:

these are traits the artist understands,

largely, and in whose gallery

the Ars Magna of anagrams hangs.