Next Monday is St Piran’s Day. You may not know this, but it was first observed by tin miners and the connection between tinners and pasties goes back a long way. And here is a piece I found from Geoffrey Chaucer . . .

This kind of stuff is so easy. She is contributing to global dumbing-down, but the readers seem to like it. Her blog is now the second-most-read site on the newspaper’s web page, still some way behind the fate of the Winkles, the town’s struggling football team. The Winkles have only won one game all season. There’s a tremendous gnashing of NHS teeth in the town. Oblivion beckons for the Winkles.

Later that night, back amongst the knick-knacks and soothed by the distinct aromas of home, as she is typing up her blog, she gets a text from the editor: dynamite. see you at 8am in car park.

She is both nervous about what Alan39 might reveal and elated. Unlike the Winkles, she’s playing in the Premier League now. You’ve got to take it day by day, each game as it comes, she says out loud, in the voice of a football manager.

Her father knocks and pops his head round the door, ingratiatingly. He carries a cup of Ovaltine. He’s taken to wearing an old dressing gown over his clothes after 9 p.m. He’s saving on the heating.

‘You’re working late, sweetie.’

‘Blogging, Dad.’

‘You were talking to someone, sorry to intrude.’

‘Only to myself.’

‘You know what they say, you are guaranteed an intelligent listener if you do that? I brought you some Ovaltine.’

‘Oh thanks, Dad. That’s so-oh kind.’

‘Night night, my precious.’

‘Night night, Dad.’

After he’s gone she wonders if her dad isn’t giving her this highly calorific drink each night to prevent her having too much sex, the life force. Unconsciously, of course, because he is in love with her in an innocent, Jungian sort of way, he wants her to grow fat and undesirable. She pours the Ovaltine into the curved avocado basin underneath the bit of mirror inexpertly screwed to the pinkish textured wall­paper, which is coming away where it abuts the basin. She feels guilty: they love her and have cherished her for twenty-two years.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20