Ghostwriter

In her novel Dreams of Speaking (2005 Age Book of the Year Award), Gail Jones introduces us to Mr Sakamoto, a Japanese survivor of Hiroshima. Intelligent and urbane, he’s also an expert on Alexander Graham Bell, the pioneering engineer credited with inventing the telephone.

Mr Sakamoto’s fascination with Bell began with his own personal experiences of the phone and, from the narrative, it’s clear that the deeply personal interactions that Sakamoto enjoyed over the wires actually kept him sane during some of the darker moments of his life.

Without giving away what is a wonderful story, Ms Jones engages the reader with aspects of that priceless medium of human contact, the voice. But, in this case, it’s not the voice heard face-to-face that fascinates. It’s the voice on the other end of the phone. When whispered, murmured, and sighed, Mr Sakamoto suggests that words on the phone take on subtle nuances and inflections of shared confidentialities that wouldn’t occur face-to-face.

Today, satellites and fibre optics are replacing copper cable, and mobiles and VoIP are replacing the traditional dial phone. What remains, however, is the physical separation of conversationalists, a void waiting to be filled by the vibrating elements of speech and the rich and personal timbres of the voice.

I find face-to-face and phone discussions each have their own merits. But the phone does dispense with many of the constraints we must observe in a physical encounter, particularly between strangers. There is no body language to distract from the way something is said, no background noises to blur or conceal a nuance, no social behaviours or appearances to misjudge, and every reason to deeply engage one’s senses in an effort to fully comprehend the message in the voice.

Sometimes my work involves encouraging a client to think through an experience, to relive it, and ride a few bumps in the process. In those extremely sensitive moments, the phone is a tangible thing to hang onto. And not so much as a grip of abject terror, but more of a support as the emotions flow and ebb with the memories.

On the phone, comfortable, respectful, or reflective silences become part of a deeper conversation. One can almost hear the client’s thought processes, and it feels perfectly natural and unobtrusive to respond with ah, or hmm, just to let them know I’m there. Even the hum from the ether seems perfectly in tune with the moment.

We have a new tunnel. It dives under the Brisbane River, linking the south with the north and bypassing the city centre in a most convenient way.

When the tunnel opened, the toll was suspended to allow motorists the opportunity to test drive (and hopefully get hooked on) the new route. When the toll was imposed after the trial period, traffic through the tunnel dropped off. Actually it plummeted, despite a well considered discount. Within days, stakeholders and the media began to make remarks that sounded a little panicky.

Approaching one of the tunnel onramps the other day, I saw an enormous electronic sign with the message No tag? It then changed to We will bill you. Think about that. Those two sequential messages can be taken as a threat. They aren’t encouraging you to use the tunnel by saying that if you don’t have an e-Tag, it’s not a problem and they’ll catch up with you later. They are warning you, yes warning you, that if you proceed into the tunnel they desperately want you to use, they will bill you. And being billed is not perceived as a pleasant experience by most of us.

I regularly write about words, and how many of the words we use are often unnecessary. However, sometimes we need to add words to clarify a meaning. The tunnel operators were attempting to encourage users with their words, but their brevity terrified, albeit subliminally. What if the sign had flashed an in-between message? No tag? … No worries … We will bill you.

Of course, over the following days, I started looking at signs more closely. One at our local cinema encouraged me to join the movie club with the words, You’ll never pay full price again, unwittingly omitting to inform me that the discounted price was dependent on my continuing to pay the club subscription.

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones, is a really cool exhibition currently showing at the Queensland Art Gallery – a must-see by the way. The huge sign advertising it in South Brisbane makes it unclear as to whether the exhibition is exclusive to Brisbane, or free only in Brisbane.

And then, as I began to notice more and more anomalies, it struck me. Some advertisers are investing huge dollars in clever imagery, but, without considering their words carefully, are failing to get the message across.

What do you think? Seen any interesting signs around the place?

Do you ever get a weird feeling somewhere around the pit of your stomach? I’m talking about something that ranges between an imperceptible tingle and a full-on lurch depending on what triggers it. I’ve heard it referred to as a feeling of dread, a nervous twinge, abject fear, a premonition, or plain old shitting oneself.

Looking in the rear view mirror in the middle of a totally absorbing conversation and seeing a cop car with its light flashing will always do it for me. There’s usually one clear expletive that will ensue from such a vision, and it ain’t oh, darn.

Last week I had my own intestine chilling experience when I posted a profound question in Twitter (I realise Twitter and profundity is a contradiction) that I’d contemplated for half an hour. As I hit enter I realised my question was sans question mark. How stupid, I thought. I’m supposed to be a writer. My next thought came quite logically (and practically), As if anyone would notice. But, yes, they did. And did I go through their tweets to check their grammar? I mean, would I?

The question of how long to spend editing can be a thorny one for a ghostwriter. Some published works have been known to take anything between one to ten years to complete, with some tomes enduring hundreds of editing sweeps during the writing process, and authors agonising for months over a single sentence.

Time is money to a ghostwriter, and because it’s the client’s money we’re talking about here, any unduly protracted work has to be avoided. Barking up the wrong tree is sometimes part of the writing process, particularly when research is involved. But knowing when to stop sniffing around that particular piece of flora and head off in a more appropriate direction comes only with experience.

Ghostwriters have to be prepared to lose words, and sometimes unexpectedly. For example, in the middle of a project a client approved 10,000 words I’d written for her. It was a part of the book that dealt with a truly terrible time in her life. Having never verbalised the experiences before, she had found the interview, however informal I tried to make it, a fairly rough ride.

A week later she called again to say thanks and to inform me that she’d read the material over and over and had wept buckets. Now, for the first time in her life, she felt she could forgive and move on. She added that the words had brought about a healing that she had never imagined possible, and rather than include them in the book where they would be likely to reopen old wounds for the people involved, she preferred to see them excised forever.

Sometimes to have a win-win, you have to aim for lose-lose.

And, talking of losing, how much is that traffic fine again?

I’ve had my name, Michael Collins, for as long as I can remember. It’s not an unusual one, but it does have famous connections. Google it and there are almost eleven million hits, and most of them are that long dead bugger, Michael Collins the Irish rebel, and the movie about him which always comes top of the list.

I blame the other Michael Collins for some of my character flaws. Since I started school – and I must tell you that on my first day my mum forgot to tell me that school was going to be a long term relationship, so after a couple of hours I got bored (a pattern that would be repeated throughout my education) and, much to her surprise, wandered home in time for lunch – I’ve been bugged with, “So, your name’s Michael Collins. Bit of a rebel by any chance?” If that isn’t a gilt edged invitation to be a naughty little boy, what is?

The Michael Collins who led me astray was an Irish revolutionary leader who went on to an outstanding and controversial political career before being shot in an ambush at the tender age of thirty one during the Irish Civil War. He was played by Liam Neeson in the ’96 movie, Michael Collins, which filled his character out a bit for me, but, until I went to Ireland, that’s just about all I knew of him.

Travelling from Dublin, I phoned ahead to make a hotel reservation in Cork, and, as with everywhere in Ireland, I was greeted with the utmost politeness. However, when I arrived at the reception desk a couple of days later, I was met by a pleasant looking young fella who just stared at me in slack jawed surprise.

“Oh, Jesus, Michael Collins. Are you really Michael Collins?”

“Hmm, yes,” I said, “that’s my name.”

He lunged across the desk to shake my hand furiously.

“Fantastic to meet you, sir. I’m really, really sorry, I took your call and thought you were joking so I didn’t make a booking for you.”

“Joking? About what?”

“About being Michael Collins, sir. He’s a very famous man around here. Bit of a god in a way. Everyone loves everything about Michael Collins.”

I was going to find out just how much the locals loved Michael Collins, but in the meantime the hotel’s mistake was rectified by a superb upgrade and the offer of a free dinner in the pub next door.

A Guinness was high on my list of priorities so I popped into the main bar for a pre-dinner drink. The pub was packed with locals and it took a while to squizzle up to the counter.

“Guinness please.”

“You’re not from around here, then?” the large boned, florid faced lady said, expertly pouring my brew.

“No, Australia, ma’am,” I replied.

As she took my money, I asked about the restaurant, telling her we’d be eating there later.

“What’s your name? I’ll make sure you’re booked in.”

“Michael Collins, thanks.”

“Fuck off.”

My hand froze in mid air, halfway between my mouth and the beautiful dark velvet beverage sitting on the bar.

We stood staring at each other, the raucous din of a full and happy Irish pub rising and falling around us. It was like being plunged into vacuum. Or having an instantaneous out of body experience. It was just the two of us, eyes locked in defence and defiance.

I reached for my ID without taking my eyes from her face, and handed it across the bar.

And then she screamed. A big scream. A scream that stopped every activity in the place dead. In the terrifying silence that followed, everyone’s eyeballs swivelled my way. I felt like a peeping Tom or a thief caught in flagrante. Instinctively my eyes sought the nearest exit. There were some pretty big blokes drinking in there and I’d already noticed some raw looking knuckles around. They were roughly the size of my head.

“We’ve got Michael fookkin’ Collins in the bar,” the landlady yelled. “All the way from Australia!”

I lost count after ten free pints of Guinness. They just kept coming. In fact I lost my ability to speak, my legs got mislaid, and everything went a bit blurry. But I do remember expressing an interest in Irish step dance.

Mere minutes later, a lithe young girl soared into the room as visions of Riverdance unfolded before me. I stomped and clapped to the wild music and wonderful singing, and later still was regaled by the exploits of the Big Fella over a bottle of Irish whisky – and it was all on Michael Collins. Good on yer Michael.

“It’s as boring as bat shit,” I muttered, tossing the half-read book onto the couch.

My wife, Jane Teresa, sighed and looked up from the depths of Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, a really great book I’d recommended she read.

“I gave it my best shot,” I said, vaguely justifying having interrupted her pleasure. “But the author just doesn’t seem to be interested in the subject he’s writing about. It’s almost mechanical and there’s no excitement in his words.”

I left JT to return to Fforde’s amazingly futuristic world, and thought about a question I’d been asked at a recent interview, “How can you be passionate enough about someone else’s concept to write an entire book for them?”

It’s a good question. And the answer may lie in asking if a writer must be passionate about his words before he can make them magically spring to life. For me it’s a resounding yes. However, I’d take it a stage further. If you have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, a mind constantly churning with questions, and a constant curiosity about people’s behaviour, the weather, the way soap dissolves in the shower, and the meaning of an ant’s life, you are likely to find most things interesting enough to write about, aren’t you?

My interviewer settled back in her seat, sipped her cappuccino and grinned mischievously. She was clearly enjoying herself, and I kind of knew what was coming.

“So, what wouldn’t you write about?”

I thought for a while.

“How about trainspotting?” she asked, barely suppressing a chuckle.

“Hmm, actually I reckon I could get interested in writing about trainspotting.”

“Really?”

“Well, yes,” I said, “I remember being hauled off to train stations in the UK as a tiny fella and spending hours, in thin clothes, on freezing platforms, with nothing to eat, blasted by snow laden winds until I turned into an icicle. All in the hope of a glimpse of the most famous steam train of all, the Flying Scotsman.”

“And?”

“Misery would be an understatement. I had no interest in trains, I loathed being cold, and at four years of age I had no say in how long we were going to endure the pain.”

“So?”

“So, one day a shout echoes across the platform, She’s coming! Suddenly, there were people everywhere, appearing out of cracks and crevices – all the clever places they’d used to shelter from that vicious wind. Scarves, coats, and notebooks were flung in all directions as a scramble for the best view began. Little boys like me were shoved to the front or hoisted onto the nearest stranger’s shoulders. Grown-ups were trembling with excitement and cheered madly when they heard the huge behemoth’s whistle in the distance.

At my age I had no idea of the importance of this old train to the enthusiast, but I could feel the overwhelming sense of anticipation and joy coursing through the crowd. It was incredibly contagious. Forgetting the cold and the hunger, I shouted myself hoarse as the great green monster thundered through the station belching clouds of thick black smoke. I remember looking up through the swirling steam at one old gent. He was grinning toothlessly and tears were streaming down his cheeks.”

I let out a long sigh.

“I’d say it was one of the best days of my life.”

My interviewer stared at me for a long moment.

“That’s amazing. Wow, look at me, all goose bumps. I’d really, really love to have experienced something like that.”

I laughed.

“You just did – with me. I was never there. It never happened to me. But if I can imagine it, I can write about it. That’s maybe what writing other people’s stuff is about. Finding something in it to be passionate about and then putting it into words.”

I was sitting on the back deck with a cup of tea when the bell rang at the nearby school. The interesting thing is that I referred to it as a bell in my mind despite the fact that it was, in fact, a loud, electronic boing boing, similar to the generic doorbells we have all over the place. There it is again: doorbell – but it isn’t one, is it?

I refer to school bells because my first memory is of an actual bell, a strident hand held job, swung over-zealously by a rather large, mean-spirited dragon lady who kicked off my loathing and fear of the teaching profession from a very tender age.

Since then I’ve referred to school buzzers, sirens, and other discordant rackets signalling the end of a period, as bells.

Back with the tea, I began to think about how our early associations mould our perceptions, and how those perceptions then affect how we appear to others, particularly when we express ourselves. Of course the way others perceive us also depends on their learned associations, making things very interesting.

For a ghost writer, how to portray the perceptions, feelings and expressions of clients – finding their voice – is probably one of the most important considerations. A ghost can work with a client who says, “Hmm, I love it, but it doesn’t quite sound like me because …” However, “Oh, God, is that the way I come across?” may be the indicator of a slight difference in perception.

Client and ghost can be on the same page from the outset, although that’s a very rare occurrence. Usually the ghost has to consciously focus on the personality of the client, listen very carefully, and begin to home in on their unique voice. The process is similar to that of an actor learning a script and rehearsing. We take someone else’s traits, quirks, and thoughts on as our own and then write rather than hit the stage.

This morphing of personalities can have interesting effects. A client once said to me, “When you climb inside my head, make sure you trail a ball of string to help you find your way out.” At the time, I laughed, but discovered later that she meant every word. That particular journey was a rollercoaster of emotions that we both survived and learned from rather nicely.

Not all ghost writing is so sensitive, however some may take both participants into uncharted waters. For that, there has to be total, unconditional trust, but that was last week’s blog, wasn’t it?

It’s been a long time since I scrabbled about in the East End of London’s filthy gutters. In those days, a lifetime ago when Ronnie and Reggie, the Kray twins, ruled, I was well on my way to be being a tough-minded copper in an urban battlefield of crime.

Since childhood, I’d harboured a romantic idea of policing, and clung to that dream only long enough to be beaten severely, see innocent folk locked up, have friends die, and fellow officers set up for refusing to accept bribes. The job definitely had a few grey areas.

That was almost forty years ago. Since then I’ve had some remarkably diverse jobs, from truck driving to driver training, dishwashing to hotel general management, security to surveillance, and now, the best – ghost writing.

Looking back over a remarkable history of employment, one factor, one element, has always made certain jobs more worthwhile than others. Trust. Without it, the work seemed meaningless, even arduous, or, in the case of the East End, downright dangerous.

As a ghost, I have to be trusted, and implicitly. And I’m not talking about the sort of trust that involves fiddling the hourly rate to earn a few more bucks, because, as far as I’m concerned, that sort of thing always works in favour of the client.

No, this is about a deeper sense of trust. Someone, a new client in need of a book, usually someone I hardly know, is about to tell all. Can you imagine how difficult that might feel? They’re going to let everything hang out. Their fears, their dreams, their disappointments, and aspects of themselves that haven’t yet seen the light of day will probably emerge blinking and embarrassed.

While not everyone howls when their personal stuff gets a chance to air itself, I’m no stranger to witnessing tears and knowing the sense of relief and wellbeing that follows. Far from the cut and thrust of the East End, I can get a lump in my throat from a good ad these days. And just check out who’s the last out of a tearjerker at the movies.

Soft? No! Sensitive? Absolutely! I have given myself the right to understand the pain of others and to write about it. Now, where’s that box of tissues?

I love the way the vision of a persistent, mocking, relentless, flashing cursor on a blank word processing document so flawlessly represents writer’s block.

The dis-ease of writer being unable to write, whether real or imagined, can strike a disproportionate fear into any scribe. And the symptoms become seriously exacerbated when the timeframe is tight. Tick tock, tickitty tock, flashitty flash – argh!

Now all this is a precursor (vague pun intended) to an explanation of my propensity to talk to myself. Rather than presume that I’ve lost my mind when you see me wandering along the street muttering to nobody in particular, I’d like you to know that, rather than face the dreaded flashing cursor, I’m actually running through the opening of another piece of writing. That sneaky little thing isn’t going to trick me, because once I have the opening, I’m away laughing.

The shower was today’s location for a nice chat with myself, as I contemplated the start of another dialogue in the story I’m writing for a client. It wasn’t particularly fruitful, but it did get me to thinking about how much writing is done in the head away from the computer.

My wife is used to seeing me looking all zoned out and vague from time to time. As an accomplished writer herself, Jane Teresa appreciates where and how the words are actually birthed sometimes. And she also fully understands, although her sense of appreciation diminishes somewhat here, when I stumble out of bed in the wee hours to jot an idea down.

An idea simmering away on the back burner can sometimes blossom at the most inappropriate time, unexpectedly and with alarming force. This is the unconscious mind working in a most spectacular way. Whether it’s true or not, Archimedes attained more fame leaping from the bath and racing naked down the street shouting, Eureka! than for many of his discoveries.

My gentle advice to anyone suffering writer’s block is to leave the project and do something else for a while, preferably away from the computer screen. If the write stuff streaks into your grey matter, like a massive meteorite exploding into the atmosphere, in the middle of a supermarket aisle, so be it. If your wayward literary genius is unfurling its embryonic wings and drenching your brain with a shower of ideas, what are a few upturned trolleys and scattered baked bean cans between friends? Hopefully, unlike Archimedes, you will be suitably attired for the occasion.

And as you hurl yourself through the checkout, cackling like a demented chook in search of a cleaver, just don’t forget to pay.

Note to self: Take a notebook and pen to the supermarket next time.

I recently thoroughly enjoyed seeing The Last Station, starring Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, and Paul Giamatti.

All about Leo Tolstoy and his meteoric relationship with his wife, Sofya, there was quite a bit of writing going on, albeit in the background and much to Sofya’s ire, as Tolstoy’s acolytes scribbled furiously, recording juicy details of the great writer’s personal life.

Often needing to write on the fly, and unable to whip out a convenient pen and bottle of ink, the writers seemed to be using pencils, and, over a cuppa after the movie, I wondered how new the pencil was to those guys as a writing implement. I mean, was their enthusiastic scribing similar to the joy of using a laptop when they were introduced? Or, going further back, the joy of word processing which allowed us to cut, paste, and edit rather than retype, or rewrite, until our fingers bled? Or was the pencil already a familiar instrument to writers in those days? Or did the director, Michael Hoffman, get it wrong?

The humble pencil. Something chewed, tapped, snapped, poked in eyes, and reverently lined up by the obsessively tidy, needed some investigation.

The word pencil comes from the Latin pencillus, meaning little tail, and is believed to have been an instrument with a lead tip used for making marks on papyrus during the heyday of the Roman Empire. It wasn’t until 1564, when sharpened lumps of pure graphite were introduced as writing tools, that writing technology leapt forward. However it was very messy stuff, and unless scribes encased the material with wax, held it in a piece of cloth, or bound it in string, they could be mistaken for coalminers.

In the late 1700s it was discovered that mixing graphite with clay in various proportions produced a material that was not only ideal for writing but could be mixed to provide different consistencies. The ‘lead’ in the pencil was born, and is still made much the same way today.

The first mass-produced pencils were made in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1662, and we have never looked back. How long the pencil will last is anyone’s guess. How long is it since you picked one up and wrote with it? I tried to yesterday, but I needed my pencil sharpener, and I wouldn’t have a clue where it is.

And how much lead is in your pencil? Well, under some circumstances that could be a leading question. But, of course, a pencil contains no lead, and, in fact, never has.

This is one of the stories I’ll be blogging from time to time. It’s a little longer than normal, so settle back, relax, and enjoy the tale of a lonesome ghost.

There are writers who would give their eye teeth to be allowed to do their work in complete solitude. A cold windy garret, dank forbidding dungeon, or a pitifully provisioned castaway island isn’t high on most writers’ lists. However, most of us can see ourselves at some time, glass in hand, gazing out over the sun drenched Adriatic contemplating our next blockbuster.

Seriously, there are times when one feels that a little peace and quiet might be a soothing balm to the creative soul, encouraging mites of inspiration to swell and burst forth in a torrent of easy words.

One northern summer I was in a remote part of Alaska, visiting someone living in the quintessential log cabin deep in the woods. I felt exceptionally well staying there, so good, in fact, that I spent an entire day from dawn to dusk splitting wood for the winter supply, loudly singing, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK” until I was hoarse. Blisters prevented me from holding a knife and fork for a week afterwards, and the reason I was singing was to discourage that big mother bear from creeping up behind me and hoicking me off for dinner, but that’s OK too.

I really fancied the idea of spending an entire year there alone. I could write screeds, at the same time enjoying the odd frolic in the snow and a touch of cross-country skiing. Wallowing in my romantic delusion, I’d completely forgotten that I despise the cold and have never skied.

So, imagine my delight when I had an opportunity to spend three weeks deep in rural Queensland, on fifty acres of tranquil land with only a droopy horse, silly ball-obsessed dog, and two cats (I didn’t know one had Alzheimer’s), and my wife for company.

After two weeks my wife left. No, no, it’s OK. Apart from the fact that she doesn’t really like being parted from excellent coffee shops for too long, there were other perfectly good reasons for her sudden departure. One of us had to go back to Brisbane and, before I could say anything, Jane Teresa was in her car and waving a cheery farewell. I swear I could see her laughing as she accelerated away at dangerous speed across the paddock.

Right, I thought, tripping over the dog patiently waiting for me to throw a ball. Apart from food, that’s all it was interested in. A ball, any ball, large one, small one, it didn’t care. You could throw a ball from morning until night and the nutty animal would chase it. Right, I thought again, stamping back to the house after sending a tennis ball into an overgrown creek, that will take all of fifteen minutes for you to find while I start some real writing.

Fast forward to the next day. It’s 10.30am and I’m sitting sans clothing and the sweat is dribbling onto my keyboard. I knew we were heading for a heatwave, but 34oC at this time of the morning is ridiculous.

The temperature rose relentlessly. Even the cicadas stopped their racket as an intense stillness descended upon the house. There was no air-conditioning and, to make matters worse, if I looked out across the veranda, a swimming pool sparkled in the bright sunlight, mocking my greater literary efforts. So I looked the other way, only to meet the baleful stare of Ball Brains, who would sit outside the other window, nose pressed to the fly screen, hour after hour, panting with noisy anticipation. Bollocks!

After four days I began to feel a little odd. The dog had a strange, glazed killer look in its eyes and I’m sure its jaw had become larger, and more wolverine. The temperature had risen more each day and was now in the forties. The cat was driving me mad with its constant yowling. The problem was that it had dementia (my diagnosis) and would demand biscuits constantly, completely unaware that it had eaten only five minutes previously. If I relented, the cat would gobble up the biscuits only to vomit them back up on my shoes, or the carpet, never straight onto the tiled floor where I could wipe it up.

And then there was the bird. I hadn’t mentioned the bird because, well, why would you be remotely interested in a man-hating lorikeet in a cage? Not normally keen on birds being confined, I was grateful this one had a stout abode. Every time I went near the thing, even to be kind enough to feed it, the beast would lunge at me in a frenzy of insane rage and attempt to peck my eyes out.

After four days, the bird began to sing Pop goes the weasel, over and over again. If it paused it was only to lull me into thinking that it had gone to sleep, or died and fallen off its perch, before taking up the refrain with renewed vigour just as I was ready to write.

And then the internet went down. I know – the solitary scribe should be grateful that he was denied such distractions – but that, combined with no phone reception, really pissed me off. I could no longer communicate with my clients, whinge to my wife, or goof off by checking on the news.

I was truly alone, suspended in limbo with a bunch of crazy animals. It was at least forty minutes to the nearest civilisation and that wasn’t up to much, but I began to construct solid arguments for going there. I would then debate the merits of taking a trip to see if anyone was left alive in the world against the importance of seeing the writing work through. It was then, as the most torrential rain I’ve ever seen began, that I realised there was every chance of going quietly mad.

It rained, and rained, and rained. The river threatened to burst its banks as the creek levels rose, cutting off roads. Yes, that bloody road; the one and only escape route to my café in Hicksville.

There was a real whiff of danger in the air. When I stepped outside the house, the mud-drenched dog now snapped viciously at my feet until, out of fear of rabies (and large teeth and mud all over my clean trousers), I threw the ball until the animal was far enough away to allow me to scuttle back inside. There I had to face the crazy cat, who took to swiping, claws extended, at any piece of my exposed flesh as I sidled by. And then the other cat, known as Medusa out of respect for her general crankiness, decided that one popping weasel that day was one too many and launched itself at the bird cage. At that point, the power failed and I screamed.

A couple of hours later, I lay in bed exhausted. It was dark, very dark, and, as I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, I wondered what else was in store for this intrepid writer. I must have conked out at some stage because I awoke suddenly with the sensation of something cold and very heavy on my exposed arm.

I kept very still, concerned that whatever it was may bite or sting if I upset it. My first thought was snake, but, please God, wasn’t it too small? Cockroach maybe, but it was too weighty. Spiders are known to be heavy, particularly the large mean fatal ones.

I was on my back with the thing on my right arm, which was stretched out towards the bedroom light. Slowly I reached out with my left arm, awkwardly crossing it over my body to reach the light. I was drenched in nervous sweat by this time, aware that some beasties sense fear and react somewhat antisocially. It took a good, heart thundering five minutes to get my fingers onto the light switch before I realised that the house may still be without power.

I squinted, desperate to see in the searing light, as the lamp thankfully came on. There before me, blinking, bemused, and rather beautiful as it squatted comfortably on my warm arm, was a large, green frog. We stared at each other for several seconds in happy coexistence before I was able to hop out of bed and return the animal to the wilds.

A couple of days later, having just driven back to Brisbane, I met my wife in one of our favourite cafés.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “You seem a little odd.”

Apparently I’d been staring into the mesmerising darkness of my long black coffee for some minutes.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “I was just thinking about that log cabin in Alaska.”

‘Ah,” she said, patting my hand.

And, believe me, the subject will never be mentioned again.