Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  Why is this? I simply cannot fathom it. These are empty socks we’re talking about here, socks with no baby in them. How can women go gooey over a pair of socks? I find Winona Ryder attractive (as I think I’ve said), but I wouldn’t go all gooey over her socks…Well, possibly…I don’t know. Anyway, what I’m saying is that the sight of a group of girls picking up a tiny jacket or a little hat and going ‘Aaaaah’ is a mystery to me.

  It’s the same with dolls. Lucy likes dolls. She’s a woman of thirty- one and she loves them. Of course, because she’s a grown-up she has to pretend that there’s some kind of pseudo-artistic attraction, it’s old dolls she likes, interesting ones. She goes on about the porcelain head with the stamp of the German maker on it. But I know that she just loves dolls and that if she thought she could get away with it without looking sad she’d buy a Barbie.

  Better stop. Got to read a script tonight, a comic play which has developed out of a new writing workshop we’ve been running at the Beeb. The author has already had a one-act piece put on at the Royal Court or some other gruesome up-its-own-arse, over- subsidized London centre of theatrical wankdom. Lucy tells me we actually saw it but I can’t remember it for the life of me. The new play is called Fucking and Fucking. I told him that we’d have to change the title and he looked at me as if I was some kind of fascist. It’s so depressing. It seems only yesterday that I was considered a hip and dangerous young producer because I commissioned sketches about tampons. Now I’m a Nazi for telling young writers they can’t use the word ‘fuck’ in their titles. Of course at the Royal Court they positively insist on having rude words in their titles and anal sex by the end of scene one.

  I can’t believe how quickly I’m turning into a sad, reactionary old git.

  Dear Penny,

  I’m not putting it off any longer, Penny. I’ve made an appointment to go and talk to my doctor. Five years and a month (soon no doubt to be five years and two months) is too long for it to be bad luck. There is obviously something wrong and quite frankly it will be a relief to know the truth. Anyway, it seems to me that the best way to get pregnant is to go and start the process of some sort of fertility treatment. At least it is according to the seventeen million old-wives’ tales and urban myths I’ve been told over the last couple of years. You hear constantly of people who know people who had decided to start IVF only to get pregnant by conventional means on their way to the first appointment! There are also any number of stories of couples who failed at IVF but then immediately got pregnant by conventional means or by sitting on wet grass or something. Add to this the numerous people who have a cousin who signed up to adopt and then immediately fell pregnant, plus of course the tales of people who got pregnant in the five-mile-high club on the way back from trying to get a Bosnian Baby. All in all I have come to the conclusion that the only absolutely sure way to get pregnant is to be pronounced infertile.

  Carl Phipps, our new star, came in to the office again today to drop off his current ten-by-eight. He’s already had an offer of a film and he’s only been with us a few days! I’m afraid this has made him rather grand. We call his type Uhoaas which stands for ‘Up his own arse actor’.

  Dear etc,

  Depressed. Very depressed. I met the new BBC1 Controller today. He’s younger than me! This is the first time this has happened. I mean me being older than one of my bosses. I don’t like it at all. He’s a whizzkid from Granada. I think he made some documentary proving that the Conservative Party is funded by a gang of Middle Eastern prostitutes, so obviously that qualifies him to schedule the entertainment of a nation. Looking at him, I suddenly felt the icy hand of mortality upon my shoulder. I’m thirty-eight, I’ll be forty in two years.

  I thought about going for a run. I didn’t go, but I thought about it.

  I feel very sorry for poor old Lucy at the moment. Not only has she got all this fertility business on her mind, but now it sounds like she’s got a real idiot to look after at work. That new actor, Phipps guy, can’t remember his first name, Cunt or something, although I doubt that could be it. He sounds like a right pain. She went on about him a bit over dinner, so I could tell he’s got right under her skin. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.

  Dear Penny,

  I’m going to see Dr Cooper today. I feel better now that I’m finally acknowledging that there actually probably is a problem and that I’m beginning the process of dealing with it. All the girls plus my mum and Sam’s mum continue to assure me that five years and one month (nearly five years and two months) is not that long to be trying. I continue to be bombarded with the same old drivel about various women who tried continually and energetically for seven years and then bang! out popped triplets. I do wish people wouldn’t all say the SAME BOLLOCKS to me

  the time. They might at least vary it slightly. There seem to be more urban myths attached to infertility than there are to famous film stars filling their bottoms with small animals. It will be so good to get an informed opinion rather than all this anecdotal hearsay.

  Just got back from Dr Cooper’s. He says that five years or so is not actually that long to be trying and that he knows any number of women who tried for seven years and then had twelve apiece. I feel a huge gin and tonic calling.

  Dr Cooper has, however, offered to do a blood test to check my hormone levels and a sperm test for Sam. I told Sam about it this afternoon and he took it very well. I thought it might bother him a bit men are so funny about their manhood and anything remotely associated with their willies but he was great and said it was simply not a problem and did not bother him in the slightest.

  FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!,

  I’ve got diluted sperm. I know it. My sack is empty! My balls undone! Can’t write any more tonight.

  Dear Pen Pal,

  The blood test is all set up for next Tuesday. Apparently this will ascertain if I’m ovulating or not. My God, I shall be

  annoyed if I’m not. Ten years of condoms, caps, coils and abstinence followed by five years of thermometers, counting days and weeing on traffic lights would all be completely wasted.

  Drusilla is horrified at the prospect of me having a blood test. She thinks that modern medicine is totally intrusive (and I suppose wandering about naked at Stonehenge isn’t intrusive). She thinks I should employ visualization therapy, which apparently consists of breathing, relaxing (surprise, surprise) and visualizing. She wants me to visualize a baby inside me, in my stomach, in my arms, in my very soul, a complete and perfect part of me. I said, ‘Drusilla darling, that’s all I ever bloody do,’ and she said that was the problem. I’m obsessive, I need to visualize mystically rather than desperately, I need to allow myself the freedom to dream. Sounds like absolute bollocks to me.

  I’ve booked a class for tomorrow night.

  Sheila has suggested that I drink more heavily and take up smoking. This is because the only two times she’s ever got pregnant (Joanna and I were amazed, we had no idea she ever had been) were after colossal binges. It happened in her wild youth and resulted in abortions as she had no idea who the fathers were. I told her I’ve had many a drunken shag in my time and sadly the booze method does not work for me.

  Sam seems to be going a bit funny over the prospect of his sperm test.

  Dear Self,

  Heard an interesting fact about sperm today. Not that sperm is on my mind or anything but the subject came up in a taxi, as it will from time to time. Sperm counts, it seems, are generally down in the Western world. Seriously down, in fact, twenty-five per cent since before the war, or maybe fifty, the cab driver couldn’t remember the exact figure. It seems that for whatever reason, be it additives in the food, pollution, radiation from our mobile phones, or the gunk at the bottom of Pot Noodles, we modern men are considerably less flush in the sperm department than our grandfathers were. Isn’t that strange? I mean modern society’s attitude to old people is basically one of contempt. We don’t want to look like them and they cost too much to run. Most people think of o
ld-age pensioners as being embarrassing wrinkly sad acts, terminally unhip.

  ‘Poor old Grandad,’ we think.

  ‘Look at him, sitting in the corner dribbling and sucking his gums, always wanting to watch a different television channel from the rest of the family.’

  Now it turns out the man’s got bigger bollocks than all of his patronizing male descendants put together! Spunk is a diminishing commodity. George Formby had more than Tom Jones, who in turn has more than Liam Gallagher. Amazing. Dixie Dean had more capacious testicles than George Best, who had bigger ones than Gazza. Actually, thinking about it, that’s probably why old-time footballers used to wear those huge shorts, it was clearly to fit their bollocks in. In fact it’s probably why when you watch an old pre-war game on film it always looks so slow and uninspired. It was probably as much as the poor bastards could do to drag their enormous scrotums up and down the pitch.

  Recently I’ve been feeling slightly old, which is ridiculous at thirty- eight. Except is it? I mean of course I can realistically say that I may not even have lived half of my life yet, but come on, my sixties and seventies are hardly comparable to my twenties and thirties, are they? I mean I may have as many years left, but will there be as much life in them? No bloody way. I already get buggered knees if I play too much tennis.

  I don’t like thinking this way. In fact, I don’t really like thinking at all. I’m not really an introspective sort of person. It’s writing these stupid bloody letters that’s making me all self-conscious.

  Perhaps I should cut down on the booze a bit. I’ll have a drink and think about it.

  Dear Penny,

  I’m afraid Drusilla’s visualization class was a complete and utter washout. Why is it that anything interesting and different always has to be championed by the most unprepossessing people? Honestly, I’m trying to be nice here, but the types at this class made Drusilla (who is madder than the Green Room at the National Theatre) look positively sane.

  I arrived at the Community Centre and a large woman with more hair (hennaed) than an old English sheepdog and breasts like Space Hoppers asked me if I wished to purchase some washable hessian sanitary napkins! I mean I ask you, Penny! Ugh, or what?! I’m happy to recycle glass, collect newspapers and rinse out tin cans but I do draw the line at recycling sanitary pads. If that is to be the price of saving the world then I fear that the world must die. And hessian? It would itch, I mean, wouldn’t it? Surely? These hippy birds must have fannies like tanned leather.

  I nearly turned around and ran for it there and then, but I’d made the effort so I decided that I’d better give it a go. There’s no point being snobbish about these things, after all. Well, first off there was a ‘greeting session’. This involved us all sitting in a big circle and chucking a beanbag at each other and whenever you caught it you had to say your name. A simple enough exercise, one might have thought, but it was astonishing how difficult some of them found keeping the rhythm. I doubt if any of them had ever been on a Girl Guide camp.

  Anyway, after that the leading lady (who was American) took

  on what is called a ‘guided fantasy’ which was quite relaxing really when you let yourself go. You have to imagine a cool forest and a path by a stream and things like that, damp mist, a green canopy above, you know the sort of thing. An infinity of calm. I rather enjoyed this bit and nearly nodded off, which was nice because I feel absolutely buggered at the moment. Of course if Sam had been there he would have made some smart Alec comment and ruined it, but if you don’t try to be clever some of these alternative things can be quite good.

  Anyway, once she’d got us feeling all sort of ‘drifty’, the American lady told us to try and visualize an imaginary baby being welcomed into our wombs. Well, I’m afraid that was where I lost it. All the relaxation disappeared and was replaced by anger and frustration. My cool forest suddenly turned into London as of now. I tried to get it back but I opened my eyes and looked round the circle at all these other sad, silly women, who were just like me (except I occasionally get my hair done), and I hated them. And I hated myself for being one of them.

  Afterwards I told the American lady that I really didn’t think that this was the right approach for me. I told her that I spend most of my time trying not to think about babies because when I do I upset myself. She said that she understood but that I have to allow myself to want, to dream and if necessary to grieve over my current lack of baby. She said that I was fighting my body, resenting it, seeing it as the enemy of all my hopes and that this self-created tension might in fact be getting in the way of conception. Actually, it did sort of make sense and I ended up rather liking the woman, but I still shan’t go again. I just get too frustrated. I keep screaming inside, why the hell should I have to

  imagine a baby? Why can’t I just have one! Far less nice people than me have lots, and it’s just not fair. I know that’s a wicked thing to say but I know I’d be a much better mum than half the women I see letting their children put sweets in the trolley at Sainsbury’s. And as for these people one sees on the news who seem to have children for the sole reason that they might go on to terrorize entire housing estates and become one-boy crime-waves. Well, the injustice is almost too much to bear. I’d read my child Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh and the only glue it would ever get involved with would be flour and water for making collages.

  When I got home I found there’d been a letter in the second post. It was from Melinda sending me photos of when we were round at her and George’s place with new baby Cuthbert. I’m holding him and he looks so sweet and it looks like he’s mine. I look like a mother with a child and I’m not. I nearly cried but I remembered my resolution not to be obsessive so I had half a bottle of red wine instead.

  Sam’s sperm test is looming. I had originally thought that he was taking it well but now he does seem to be dwelling on it rather.

  Dear Self,

  I had lunch with Trevor and George from work today and was determined to touch on the subject of sperm. Pick their brains, so to speak. I mean George ought to know something. He produced Cuthbert and I wouldn’t like to meet the sperm that fathered him. Trevor’s gay so God knows he should have some opinions on the subject, having encountered the stuff face to face, so to speak. All in all I had been looking forward to airing my fears re my upcoming (if that isn’t too loaded a phrase) sperm test.

  I didn’t get the chance, of course. We talked shop. We always do.

  It’s a funny thing about this biz we call show: whenever people involved in it get together they can talk about nothing else. I’m as bad as anyone. I believe that in the army they have a rule in the officers’ mess of no talking shop over dinner. It sounds like a great idea but it wouldn’t work for us, we’d just sink into an awkward silence. Telling people in showbusiness not to talk about showbusiness would be like telling the Pope to lay off the religious stuff.

  We were lunching in Soho at a posh place called Quark. All restaurants in Soho are posh these days. Those nice, rough and ready little Italian diners are just a distant memory. I’d already made an arse of myself, of course. I arrived first and the waitress (wearing a skirt that was little more than a big belt, why do these girls torment us so?) immediately put this plate of prawny things down in front of me. I said they must be someone else’s because I hadn’t ordered anything yet. Well, she actually laughed at me!

  Amazing, she laughed and said they were ‘for the table’, a complimentary pre-appetizer appetizer. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you won’t be charged for them,’ like I was some sad tourist way out of his depth and worrying about his budget. God, I felt every type of turd. My own fault, of course. Silly mistake. Particularly for a professional eater of the sacred meal called lunch like myself. I tried to recoup by cracking a little joke. I asked her for a biro so that I could write ‘Prat’ on my forehead and, get this, she fucking gave me one.

  Amazing! It’s this worship of all things American, I fear. They have rude, smart Alec staff in New Yo
rk so we poor Brits who no longer have personalities of our own must do likewise. The thing is that it works in America. Brittle, wisecracking chutzpah is part of New York culture. It’s happening, it’s buzzing. When we do it it just comes across as surly. Manners are now seen as totally out of date, a shameful hangover from our class-ridden pre- meritocracy past. There’s a terrible modern orthodoxy that has developed which says that to be polite and show respect to other people is in fact to diminish your own status. Therefore people assert themselves by being rude. I think it’s sad.

  Anyway after the prawny things disaster the half-naked waitress gave me the wine list. Well, I couldn’t face a wine list, not after the prawny mauling I’d just taken. I’d probably have ordered a dessert wine to start and been tarred and feathered and thrown out for being uncool. So I said I’d just have a mineral water and she gave me the mineral water list! I mean, for God’s sake! An actual leatherbound water list! I’ve never seen that before. The world is now officially raving tonto.

  Anyway, as I was saying, I’d been hoping to draw the others out on sperm, but before I could even bring the subject up (which takes delicate handling in itself) we got into this terrible row about our job descriptions, amazing but true. It all came up because Trevor was talking about some script or other that he wanted to commission and he said…

  ‘I don’t want to throw my weight around here, but as the BBC Head of Comedy, Television Group South, I feel that…’

  Well, he didn’t get any further because George and I both protested that we were the BBC Head of Comedy, Television Group South. I knew that George wasn’t because I knew for a fact that he was Chief Coordinator, BBC Entertainment Group, Television. I’d seen it on an invitation to a party. I also knew that he was angling for the post of Network Regional Channel Controller because I’d read it in the Independent only the previous morning. George insisted that he didn’t care what it said on his invites, or what I’d read in the Independent, that he was BBC Head of Comedy, Television Group South.