Inconceivable

by Ben Elton

  I suppose it’s just possible that I sounded rather schoolgirly. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. We shan’t be asked again anyway.

  On the way home Sam insisted that he wasn’t pissed, but he did his usual pissed thing of worrying about whether he’d put his foot in it to anyone. I said he might as well have put his foot into that woman’s cleavage because he’d done everything else but climb into it (which he denied, pathetically). Sam always comes home from parties worrying that he’s said something wrong or offended someone. It’s incredibly boring and, what’s more, it’s affected me. I never used to be like that at all. ‘Fuck ‘em,’ I used to say, but he’s so bad he’s got me doing it as well. Sometimes we come home from going out and spend the whole cab ride asking each other if we were embarrassing and reassuring each other that we weren’t. It’s sad.

  Anyway, he’d better not have been too pissed. He knows damn well what he’s got to do tomorrow morning.

  Dear etc.,

  I think it went all right tonight. Bit worried I might have said the wrong thing. I’ve been over it with Lucy and it seems all right. As far as I can recall I only spoke to the Director General twice. I said, ‘Good evening,’ at the beginning and later on I said, ‘Yes, I think things are fairly healthy in the arena of entertainment and comedy at the moment.’ I don’t think either of those comments could be misconstrued. Surely not? Unless he thought I was being sarky? But why would he think that? No, I’m quite sure I didn’t make any faux pas.

  Definitely.

  What’s more, I certainly didn’t spend the evening staring at that woman’s tits, as I’ve been unfairly accused of. I mean they were there, for God’s sake! In fact they seemed to be everywhere! I simply couldn’t avoid the things. I could hardly sit and look at the ceiling all evening, could I?

  Anyway. One thing is for absolutely sure. I am not pissed. I was very careful about that. Because, as I’m well aware, I have to provide a shag in the morning. What is more I intend to make it a cracker, because I really love Lucy. I really really do. Despite her paranoia about other women’s bosoms I absolutely love her.

  I just told her so and she said I was pissed, but I’m not. I just love her, I really do, I love her, I love her, I love her and tomorrow, before I go to work, I am going to make love to her so passionately and so beautifully that she will remember it always, because I love her.

  reeked

  Dear Penny,

  This morning I think I had the worst shag I have had in thirteen and a half years of moderately continuous lovemaking. I doubt that I shall ever forget it. Sam

  of stale booze and fags, plus I was still seething about him spending the whole evening staring down that enormous cleavage, which he continued to deny, of course.

  Anyway, we both knew we would have to go through with it. The postcoital examination had been booked for ten and you do not mess with a confirmed appointment on the NHS. I must say that from the moment we woke up it was clear that it was not much of a prospect for me, erotically speaking. Sam staggered back from a rather loud visit to the lavatory announcing that he had a headache but that it couldn’t be a hangover as he hadn’t been drunk. What’s more, we were a bit late already because, although Sam had set the alarm to give us an extra half-hour (it normally only takes us about fifteen minutes), somehow or other he’d managed not to push the button in so it hadn’t gone off.

  Anyway, I had just decided to ignore the beery, faggy fug that surrounded him and attempt a bit of foreplay when Sam said, ‘I’m afraid we’re really going to have to be quick, darling, because I’ve got a meeting.’

  Well, I screamed at him! ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ I said. ‘Trying to start a family when you’ve got a

  meeting! Perhaps if I phoned your secretary we could schedule our sex life into your diary. Just in pencil, of course. Wouldn’t want to be inflexible about it or put you under any pressure!’ Sarcastic, I know, but I was furious.

  Anyway then, of course, the inevitable happened and he couldn’t do it. His dick just completely disappeared. I told him to think about Ms ‘look at my gargantuanly fulsome funbags’ from the previous night but he got all angry and said that he didn’t wish to think about other women, but that bonking to order was not as bloody easy as it might appear.

  Well, to cut a short story even shorter he

  just about managed it. He wasn’t at all sure that he’d produced enough for the test but Dr Cooper had assured me that it doesn’t take much, so I thought that it would be all right. Actually I felt a bit sorry for him. I could see he felt he’d let me down a bit so I said he wasn’t to worry because it wasn’t his fault that he had a small and unreliable penis.

  I really did mean it nicely but it just seemed to put him in an even worse mood.

  So, Sam got dressed and went to his meeting, and I went off to the clinic. Obviously worried about all the stuff falling out on the way. Horrible thought. It had been such a gruesome effort mingling our juices in the first place that I didn’t want to have to go through the whole ghastly palaver of a pre-postcoital examination bonk again, if that makes sense.

  So there I was, hobbling to the car and trying not to cough. Once in the car it was worse. Driving yourself in these circumstances is a mistake unless you have an automatic. It is simply not possible to change gear with your legs crossed, and trying to do the whole journey in third makes things very juddery when you pull away at the lights, which of course shakes things down even more.

  Then when I got to the clinic the road was blocked by a car with its hazard lights on.

  I hate hazard lights.

  They should be bloody well banned. People think that if they have them on then everything is all right. They can do exactly as they please. Park in the middle of the road, reverse up motorways, drive through crowded supermarkets, invade Poland. ‘It’s all right,’ said Hitler’s panzer commanders, ‘we’ve got our hazard lights on.’ I mean I ask you!!! I’m confident that the day is not far off when the burly and tattooed drivers of getaway cars will claim as a plea in mitigation that as they speeded away from some robbed bank or hijacked security van they had their hazards on!

  So of course I had to reverse back up the street (with people reversing behind me, and making V-signs as if it was my fault). By a miracle I managed to park in a space exactly the same size as my car. I don’t know how I did it. Extraordinary achievement and it only took seventy-two manoeuvres, which isn’t easy when you’re trying not to judder your insides. Thank God for power steering!

  Anyway, out I got and hobbled back along the street to the clinic, still trying to keep my knees together, past the car with its hazards on. I’m afraid to say that I gave way to anger and snarled at the bloke at the wheel, shouting, ‘You’re blocking the road, you fool!’ which was rather stating the obvious. Then of course I felt all guilty because perhaps he was waiting to pick up a disabled person. On the other hand, there was no yellow sticker, but even so it never helps to be aggressive.

  So, feeling all hot and bothered I announced myself at the reception desk. Most embarrassing.

  ‘Hello. I’ve come to see if my vagina poisons my husband’s sperm.’

  I didn’t actually say that but the receptionist knew anyway. She smiled wearily and told me to take a seat. There were two or three other women waiting as well and I must say it felt very strange and slightly creepy knowing that we’d all been shagged within the previous hour or two and that we were all desperately trying to hang on to the dollop within.

  As it happens, the clinic was very good and got through us quite quickly. I only had time to get halfway through a fascinating article in Woman’s Own about Prince Andrew’s exciting engagement to his new fiancee Sarah Ferguson, who is known to her friends as Fergie. I must say medical waiting rooms are incredibly nostalgic places. They are the only places where you can pretend that the Princess of Wales is still alive. I got quite sad all over again just thinking about that dreadful Sunday when she died.

  So anyway, then
it was into the torture chamber and all the usual appalling cervical intrusions, legs up in the stirrups, fanny prised apart, invaded and inspected. ‘Ah, well,’ I thought, ‘another day, another duck-billed battering ram shoved up my poked, prodded and provoked privates.’ There was a student there as well, having a good old stare.

  I hate that!

  I absolutely loathe it. I mean I know they have to learn and all that but I really can do without spotty teenagers wanting to mess around between my legs. It reminded me of being back at school.

  Anyway, what with one thing and another I was in a foul mood as they slapped on the freezing cold lubrication and the doctor shoved up his horrid contraption, cold again, of course, and began scraping out my cervix. And what did he say? Well, of course, he said what they always say.

  ‘Do try to relax.’

  Oh well, of course. A perfect stranger is sticking bits of cold, greasy metal up your vagina, staring deep within, tutting in a worried manner and then asking an adolescent boy what he thinks of it, but do try to relax.

  I always want to say, ‘Sit on a traffic cone, mate, and you try to relax,’ which would be brilliant and utterly unanswerable, but of course I never do.

  Well, anyway, it turns out that Sam had not disgraced himself. There was enough of the stuff up me for the test and to my surprise I got the result immediately. Normally these things take ages to come through but amazingly the doctor whipped his spatula out of me, slapped the smear under the microscope and gave me the result there and then. Satisfactory, he said. Everything had turned out fine. Except, that is, for the fact that when he extracted the metal duck it made a disgusting loud wet raspberry noise, which was excruciatingly embarrassing. It’s all that jelly they use and he used far too much. Every time I braked on the way home I slid off the car seat.

  Anyway, as I say, long story short (EastEnders is nearly starting and the new barmaid is considering turning to prostitution to support her child. Juicy, or what?), the news is good. Sam and I are definitely chemically compatible. My juices do not reject his seed (although he’s been such a pig lately I would not blame them if they did!). I am of course very pleased about this because despite his being a pig I do love him and I had been dreading having to pop round to our gay friends with a turkey baster and asking them to fill it full of sperm.

  So there we are. It seems that compatibility is not the problem. Nor is my ovulation and nor is the motility of his sperm.

  And yet we are still not preg! Why? WHY? Bloody why?

  It is completely baffling and most distressing. What’s more, we’re running out of options. I fear a laparoscopy looms. Oh, shit. The very thought of a doctor inserting a television camera into my bellybutton makes my knees wobble! I’m not good with bellybuttons at the best of times; they make me go funny. I won’t even let Sam kiss mine (not that he’s offered to in years) and now I must face the prospect of a CNN news team clambering through it and sending back live bulletins from my ovaries.

  I can scarcely believe I’m going to write this but I’m beginning to seriously think about Drusilla’s theory re: ley lines and Primrose Hill. She does seem very certain of her facts. Shagging in Highgate is less conducive to connecting with the ancient forces of rejuvenation and fertility than shagging on Primrose Hill. I know that Drusilla is a witch but she’s a good witch, which is a very different thing from the wicked variety.

  Dear etc.,

  Well, this morning was a pressure job all right, our postcoital compatibility test. Doctor’s orders. Shag and then straight round to the clinic to check the juices. Not much fun for the woman certainly but let me tell you it’s a horrible situation for the bloke who is called upon to provide the wherewithal. I mean it’s not ideal, is it? Sex on demand is tricky enough at the best of times, but in the morning, particularly after a big night at the Director General’s, it’s a very tough call indeed. The truth is we haven’t done it on a weekday morning in years, well you don’t, do you?

  We’re not bloody students, are we?

  Besides which, the whole problem was compounded by the fact that we slept through the alarm, dammit, and I happened to have a particularly early and rather important meeting.

  Lucy says, ‘When don’t you have a meeting?’ But actually that’s not true. I am, in fact, often there at her beck and call. The point is when I am available to her she’s not interested. She’s only interested in presuming on my time when she knows I have other things to do.

  So, what with the hangover (which I think I managed to disguise from Lucy), the earliness of the hour, and the impending meeting, instant and impressive erections were not massively in evidence.

  Lucy tried to be nice about it but quite frankly she didn’t try very hard. I don’t think women have any idea how difficult it can be.

  They think that because most men seem to have erections pretty much all the time we can summon them up at will. They do not understand that when it comes to dicks, the captain is not in control of the ship.

  Lucy said, ‘I cannot believe this! Every morning you have a horn you could hang a bath-towel on. What’s the problem now?’

  She simply doesn’t understand. I admit, of course, that on almost every other morning of my life I have woken up with an erection but that, and this is the point, is because I didn’t need one.

  It really is unfair. Any bloke can get a stiffy when he doesn’t need one, and of course he almost always does. On buses; in the checkout queue at Sainsbury’s; anywhere, really. But what women do not understand is that these unasked-for horns are normally not bonking horns but useless, sexless, pointless, unlooked-for protrusions.

  Anyway the point I’m making is that the dick has a mind of its own, considering itself entirely autonomous and impervious to orders from the bridge. This is something that women need to understand, something that they should be told by their mothers at an early age. The fact is simply this: trying to tell a knob what to do is the very last thing it will appreciate or respond to.

  I’m going on a bit, I know, but the injustice of the situation moves me deeply. Anyway, we pulled it off in the end, so to speak, but it was a very, very close-run thing.

  I did, however, manage to make my meeting, which I was pleased about because it was a special one, concerning as it did Nigel’s major new film-making initiative, an area in which considering my current standing with the Controller I cannot afford to screw up. Actually, I was rather excited about it. After all, film is film and we humble telly people do not normally get to dabble in so exalted a medium.

  It was to be a ‘breakfast’ meeting at a posh hotel, I’m sorry to say. Whichever American it was who invented such a deeply uncivilized idea should have his eggs boiled, his muffins split and his pop-tarts toasted on an open fire. You can’t make sense of a meeting over brekkie! How the hell are you supposed to take anything seriously when you’re eating Rice Krispies? Or, worse, Coco Pops, which was what I had.

  I can never resist the kids’ stuff when I eat in hotels. I always want to order sausage, chips and alphabetti spaghetti from ‘Sidney the Seal’s Jolly Menu for Whizz Kidz’. Well, let’s face it, that sort of stuff is normally the only thing that British hotels can actually cook. If you’re fool enough to order anything ‘steeped’ in a sauce or containing the words ‘jus’, ‘julienne’ or ‘trio’ you might as well diary in half an hour in the bog for the afternoon while you’re at it.

  In fact this was Claridge’s, so all the posh nosh was probably superb and I could have ordered porridge or salmon or the full English but I’ve never been big on breakfast, and the smell of kippers and kedgeree before eleven quite frankly makes me nauseous. Fish for breakfast has always struck me as wrong, like having a croissant for supper or coffee in a pub. Apparently, however, fishie brekkie is the last word in traditional crusty, old English chic (‘chic’ I believe being the traditional spelling of ‘shite’), so Claridge’s of course offers it. Not for me, though, nor salmon and scrambled egg on a lightly toasted muffin. Let’s face it,
how often in my life do I get the chance to have a bowl of Coco Pops?

  Anyway, to ‘cut to the chase’, as people in film say, I was meeting some people from Above The Line Films.

  I do beg your pardon, I was meeting with some people from Above The Line Films. One must of course speak American English when moving in film circles these days (sorry, motion picture circles) and since those circles are the ones in which my Controller wishes me to move, American English I must speak when I meet with all sorts of motion picture wankers, or, rather, jerk offs.

  The people from Above The Line are very hip at the moment, the reason being that they recently made a film that some Americans quite liked. It’s an interesting thing about the Brit film industry (such as it is) that for all the gung-ho, Cool Britannia jingoism we spout about our cool new British talent, we judge our product exclusively on whether or not people in America go to see it. You could make a British film which every person in Britain went to see twice, plus half the population of the European Community, but unless at least five thousand Americans have also been persuaded to go the style fascists will judge it naff and parochial.

  On the other hand, if we make a movie which flops everywhere and which only five thousand Americans go and see, the director will still be seen as a major burgeoning international talent. This is what the Australians call a cultural cringe. They used to have the same thing about us. In the sixties it was no good being big in Oz, you had to be big in Britain. They’ve dropped that now and concentrate on America like everyone else. I believe that some New Zealanders still see success in London as important but probably only the ones who supply the lamb to Marks & Spencer.