The symptoms of synopsis

NEWS - Dark Water published 5 August 2010

EVENTS -

Bristol Crimefest 20 -23 May 2010

Millport Library - 3 June 2010

Harrogate Crimefest - 22 - 25 July 2010

I think the government should put a health warning on the word 'synopsis'. It should be considered a stress related illness and the request for 'synopsis' (or whatever the plural is .... answers on a postcard please, I've asked people with an awful lot of grey matter and they can't agree!!) should be accompanied by prozac and chocolate to deal with the sense of hopelessness and isolation it entails. I remember well having difficulty understanding the T lymphocyte response and it was only when the lecturer said ... think of B lymphocytes as hand to hand combat (Stewart Granger coming down the stairs buckling his swash immediately entered my mind) and the T's as the Indian scouts coming back to base with reports that Big John Wayne and a Hollywood camera crew are about to descend ...so they need to get reinforcements!! This analogy was then taken up by the TB immune response; the cowboys all in a circle and the Indians going round and round... stalemate. And that I understood. I could see it all in my mind, Bernard McLaverty who I so adore, said good writers always see it in their mind, like a film or like reality ... (gives rise to the adage that if you can't see it, you shouldn't film it. We don't really want to know in the last line that the narrator is a cat, or sofa, or the back shock absorber of a Toyota Corolla) the visual aspect of the film would give it away ... instantly.

But the synopsis is dry, methodical, precise and rather grown up and well behaved. There's a Percy Perfect Prefect thing going on about the synopsis and I think you should be able to present synopsis in a variety of ways ... music, song, dance, french mime, finger puppets .... Can you tell it did not go well???

Meanwhile I seem to be a celebrity endorser for a local candidate for the election. I confessed at the time I knew nothing about politics (in fact politicans are probably the precise people that are good on synopsis and therefore not to be trusted). But this candidate is a good friend, and decent human being and on these grounds alone I think he'd be a good egg in parliament ... somebody who is honest, has a nice wife, a very well behaved, polite child and a cute dog. He has job worries and money worries just like the rest of us and lives a very normal life. So I am keeping my fingers crossed for him.

I can reveal exclusively that Gordon Brown was boogying on down at the Showaddywaddy concert in Glasgow recently, shame it was a Gordon Brown and not THAT Gordon Brown ... but somehow I find the latter image rather pleasing.

On pain of death and getting my fingernails pulled out by my editor, I am going back to my synopsis, might just have a look at how that volcano is doing ...

Or maybe walk the dog again

Or make a cup of tea

Or start my sitcom...

Or do my procurator fiscal essay!!

Caro