Challenge to Deb: write a likeable Tory. Think of the gushing reviews you'll get.

Challenge to Deb: write a likeable Tory.

Not sure the gushing reviews would be worth the repeated times I'd be struck by lightning, or the eternity in Hell I'd be sentenced to.

In fact, I nearly did - Albert Wychsale started out as a Tory, but he's essentially far too much of a humanist to toe the party line. So I settled for having him make shameless use of his position and power when the cause demands it.

And BTW, my editor, an 86-year-old leftist secular humanist, says Albert's her favourite character in this series, because he' so surprising, for who he is.

31 and holding... I thought I’d be Murphy Brown by now, asking the questions that make politicians cry. Now I e-mail the politicians, and ask the questions that make me cry. I thought by now I’d be a big novelist, but this month I finally stopped typing “my book” like that. I thought I’d be doing some foreign guy whose guts my dad would hate. Now the closest to sexual holding I get is my breath when I send out some smut. When I was eighteen, I held my breath until I didn’t live with Mom anymore. Now I hold my breath over her mammograms. I can’t hold a happy thought for as long as my righteous rage...which means I can’t hold back.

erika, that's absolutely fucking gorgeous.

Thanks. It's not often that a holding pattern comes in handy. And bonus, did not type "holding cell" once.

Holding Her World

Such a good baby, she thought. The white outfit was laid out, ready to be slid over his head and she did so. A diaper was pinned on and tiny socks slipped over his feet. She picked his head up gently and slipped the blue bonnet on, tying it loosely under his chin. So quiet and uncomplaining, he was a good baby, she whispered. Nestled in her arms, she carried him up to the front of the room. There she placed him in the tiny, velvet-lined white casket and thought what a small container, to be holding her whole world.

aw, man... wrenching.

Wow, Sail, that about killed me. Just heartbreakingly perfect.

I'm not quite sure where that one came from. My children are grown, now, so the nightmares of this kind of thing are long past. Still, it just wanted to come out. Fear can be, even decades later, a powerful motivator.

Sail, I remember sitting in a North London park with Jo, aged about two months, talking to a woman with a newborn son. Healthy little guy, chubby, smiling, very mellow.

She stopped coming to the park after a few weeks and I found out he'd had a stroke, and died, aged 6 weeks. She had high blood pressure, her whole family did, her husband did - they were all Lebanese, both sides of the family. Never thought to check the baby for it.

Both Sail's and erika's are amazing.