Bedtime Story

This time of year, when it gets dark before it gets light, when the Cornish rain fizzles in the street lights and soaks you through before it even touches you, when all the visitors have gone home and only the locals are left behind, this one night of the year we lock our doors and close our curtains and wait for the dawn that one of us will not live to see.

For on the night of Halloween, every year he comes and takes one of our kind with him to that place from which no one but he returns.

On a high tide when the wind moans and rocks the boats tied up in the harbour, and flecks the black water white under a full moon, he emerges from the sea on the final stroke of twelve. The steps he climbs from the harbour to the Wharf have been no more than a memory for two hundred years. He is tall and stooped under the weight of the water that streams from his salt-caked oilskins and the long boat hook he carries over this shoulder. Wrapped around his body and trailing behind him as he begins his terrible walk is the tangle of netting they say dragged him to his death.

He walks with slow, heavy steps, the water pouring from his laden seaboots. The few who have seen him have described a discoloured face bloated by the sea, the eye sockets empty holes beneath a mildewed seaman's cap, the lower jaw and lips completely gone. No one knows what this sightless face searches for, as he makes his slow deliberate way up one of the steep, narrow streets that lead up from the harbour. Those who lie awake in terror behind locked doors for his passing hear the scrape of his boots, the tapping of his boathook on the cobbles and the heavy, rotting net dragging behind him.

A couple of years ago the old woman who lived next door to us was found dead in her bed the morning after Halloween. They say that when they went into the house the carpets downstairs were soaked, and there was a trail of water all the way up the stairs and across the bare floorboards of her bedroom. The room was filled with the stench of rotting fish and mildew, and her bedclothes were stiff and white with salt and seawater. The old woman lay in bed, her grey hair wet and matted across her face, her mouth wide open in a soundless scream. Her papery hands were held up in front of her as if clawing at the air. And you know what, says my dad, who swears he was one of the men who found her, her face and neck were covered in criss cross marks as if she'd been caught in a fishing net.

What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week

First day of October half term, town's heaving as usual with emmets despite the fact that it's been raining all day. Here is my guide to What to Do in St Ives on a Pissy Wet October Half Term Week.

1. Wear shorts just like it was the summer - you're on holiday after all!
2. Don't forget the crocs, ideal for walking the slippery wet granite pavements.
3. Of course you can go crabbing in October.
4. Dogs are allowed on the beaches now, but make sure when they shit you cover it up, especially if there are surfers on the beach who are likely to stand in it.
5. Don't miss the Damien Hirst pickled unicorn at the Tate, and ask about their free admission to people wearing wetsuits
6. There's nothing incongruous about drinking hot chocolate whilst sitting out on the terrace of the Porthmeor beach cafe in a Hawaiian shirt.
7. Why not light a driftwood fire on the beach to keep yourself warm?
8. Is John Dory in season? Well, you could ask.
9. Visit one of St Ives' two specialist chocolate shops and ask Why?
10. Remember, Fore Street is now open to traffic from both directions.
11. Why not have your own Soggy the Bear bonfire?

Hayle is other people

Just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, this morning I found myself gazing across the Sargasso Sea of drifting humanity that is the Hayle Car Boot Sale. A car boot sale is where the dispossessed, repossessed and terminally sad go to trade rubbish between each other. Imagine a refugee camp stripped of its shanties and basic amenities like toilets, and replaced by transit vans and N-registered estate cars with open tailgates surrounded by wallpapering tables, and you have some idea. Basically it makes the market in Eastenders look as exotic as a souk. Compared to the average stallholder at Hayle Car Boot Sale, Stacy Branning, no, even Stacey Branning's daft mum looks as unapproachably glamorous as the perfume counter lady at Leddra's. The more enterprising stallholders rig up improvised rails, from which secondhand clothes hang dejectedly, like scarecrows round-shouldered with poverty. A lot of them just spread out out the flotsam and jetsam of their impoverished lives on candlewick bedspreads laid on the muddy grass. The customers who drift dead eyed between the stalls are straight from the mad, bad and dangerous to know catalogue of whatever casting agency has offices in Krakow and Tallin as well as Camborne. My mum and dad dragged me along because among other things they were selling my old clothes, fake surfing brand T shirts with embarrassing slogans on the front that I would never wear. Mum said that if people saw me there they'd be more likely to buy my old stuff than if it was just her. Some of them spent ages fingering everything on the rail and holding it up against their kids to check the size, and then they'd hold up two or three things and ask mum the prices, and then spend ages deciding which of them to buy, and finally haggle over the price of just one thing. Dad was getting really annoyed, you could see that, like first he was watching really suspiciously in case they were nicking stuff, and then he'd say things like do you want that then or not? and then he insisted with one woman on 50p for a hoodie that said I Surf Overhead on the front, when she wanted to pay 30p, so she walked off without buying anything after wasting at least twenty minutes deciding what she wanted. In the end dad got bored and went off, and to be honest we did a lot better after that, although I did get spotted by a couple of girls from school who no doubt would have spent most of next week ripping the piss out of me if it wasn't half term. Anyway, after about four hours, we'd made £24.60, minus the £6 it had cost us to get in, so that was £18.60 profit.

Dad turned up again just as we were packing up the car. He'd got a carrier bag and a slightly sly look on his face. Look what I got, he said, proper bargain these were. He'd only gone and bought a pair of secondhand binoculars and a boxed set of Wycliffe videos. Videos, not even DVDs. How much did you pay for those? mum asked him. £5 for the binoculars and £18 for the videos, he said. The bloke wanted £20 for them but I bargained him down.

The Many Heads of God or whoever

Great. The GUESTS who were in my room for the last two days (two old people at that) have gone off this morning and when I went in to check everything was OK I discovered that one of them had broken the head off my laughing buddha. When I asked my mum she said she didn't know what I was talking about, and no they hadn't said anything to her about it.

I had got very fond of my laughing buddha. Since I bought him we'd gone through a lot together, what with the whole Trev thing and so on. I could talk to him like I couldn't talk to my mum or dad. I've searched all over my room but there's no sign of his head either, so I can't even try to stick it back on with UHU.

Without a head, a laughing buddha loses his identity. Whatever he was before, without his head he's just a headless fat bloke. Where he was friendly, and I felt safe talking to him, now he's gross and well, a bit pervy to be honest, what with his man boobs hanging out and everything.

So what I've done is cut the head off of an old Action Man and I've glued that on instead. It's just about the right size, so doesn't look too bad, except obviously it's not a laughing buddha anymore as Action Man's face is a bit scowly and he's got this big scar on his cheek and he isn't bald like buddha either. I'm going to spray him gold all over so that at least his body and his head are the same colour.

Will that turn him back into buddha? That got me thinking, because obviously buddha didn't laugh all the time, so just the fact that he isn't laughing any more shouldn't be a problem. In some ways I think I'll prefer confiding in a buddha with a bit more gravitas than one who looked as if he was pissing himself at my worst fears. Or will he just look like an Action Man who's let himself go a bit, paralysed by drink, self-doubt and post traumatic stress?

When I think back, I remember it was a toss up between buying the laughing buddha and a little Ganesh, who I liked because he's got an elephant's head and a name that reminds me of Dennis the Menance's dog. I'm glad I got the buddha now, because if the Ganesh had got his head broken off, I think it would have been a lot harder to replace. If the worst comes to the worst with buddha once I've sprayed him gold, I can always turn him into a Christmas decoration.

Suspended animation

You may have noticed I haven't posted any blogs this week. Well the reason for this is that on Tuesday BT suspended our broadband service because my dad hadn't paid the bill. I knew times were hard, but not that hard.

Anyway it turns out that my dad HAD paid the bill, except instead of writing £194.92 on the cheque he'd written £174.92, so it was £20 short. For this they had suspended our broadband service. When I left for school yesterday morning he'd just started trying to explain this to somebody in India on the phone, which is apparently where most people who work for BT now live. When I got back at half three he was still on the phone, having by then driven himself mental by talking to half the population of India. He'd paid the £20, but it was going to take them four hours to reconnect our broadband. He said this wasn't good enough, and asked to speak to somebody who could do something about it, who told him it would take eight hours. The next person told him it would take 24 hours, and by the time I got home (roughly five hours after he'd started) the man he was speaking to was saying it would be 48 hours, but if he could do it over the internet it could be done straight away. My dad pointed out that if your broadband's been cut off you can't use the internet to get it reconnected. The man said he was 'customer facing' not 'service facing' so it was the best he could do. If he could do any better he reassured my dad that he would, and in my dad's position he'd be a bit pissed off as well (or words to that effect) but it was how the system worked, ie. it didn't.

Then my dad had a big bust up with the man in India, and asked for his name so he could report him. The man said his name was Rufus. My dad was a bit sceptical about this, and said Rufus what? Rufus, just Rufus, the man said. What, so I ring BT and say I'm complaining about the customer service I've had from Rufus in India? Yes, the man said, they'll know who I am. Now, given that the population of India is millions of billions, OK, not all of them can be employed in BT call centres, and there can't be many guys called Rufus in India, but it's still a bit presumptuous isn't it? Hello, BT? Is Rufus there? Yeah, Rufus in India, that's the one. He is? No, I'll hold..

So anyway, after 5 hours my dad finally got cut off, he reckons because Rufus put the phone down on him having been confounded by the precision tool of his remorseless logic, but probably because it was night time in India, and having got his £20 out of my dad Rufus decided it was time to go home, where he probably spends every night working on his PhD in quantum physics.
The broadband came back on at about 11 this morning. Result. My dad was still going round like a dog with two dicks when I got home this afternoon. Thanks Rufus of India.

Dead Shark Terror

Apart from Trev, there was another shark cruising St Ives last week. Well I say cruising, this one wasn't exactly cruising, it was more bobbing, in that it was dead. Mind you, even dead it was a pretty impressive twelve feet long, although being a thresher shark half of that was its tail. They 're not called thresher sharks because they hang around outside off licences, but on account of this massive long thin tail that's supposed to be able to break your arm with one swipe, although they say that about swans don't they, so it's probably a bit of an urban myth. Anyway this one caused a massive commotion in the local press because it was found by a late -holidaying emmet from Lincolnshire who spotted in bobbing around in the sea and WADED IN FULLY DRESSED to pull it out, not knowing what it was, and then a local surfer saw it and kakked himself because he recognised it was a shark. The headline in the local press was something like 'Surfer menaced by massive shark', which was stretching things a bit really, in that the shark was 1) dead and 2) has a mouth the size and shape of a hen's arsehole.

Big Deal No Deal

It rained a lot last night, and what with being worried about Trev doing the deal with the other place and having a stash of cash burning a hole through my pillow, it was hard to sleep. The rain belted down on the slates, and now and then as the wind shifted direction it would suddenly hit the window like somebody had blasted it at point blank range with a sawn off shotgun, or a giant invisible dog had cocked its leg against the glass. A couple of times I was jerked out of a fitful sleep, thinking that the window was going to explode and shower me with fragments of glass. Through the rain running down the uneven panes, a pixillated Godrevy Lighthouse blinked blearily in the distance.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because it was just getting light when I was woken up by the sound of the loose floorboard on the landing outside my room on the floor below. The rain had stopped. I lay listening for a few seconds and then heard the creaky step three from the bottom. A few seconds later I heard the front door opening. Someone was going out, rather than coming in. I didn't hear anybody else moving, so I got up, put my hoodie on and scooping up all the money from under my pillow, stuffed it in my front pouch.

I got down two floors and to the top of the hall stairs just in time to catch sight of Trev slipping out the front door. Vaulting down the last few steps, I pulled the door open - his hand was still on the catch, and standing there in his light grey suit, he looked shocked, I guess because all I was wearing was a hoodie and my pants, and he probably couldn't even see my pants. I've got your money, I said, reaching into the pouch of my hoodie, and pulling out handfuls of coins. Here, count it, it's four figures like you said. He held both his hands out as I poured the money into them, pound coins, fifty pees, ten pees, even brown money spilled and slid between his fingers onto the wet doorstep. You said we had until the end of today, didn't you? He filled his pockets with his fistfuls of small change, and bent down to pick up the coins that had fallen on the ground. Then he straightened up, and I held out my hand for him to shake. That's how deals are done, I thought to myself, and satisfied I went back to bed.

It was quite a nice morning when I woke up again. The seagulls were making their usual racket on the roof. I went downstairs to find my dad, my mum and a policewoman in the kitchen. What's up? I asked mum. It's Trev and his wife, said mum. Turns out they've done a runner without paying their bill. It's not the first place they've done it either. This lady here says in the last three weeks they've done it in Polzeath, Padstow, Newquay and Perranporth. My dad shook his head in disbelief. We're sure it's the same couple, the policewoman added. The woman passes herself off as his wife, sometimes a production assistant. He's a highly plausible con artist who passes himself off as television producer, and as well as disappearing without paying his bill he often cons people out of large amounts of money on the pretext of featuring their property in a tv programme. Well at least he only got away with not paying for a couple of nights B&B here, right? Dad and I looked at each other. I wasn't going to say anything, and I got the feeling he wasn't either. That's the thing about being conned. As the policewoman said, you feel stupid, as if it's your fault, and you aren't going to go on Crimewatch telling everybody about it are you?

Four Figures

Trev said to dad as he was serving his breakfast this morning (no sign of Mrs Trev) that he'd had a call from his producer who was really interested doing this prog at our place, he said it had got everything they wanted, whereas the other place - well - he did a sort of side to side shake thing with his hand, which for a minute made me think he'd got Parkinsons or something and that was what he meant when he said he didn't want to show his hand, but it was meant to convey that things were uncertain, things were in the balance, and I'm sure the balance in question was the bank balance.

My dad was torn between excitement at doing the programme, being on telly, transforming our run-down B&B into a profitable business, and anxiety that Trev was about to do a deal with somebody else for an undisclosed sum that, whatever it might be, would be beyond his abilty to match. It's a measure of how much on a financial knife edge things are around here, let me tell you, that if my dad has to replace a light bulb I see an immediate impact on my pocket money at the end of the week, especially out of season when we don't have many people staying and there's no regular money coming in. My dad doesn't get much building work these days, probably because people can see what a pig's ear he's made of our house, I should think.

Anyway, Trev's phone rang and he went out to take it, and while he was gone I yoinked one of his sausages off his plate when my dad wasn't looking. He wasn't gone long, and when he came back he was shaking his head and had a serious face on, but it turned out to be one of those X-factor judge's looks that's meant to make you think one thing before they tell you the opposite. Fear, relief. Well, he said, it wasn't easy, but I've managed to persuade my co-producer that I need another day to complete negotiations here in St Ives. I bigged you up with him, I stuck my neck out for you, I said look, this place is just what we're looking for, we just need a few more hours to firm up the deal. So, this is it, I've rescheduled the production meeting until tomorrow, so I've got another day here, but that's all I can do. If we can facilitate the er, facility fee by close of play today we've got a deal. I can't go back to London tomorrow without the deal. Know what I mean?

We knew what he meant. I wondered how he'd managed to get so much into the conversation with his co-producer in the very short time he'd been outside on the phone, but I suppose that's how you get to run your own production company. Not wasting time. Being persuasive. Not taking no for an answer. We're looking at four figures, Trev said to my dad. I shouldn't be telling you this, but that's the other offer. I'm sticking my neck out for you here, right? Four figures, and we've got a deal, but it's got to be today.

Well, he'd made it pretty clear. Now he'd taken us into his confidence we were all in this together and we all had to make it work, or everything would be down the drain. We were looking at four figures, Trev had said. I went upstairs, put a chair against the door, put another chair under the the skylight, stood on it so my head and shoulders were poking out, and lifting up the loose slate, from the space in the roof took out the box I call my Escape Fund. I keep it in an old cashbox wrapped in a Co-op carrier bag to protect it from the wet, wrapped in a piece of sheet. It's money I stash away for when I need it to escape. Escape what, and how, I don't know yet, but I'll know it when the time comes. It could be to run away when it all gets too much, or buy a boat to take me off half way round the world, or pay my way through university, because sure as hell mum and dad aren't going to be able to afford it when the time comes. Keeping it hidden under a loose slate in the roof, I don't know, sort of keeps my options open in case I need to make a quick getaway.

I've never really thought through the logic of this quick getaway across the rooftops thing, because I keep the key to the cashbox sellotaped inside the back cover of my French dictionary, so I had to go downstairs to get that before I could go back, put the chair behind the door again, and count my stash. There was £34.87 in pound coins and change. That was four figures. Stuffing the money in my jeans pockets, I chucked the empty cashbox under the bed and went downstairs to find dad.

Deal or no deal?

It's not even an original concept, is it? You don't imagine with things as they are at the moment that anybody would be interested in yet another telly programme about doing up houses, even if they're B&Bs, so not proper houses that anybody in their right mind would want to live in.

The original bit of the concept appears to be that Trev wants my dad to pay him what he calls a 'facility fee' for him agreeing to use our house to do the programme, instead of one of the others he looked at. Turns out that what I thought about him looking at the other two first before he got to ours was right then, except one of the other B&B owners - he said he couldn't tell us who it was for confidentiality reasons, but I definitely thought it was woman's voice - actually rang him on his mobile while he was talking to dad and offered him what Trev said was 'a substantial sum' for doing it round at hers. When he said he was in negotiations with another owner, she doubled her offer apparently, there and then! He said he'd get back to her before he left St Ives tomorrow, but as he said to dad, that's the sort of dog eat dog business television is.

Trev really wants to do the programme round ours I can tell, he just thinks it's got better potential than this other place. As it's a programme about doing places up, I can imagine it has. The manky hand of Fate, giving with one and taking away with the other!

Access all Areas

So, seems my dad's got a new best friend. We don't have much privacy here as you'll already have gathered, so imagine my annoyance last night when I went into the kitchen to find my dad sitting at the table with a man whose voice I immediately recognised (even without it being filtered through the floor). I also spotted straight away by the dexterous way he was pouring my dad's touch this at your peril Jack Daniels into the glass he was holding that, unless he'd got an extra hand (which you definitely wouldn't want to show to anybody if you had one, would you?) there was nothing about either of his two visible hands that you wouldn't want not to show. Perhaps he was hyper-sensitive about the fact that he bit his nails quite badly.

This, said my dad, looking at me warningly, is Trev. Trev this is Jed. Awright Jed said Trev in a way that you could tell straight away he wasn't used to talking to kids my age. Your dad here's told me all about you.

Yeah right. That I'm mental and go to a special school and am only allowed out at weekends on the condition that I have to sleep in the attic so you needn't feel guilty about chucking me out of my room.

You'll never guess, my dad said, Trev's only a television producer - I run a production company, Trve corrected him. Off of the telly though, my dad insisted in his unreconstructed way. He's visiting St Ives to assess its potential for a new programme concept. He reckons that the family atmosphere small properties like this provide for their guests is so 1970s, but they've got real potential for upgrading as boutique B&Bs for more upmarket er - he looked to Trev who fed him the line like someone chucking a sardine to a seal - clients. Dad swallowed it headfirst. Yeah, clients, not guests, different thing altogether you see, isn't that right Trev? He glanced at Trev just to check that he'd got it right. He reminded me of one of those people you see on telly reading from a prepared statement. I've said that myself, haven't I son? my dad was saying, deviating recklessly from his script. Isn't that just what I've said before to you and mum? "Boutique B&Bs." He didn't quite hook his fingers in the air but I definitely heard him nail the quote marks around those words as he repeated them.

So the idea is, Trev chipped in. I could just about hear the page of the script turn over in Dad's head. Well yeah, that's the thing you see son, Trev here reckons that his production company'll put up the money for us to do this place up, gut it from the inside out, turn it into a boutique B&Bs, and it's all on the telly, a series like. It's just what he's looking for! What do you reckon to that then, eh? You know, one of those 'how we did up a property' programmes. Then to tie in with the programme, Trev's got the press contacts, journos from the travel pages, Sunday supplement features, the works. We're lucky Trev and his wife found us, they were going to stay at Porthminster while they looked round, but it was full and you'll never guess, someone at the hotel, someone actually at Porthminster Hotel, recommended they should try us. Trev nodded at me. That's right, he said, well, they said, we don't know if they'll have any vacancies, but you should try there, it's one of the best three B&Bs in town.

I wondered which the other two of this dubious trinity were, and whether Trev and his wife had tried them first before settling for us. See son, my dad said, full of himself, what I have always said to you, treat your guests well and the word gets around. One of the best three B&Bs in town. You can't buy that sort of recommendation.

I wanted to say if our place was so good why would Trev (or my dad come to that) think it would be improved by being converted into an upmarket boutique B&B. Our guests stayed with us because we were cheap and right by the harbour and near to a lot of frankly much better B&Bs that invariably filled up before we did. To me, we are this resort's B&B of last resort.

So much wrong with that

Turns out that when Mrs Mikey was talking to me yesterday she wasn't introducing herself at all, but asking for her key. So her name's not Mikey or anything like it. What sort of a person starts demanding things off of somebody they've just found on the floor with most of their internal organs ruptured by falling downstairs? She told dad I was messing about on the stairs and nearly took her legs out from under her (in those shoes?) and then wouldn't answer her when she asked me for her key. That's because I didn't understand her stupid accent, which to be honest made Jordan sound like Monica Stewart. But my dad's way of dealing with it, which he seems to think was an OK thing to say given that he was having to think fast on his feet, was to tell her I had 'special needs' ie was a bit mental, and went to a special school up Truro. Nice one dad.

Don't Have Nightmares

When you live in a bed and breakfast house the last thing you can expect to get on a morning is a proper BREAKFAST. I wait for the clatter of plates that means dad is clearing up, and then get myself down to the kitchen to see if there are any leftovers. All I got this morning I got half a piece of toast that one of our GUESTS has left on the side of their plate.

Anyhow, I was standing in the kitchen washing this piece of toast down with the dregs of a carton of Tesco value orange juice when my dad came in. Are you deliberately trying to drive our GUESTS away? he demands, do you want us to end up out on the street? I didn't know which of these questions to answer first. My first thought, obviously, was that he'd found my blog. This blog.

These people, he went on, gesturing to the door that leads to what my mum and dad optimistically call the 'guests dining room', are LOADED, they don't need to stay here, they could afford to stay anywhere in St Ives, they could probably BUY the Porthminster Hotel and still have change for a crab sandwich at the Tate, but you, you, you're just as RUDE to them as you are to everybody else. Anybody'd think you RESENTED people staying here.

So he could have found my blog, but by now I'm thinking this wasn't about the blog, but something else I've done. I'm standing there looking at him, and the little flecks of spit in the corners of his mouth that he gets when he's mad, trying to think how I've been rude to any of the guests. As I'd only just got up and hadn't even seen any guests this morning, it couldn't have been something I'd just done. All I can think of, standing there, thinking on my feet and licking my Tesco value orange moustache from my top lip, was that a few days ago dad made me take some suitcases out for some old couple who'd stayed in my room, and I'd deliberately put one of them down on a coil of dogshit that just happened to be outside the front door. I'd even half liked some guests we'd had in the last week or two (baby Wanda and family).

We work like (regretable offensive racist term, which I REFUSE to repeat - deep inside my dad, I'm sorry to say, is a pretty unreconstructed working class lad from Leeds, who sometimes regresses into an extra from Life on Mars) day and night to keep this place running (day AND night? What exactly do they do when our GUESTS are asleep them, I can't imagine my dad sitting up all night on the off chance somebody rings down for room service) we hardly earn enough to get by, and then when we get somebody staying here who's got some real money, who's actually prepared to put some of behind the place, you treat them like, like ...

He ran out of words here or I stopped listening, one or the other, I can't be sure. That happens sometimes, it's like someone flicks a switch and it diverts my brain as decisively as the points on a train track. It was the idea of someone putting money behind the place that did it. Was this bloke some sort of Brinks Mat type armed robber, offering to give my dad a cut if he could stash his cash behind our house? That wouldn't be much good, because as I've said before, the back of our house is overlooked by the back of the houses on the next street. I had no idea where dad was going, but me, I off on The Usual Suspects. Standing there facing the line up with a steely gaze. Narrowing my eyes as I scrutinised each one of them. They all have faces straight off of a Crimewatch reconstruction, but have any of them got a manky hand?

No He Isn't! (and hasn't been for some time)

OK, so it turns out it can't be Jeremy Beadle as he's unfortunately and sadly died a couple of years ago after a long illness bravely borne with the unfailing humour you'd expect of one of the nation's greatest pranksters. Now you say that, actually, I realise I hadn't seen him on the telly for a bit, he hasn't 'been about' like he used to be. There was one time you couldn't switch on the telly without him being on it, playing tricks on people, making them walk through that scary doorway and coming out as somebody else, saying Tonight Jeremy, I'm going to be Michael Jackson, or whoever, or presenting University Challenge. So, I'm really sorry to his family and fans and the people who make plaques for where famous people have stayed, for any upsettedness caused by me thinking he's staying downstairs in my mum and dad's B&B in St Ives at this moment. Good job The Sun or one of those papers didn't get hold of it before I could post this retraction, or else they'd have had the place beseiged with reporters and papparazzi and page three girls by the time we wake up in the morning. And I'm sure Mrs Beadle wouldn't have described our B&B as a 'shithole' either. If Mrs Mikey thinks downstairs is a shithole she ought to come up here and look at what I have to put up with.

Watch Out! Beadle's About

No ill effects to speak of from my fall down the stairs, apart from the slightest speck of blood in my urine and a bruise shaped like Australia on the inside of my right my elbow. Can't say the same for my iPod though, which is bust. So, living in the attic like Mr Rochester's wife's less sociable brother, and no music to listen to. What a fun weekend this is going to be.

You know I've said before how people often argue on their first night here? It must be something to do with the strain of driving down, spending hours cooped up in the car together and then drinking too much wine to 'wind down' or something. Anyway, you get it a lot, or rather I get it a lot, because being in the attic above my bedroom I often hear our GUESTS arguing with each other through the floor. I found out about sex that way as well, it took me a while to work out what was going on because it was just noises, like just hearing the soundtrack of a film without being able to see what they were doing, until I matched the noises up with somebody actually DOING IT on the telly, and put two and two together.

Anyway, Mr and Mrs Mikey are at it now (arguing I mean, not the other) and it seems to be about money. Turns out that he might have got more money than sense, but he still isn't satisfied and is trying to make even more, which is what they're doing here. She says why has he brought her to this 'shithole' and he says he doesn't want to draw attention to them by throwing his money about, and he says he doesn't want to show his hand until he's got the deal in the bag. So although I haven't seen him yet I think he must be either 1) famous or 2) mean, and 3) be a bit self-conscious about people seeing his hand. Perhaps that's why Mrs Mikey looked a bit funny at me with the black bin bag wrapped round my hand, because if he's got a disabled hand or something, she might have thought I was taking the piss. Anyway, I've racked my brains but the only famous people I can think of with a disabled hand are 1) Doctor Strangelove, who was a man in a film so it isn't going to be him, and 2) Jeremy Beadle off of the telly. I don't know if he's mean, but he fits my profile in every other way.

So, I'm sitting here in bed, convinced that genial prankster Jeremy Beadle is spending the night at our B&B, just beneath my feet. I can't imagine her driving in those shoes, and it's understandable that if an overstrung celebrity has had to drive down all the way from London, he's going to be a bit fractious on his first night in a strange place. It may be my first brush with celebrity, (unless you count me spotting that man off Casualty that used to be Dot Cotton's lodger in Eastenders in the fish shop on Back Road West on day last summer) but I know you can't expect them to behave like ordinary people. There's a B&B just round the corner that has a plaque on the wall just because some bloke nobody's heard of called Daphne Maurier stayed there in 1940, so I imagine we'll definitely get one now because of Jeremy. Then all we'd have to do is wait for dad to eventually get round to putting it up.

Brief Encounter

Got home from school today to find a bin liner with my stuff in it on the landing. That's mum's way of telling me there's some ANNOYING GUESTS using my room. Great. Livin for the weekend and all that.

Just as I was making my way up the twisty breakneck stairs to the attic, like Ann Frank sneaking back upstairs after a secretive night out, I catch the bloody bin bag on a nail in the wall and it splits open, turning the stairs into a sliding scree slope of school books down which the smaller and more breakable of my few personal possessions - like my iPod and my little laughing buddha - bounce and spin like a freefalling downhill skier. A couple of pairs of jeans and a t-shirt fall out, sprawling on the stairs like the victim of a bored serial killer. I stand there with the flaccid remains of the black bin bag in my hand, the sleeve of a sweatshirt spilling through the slit like a disembowelled body.

I was really worried that my iPod had got broken, so I jumped down the stairs to get it, which I should have done a bit more carefully, because I slipped on my bloody FRENCH book and clattered down the last few stairs on my kidneys, which was very painful. And as if that wasn't bad enough, as I'm lying there on the landing trying not to cry, the door of my bedroom door opens and this woman comes out. She's an expensive looking woman with blonde hair and long legs and white strappy high heel shoes, and I wonder how she's managed to get up our stairs without breaking her neck. She has those sorts of toenails with the rims painted white that my mum says are a sure sign of somebody who has nothing better to do with her time and whose husband has more money than sense. If my first thought was how she'd managed to get up stairs without breaking her neck, my second was what the hell was somebody whose husband had more money than sense doing in staying in our house?

She looked at me a bit taken aback. Are you all right? she says. She has a accent like a premiership footballer's girlfriend. No, I want to say, I think I've burst my kidneys and you're in the wrong house. But I just nod and bite my lip. And she smiles and picks up my i-Pod and says Is this yours? If I speak I know I'll cry, so I just reach up to take it off her, and then realise I've still got the eviscerated black bin bag in my hand and I must look like a twat, as if cannoning down the stairs like a Skeleton Bob hadn't already made me look like a twat. You must be Jed, she says. Your dad told us about you. Then she throws me her name, which I don't catch. It's one of those two syllable country and westernish names which is really just two vowels strung together with a hyphen, like Jo-Lee or Kay-Lee. She says it in one of those voices that sounds like a question. I nod like a spacker, and in my head I call her Mikey because although that's a boy's name that's what it sounds like, and having already made myself look like a twat I can't ask her to repeat it. She looks at me for a bit, gives me the i-Pod, and goes back into my room leaving me sitting on the landing surrounded by all my scattered belongings with a shredded bin bag in my hand.