In the alternative universe world without shrimp I would like to inhabit:

~ I am not told to write up a review of 10 local events in aid of National Coffee Morning as a page lead with two pictures to fill a page near the back of the paper on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday morning told to cut it back to 100 words and one picture because the page has been given over to advertising.

~ I do not sit at my desk until 9pm on the day before deadline when I could have gone home at 8 because my editor forgot to tell us there would be no more pages to read tonight.

~ I am not heading down into my overdraft four days after payday (and 26 days before the next one) after a Rockefella-esque weekend with my family (and another one due this weekend, yay!) ~ Okay, actually this is about me spending cash on having fun with friends and eating spaghetti on toast the rest of the month so I can’t really complain!

~ I can go for lunch now. And they have brie left for a brie and bacon toastie in the local sandwich shop :D

~ All my friends and family are happy, not being stressed by various miscellaneous f*ckwits, emotional retards, financial leeches, evil credit card companies, bosses who are Sauron the dark lord but think they’re fluffy wuffy hobbits, and or blokes with the profound depths of puddles. Instead their lives are filled with love and muffiny goodness and they (and everyone around them) realise how fantastic they are and how the problems they are having relate to the inadequacies of the people they are having problems with rather than something wrong with them. :D

~ The West Wing is put on at a more civilised time. Or I have SkyPlus.

That’ll do for now. There’s bills to write :D

There are some days that just feel like they'll never end.

And then there are other days that just. Never. End.

Am finally home (just the 12 hour day) after a day that's seen me almost get run over, drive 40 miles up and down the 10 mile stretch of road between my home and work trying to find a hole in the hedge village hall in a hole in the hedge village, got frightened by a manic horse and, just to top it off, trod in a dead rabbit.

It's days like this the city girl in me wants to run screaming back to London.

The County Council Rural Area Committee were meeting at a village not too far from my house this evening, so I got despatched off to cover it. A meeting at 7.30pm on a Thursday night is never going to inspire feelings of joy (any stories from it are a week old by the time they appear in the paper, it's rare for anything good to come out of it, and because it's so rare for reporters to turn out to them all the councillors on the committee suddenly metamorphose into table thumping parliamentarian wannabes, with (what they think are) soundbites spewing forth like a fountain of crap until an hour long meeting has stretched to three.

Yup. Nowt worse than a Thursday night meeting.

Except perhaps being incapable of finding the bloody meeting and instead driving in the pitch black between farms and fields trying to find (a) any kind of sign, (b) anywhere with a light on that didn't look like a house (c) somewhere to turn round after I'd driven ten miles in the wrong direction.

I found the village easily enough and, having parked the car in the car park of the village pub, was practically jumping from foot to foot with glee that my crappy sense of direction (which is legendary in our office) had not let me down. Hah! I showed them.

But a quick walk along Main Street (which is a lie by the way) scrape up a few houses and a post box. No village hall. So I go into the pub, which falls silent as I enter (lo! It is someone from the Outside. And a woman. Alone) and with a heretofore unknown fortitude refuse a drink before asking someone (anyone) to point me in the direction of the village hall.

It's like stepping into Royston Vasey. There's much scratching of heads. And finally, after a long silence the self-appointed spokesman points out of the window into the darkness.

"Out there. That way. Past the pub. Down the road. The road curves to the left. You need to look on the right."

I say thank you and rummage around for the car key. He shakes his head. "It's literally over there. You don't need to drive. And there's nowhere to park."

So off I trot. In the mud. Which smells suspiciously of horse poo.

The hall looks like a house. It's dark. It's got one of those signs that's supposedly a piece of chopped up tree trunk with Viola Villa etch inside in swirly calligraphy.

So I walk up a bit further. It's a big field. There's a building on the other side of it, about 300m up the mud trench (no pavements here). So I keep trudging. I get there. It's a shed. There's a tractor.

By this point I am already ten minutes late for the meeting. Having arrived in the village ten minutes early.

I hear a sound behind me and (in a sign of my desperation to find the place) instead of fleeing from whatever is making odd rustling noises and heavy breathing move towards it and open my mouth to ask if it knows where the village hall is. As I do it neighs. Loudly. I jump a foot in the air, yelp and drop my notebook into the mud (which, remember, smells like horse poo). So I begin trudging back to the pub and the car.

I get back to the car. Check my multi map print out. It's the right road. It's got to be here somewhere. So I get in the car. I drive five miles back towards home peering intently left and right to find anything which could conceivably be a village hall. Seriously. I am going so slowly a man in a tractor overtakes me. As street lights begin to appear, marking the return to civilisation, I do a dodgy three point turn and drive back the other way. The five miles I've just come, past the pub and then five miles further on. Still nothing.

So I turn around again. And drive back to the pub. Park up and go back in. By this time my shoes are muddy (I notice belatedly I'm treading dirt into the saloon), I'm clutching my notebook like a bible and am beginning to look frazzled around the edges.

Spokesman man has gone home. So the barmaid (who apparently isn't from the area and so doesn't know herself where the village hall is) bellows over for Lois. She'll know apparently.

She points me in the opposite direction to the Spokesman man. Says several sentences very quickly that I don't understand and finishes 'you can't miss it'. I wait for something else, and when she doesn't, say "Over there?@ and point in the direction she's been gesturing with her fork full of steak pie. As she says "That's right love" I see it half chewed rolling round her mouth like a tumble dryer.

So off I trudge again. The area she has pointed me too is pitch black. It's windy, it's cold and I have to cross the road to get there. I check both ways (it is national speed limit zone) and begin to walk... and almost get run over by a lunatic in a 4x4 whose headlights are so bright I'm almost caught like a rabbit in headlights before I chuck myself at the other side of the road. Dropping my notebook again.

As I lean down to find my notebook I find I'm actually standing in a dead rabbit.

Trying hard not to weep with frustration, I fish out my mobile to ring my news editor at home to see if she can tell me where the blasted village hall is. She's out. I leave messages on her landline and her mobile and go back to the car, dragging my feet along the ground trying to get rid of the rabbit entrails on my shoes as I go.

So now I'm home. It's 9.15pm. I got home ten minutes ago wanting to vent (having left for my meeting at 7pm). And it was a complete waste of time.

And while I know the meeting would have been a waste of time, I begrudge wasting time that way than the rabbit entraily way. Although on the plus side I'm off work tomorrow (long weekend at home, yay!) which is just as well as I'm too annoyed to laugh off people taking the piss out of me about it yet.

Maybe once I've given it some time.

A year or two.

Ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up and nine times out of ten you’ll get one of a handful possible answers. Astronaut. Ballerina. Vet. Firefighter. Not me.

At a memorable family gathering when I was four, my beaming father was telling assembled aunts and uncles how when I was old enough I would take over his prized company. Not really understanding the business dynamic I told him I’d stop selling leather (it’s a Turk thing – it was always going to be leather or jewellery) and turn it into a KFC.

He didn’t mention me getting involved with the business again for more than a decade.

Not that it mattered. As soon as I learned how to read I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to write books. I wanted to make stuff up and have people read it and be as interested in it as I was in the exploits of the Famous Five (I’m still working on that).

I used to write stories, copy them out on pieces of A5 paper, illustrate them and then bind them together with treasury tags. For a while aged about 11 I had a sideline in writing stories where I would parachute my mates into the plot of their dreams – wanting to go steady with Jordan from NKOTB or Alex from Home and Away? With a few hours and a four colour biro, I could sort it.

Around about the same time a kids’ TV show called Press Gang first debuted. As a kids’ show it was tucked away in the middle of the afternoon, but it was as snappily written as anything adults got to watch. With great characters, plotlines ranging from a will-they-won’t-they romance to rival Moonlighting and hardhitting issues du jour (and even pre-jour) including child abuse and post traumatic stress disorder it was amazing. There simply wasn’t anything else like it. And having decided that journalism looked infinitely more fun than writing books (cos you got to go out and ask people stuff rather than sitting at home alone) Press Gang became my obsession.

I taped every episode one after the other on specially bought new videos (no fuzzy sound/picture problems), I read and reread the novelisations, and spent many happy hours cutting out pictures and cast interviews from the latest issue of Look In for a special scrapbook. Which I still have.

I wanted to be Lynda Day, editor, with her trendily frizzy hair - my mum would rather shave my hair off completely than let me have a perm - and funky cardigans (it was 1989). She was running a newspaper, had a sassy comment for every occasion and a gorgeous big lipped American called Spike in a battered leather jacket (the obsession with well made leather clothes is a genetic thing) to flirt with. Who wouldn’t want to be her?

Now thanks to the joys of Blogger this post has probably already given RSI to anyone patient enough to scroll down all this way. But I had to start at the beginning. Because the significance of what comes next is put into context.

On Saturday night I met Dexter Fletcher. Yep. Spike Thompson. He of my pre-teen fantasties, whose pictures shared wall space with my Rick Astley and Wil Wheaton posters. I’m still smiling now. And it’s all thanks to a very forceful friend. Because as soon as I saw him I was a wibbly heap of incoherent hormones in a way I haven’t been my entire adult life.

We’d travelled down to London for a girlie weekend – meals out, shopping, trip on the London Eye, boat cruise along the Thames and the last show in the When Harry Met Sally run with Molly Ringwald and Michael Landes as the leads.

The show was good, better paced and funnier than when I’d seen it previously (with Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan) and Dexter was very funny indeed, (biased, moi?) while dusting off his American accent.

At the end of the show we headed off to the stage door (what’s a bit of stalking between friends?) but as soon as we got there and I saw him up close I got the wibbles. It was the oddest thing. I’ve met famous people before, and in the course of work I’ve even interviewed a few one to one. But even talking to Jack Straw during the height of the Hutton saga last summer left me less flustered than seeing the lovely Dex.

I am quite chatty and somehow when I’m nervous the part of my brain that self-censors what I’m saying seems to cut out. The last time I’d been even remotely excited as this about meeting someone I ended up telling Brian Thompson (Buffy and X-Files actor) that I had a mono-brow which needed regular plucking. After I’d been talking to him for about 20 seconds. [It makes more sense than it sounds. He asked where my name came from, I said it was Turkish, he said I didn’t look Turkish, I explained it’s because I plucked my Turkish style monobrow… Who I am trying to kid? It was hideous]

So after hyperventilating in the corner at the view of my teenage lust object I decided it was better not to talk to him then talk to him, make an arse of myself and end up feeling horrified forever. Much to the consternation of my long-suffering friend. Luckily she turned into a stern yet decisive goddess, shoving me towards the front of the queue where I could get him to sign the cover of my Press Gang season 1 DVD. (No signing of the programme for me. I was in full-on geek mode, do you understand now?)

I got the sleeve signed, he was lovely, funny, sweet and polite. I didn’t say anything stupid in the minute or so we chatted and so I fled away from the door before I did anything to ruin the moment.

But my lovely friend had other ideas. When she got to him to get her programme signed she asked if she could get a photo with him (most of the people were waiting for Molly Ringwald so there wasn’t really a big crush) and then she asked if he’d mind me having my picture taken with him too. He said no, and was patient as I got back through the throng to stand next to him. We chatted some more, I got a bit of a hug and then he wandered off into the night to his end of run party. I’m still smiling about it now.

Meeting your childhood crush is always going to be a risk. When I was 11 and 12 Dexter Fletcher *was* Spike Thompson. If he’d been an arrogant celebrity type it would have ruined it. But it turns out he’s a good actor. And a damn nice guy. Even without the American accent.

Most of my friends think I’m insane. He’s older now, has a few wrinkles and hair more reminiscent of Julia’s than his own old PG style. Comparisons have been drawn (not by me) to Keith Richards. But as far as I’m concerned my crush stands. In fact it might have developed a bit ;)

Then:

Now: .

Definitely a memorable weekend… thanks not only to Dexter but the lovely Nic – now forever known as the pushy goddess ;) :)

Now I suppose I’d best go do some work…

The portents of doom are here... I've drunk so much coffee I feel queasy, my desk is covered in crumbs from a packet of barbecue beef McCoys and we've got two stories on the go both of which we've already had complaints, solicitors' letters etc etc for.

It's not a good Wednesday morning.

But my work is done. I'm reading sports pages while everyone else deals with the controversy. Happy day.

Another day, another pointless quiz. Find out which woman of fantasy literature you are here.