It was all rather disheartening really, Penny. I mean I don’t aspire to being a sex bomb but a girl does rather hope to be able to provoke an erection in her husband. It was the pressure, of course. After all my calculations he knew he had to produce the goods. Difficult for him, I’m sure, but as a woman with feelings I do rather wish it hadn’t appeared quite such an ordeal.

Anyway, long story short and all that, honour was satisfied. Sam says that all he can say is that if we do score this month the kid will be a strong swimmer because its dad certainly didn’t give it much of a start.

When we’d finished he rushed off, of course. I asked him not to because I think it’s important to spend a bit of time together after sex or else it’s just sex, isn’t it? But Sam said he had to go back to work, which, considering he claims his job consists entirely of telling arseholes how clever they are, didn’t seem like much of an excuse to me. I told him that at times like these we should make an effort to concentrate on the emotional side of our relationship, otherwise our love life will be nothing more than a mechanical thing, devoid of sensuality and romance. He said, “Right, yes, romance, absolutely right,” and left.

When I got back to TV Centre there were three messages to ring Aiden Fumet, Dog and Fish’s manager. He’s also the manager of about sixteen other acts whom Time Out and the Guardian have sequentially announced as “quite simply the best in Britain today”. Aiden Fumet is a very aggressive man, which is all right in itself – certain types of agent and manager have always been aggressive. What puts Fumet beyond even the most distant pale is that he is also self-righteous. He seems to see any failure on the part of the BBC to grant a series to any of his acts as evidence of a vicious conspiracy to deny the young people of Britain the cornedic nourishment for which their souls are clearly crying out. The idea that the BBC might think some of his acts less than good does not cross his mind.

“What the fuck was that malarkey all about, then, Sam, dumping my boys at One Nine Oh?” Fumet said when I called him back. “I’d better warn you now, mate, that Dog and Fish are one phonecall away from going to Channel Four. One fucking phonecall and they’re with Michael, OK? And the BBC can fuck off.”

Well, I was in no mood for this. Normally I have to admit that I’m a bit of a pushover. To be honest, I just can’t be bothered to argue with these people. The worm, however, can turn and show his teeth (if worms have teeth) and a worm who has just been crap in bed with the wife he loves and who is counting on him to fill her up with sperm is likely to turn like a U-bend.

“What is going on, Aiden, mate…” and I commenced to give him the most exquisitely phrased bollocking of his entire life. Unfortunately it was all wasted because after he’d told me to fuck off he’d hung up.

Later, I told Lucy about the whole incident over supper, and that led to a slight misunderstanding. She said that she was sorry about today, and I thought she meant she was sorry about me getting shat on by arrogant, no-talent twatheads. So I told her not to worry. I told her that it was my job. Well, it turned out that she was actually talking about our lunchtime sex session. She’s been concerned that I might feel used – “milked for my sperm like a farmyard animal” was how she put it. So when I said, “Don’t worry, it’s my job,” she thought I meant having sex with her was my job and said, “I hope you don’t see it as a job,” in a very tart voice indeed. But I of course still thought she was talking about my work and therefore took her tart retort as a snide reference to the pathetically unfulfilling way I earn a living and said, “Yes, it’s a job, a bloody boring job. There’s certainly no satisfaction to be had in it.”

Misunderstandings all round and quite an atmosphere had developed before we got it sorted out, after which I immediately put my foot in it again. Lucy remarked that this confusion perhaps indicated that we should be setting time aside to be tender and close with each other and communicate more. Well, I thought she was just trying to be nice to me, so I told her not to bother on my account as I wasn’t bothered either way. It turned out that she was actually appealing for a more tender and sensual attitude on my part, so me saying I wasn’t bothered was the worst thing I could have said.

After that we didn’t talk any more and she started clearing the plates in a marked manner.

Dear Penny

I got my fucking period today.

I’m writing this with a hotwater bottle clamped to my tummy because of the cramps. Oh, how I love being a woman. I’ve known it was coming for days.

“What’s that dull aching feeling, I wonder?”

“Why, that’s a little warning that you’re going to be bent double in agony for a couple of days living off painkillers, and by the way it looks like you’re barren as well.”

Drusilla says I have to learn to love my periods, that they’re part of the sacred cycle of the earth and the moon. Words failed me at that juncture, which was fortunate really because had I thought about it I would have told her to get on her sacred cycle and ride it off a sodding cliff.

It really is so depressing, Penny. The grim, clockwork inevitability of my body failing to perform the functions for which it was designed. A few months ago I broke down on the M6, my car, that is, not me, although quite frankly I nearly did as well. It was awful, just sitting there waiting for the breakdown people to come. Completely useless, sitting in an apparently perfectly serviceable car but not able to get anything to work (it was a blocked fuel line, by the way). Millions of other cars kept whizzing by and they were all working but I was stuck, absolutely stuck, and there was nothing I could do about it. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was. Well, my whole life’s like that really. Month after month I’m stuck, my car won’t work and I have no idea how to make it go. All there is left for me to do is to try and seek help, to face that long trudge up the hard shoulder in search of a phone that probably won’t work in order to call an emergency service that will take for ever to respond and when they do won’t be able to find the problem or have the right tool to fix it. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the female sex are whizzing past in Renault people carriers with eight babyseats in the back. Am I dragging out this analogy too far? If so I don’t care.

Look, I know I’m whining here, but if I can’t whine to my imaginary friend who can I whine to? My periods are absolutely horrible and the crowning nightmare of my apparent infertility is the idea that this abject misery, which I have endured twelve times a year since I was thirteen, might be for nothing. I mean, if it turns out my whole plumbing system is irrevocably buggered and that I might just as well have had a hysterectomy twenty years ago I shall just die.

Dear Book

Failed again. Arse. Lucy says that Sheila says the bloke on Oprah said that I’m not supposed to use that word. “Failed”, that is, not “arse”. Apparently the “fail” word implies a value judgement. If we say that we’ve failed then that means in some way it’s our fault, which of course it isn’t. Lucy has read eight and a half million books on the subject of infertility and while they don’t agree on many things they do all seem to feel that a positive outlook is essential.

Well, bollocks to that. We’ve failed again. Lucy has got her period, Restricted Bonking Month was a complete washout. She’s in bed right now, with the light off, groaning. I’m sure the main reason she wants a kid is to have nine months off having periods. They seem to be so awful for her. She says I can never know how bad it feels, but to give me some idea she says it’s like being kicked in the balls over and over again for two days. Sounds terrible, although how she would know what being kicked in the balls is like I don’t know.