'im indoors

I’m never quite sure whether delivery men and women and the postie love us at this house or hate us. One thing’s for sure is that they see a lot of us and so for the self-employed delivery man we provide plenty of work on a regular basis. If you don’t count the number of books we order from Amazon and other on line bookshops (and I’d really prefer not to count them – I don’t want to know the truth!) there are still plenty of parcels of our own books – mine and the BM’s - arriving at the door in cardboard boxes. Yesterday was a bumper day, even by our standards. There were American edition copies of my April book (well, I say April, but I see from the Waldenbooks listing it’s actually out already) Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride. They came early in the morning.

Mid morning brought proofs and picture images for the BM’s upcoming Heroes Villains & Victims of Leeds. Not quite a book box but substantial all the same.

A lunchtime delivery was a huge box filled with author copies of The A-Z of Yorkshire Murders and Yorkshire’s Murderous Women. Two more to add to my ‘grim and gruesome’ collection he tells me. And those are just his January and February books – in the coming year, we can look forward to : Revised editions of Straightforward Guides to Creative Writing/Freelance Writing/Performance Poetry, Plain Clothes and Sleuths: A History of Detectives in Britain, Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Grimsby, Spies in the Empire, another (joint) guide to Creative Writing . . . Phew!

Not just a Babe Magnet, you see!

And not just an author of the ‘grim and gruesome’ books either. On my shelves there is special pride of place for the poetry collections, one of which I blogged about last year. This is the result of the BM’s years as Writer in Residence in Lincoln Prison where one of the important projects he was involved in was Storybook Dads where men in prison record a story for their child into a CD and the result is then sent to a little boy or girl and may be the only contact they have with a Dad ‘inside’.

So – as talking to several people yesterday reminded me about this – let me share . . .

Storybook Dads on B Wing

I fumble with the mini-disc player,
Reach high for the socket
(It’s used for haircuts)
The flexes are knotted, and behind us,
As we crouch in a corner,
Cells are opened, it’s like falling timber,
Officers bellow out exercise time.

Dad chooses a story to read and send home.
He’s nervous, choosing between Aladdin
And The Badger’s Bath. Wearing his grey tracksuit
He is not like a dad. At visits though, it’s his face

That matters. Now it’s his voice,
At first quiet, shaky, hesitant.
But now we’re into the badger’s story
I’m not there anymore; it’s him and his daughter.
Hello Rachel, it’s your dad here.
I love you and I want to read you this.
Love, dad.
He reads, then stops. ‘I can’t do this!’
But I urge him on and smile.
He almost chews the mike to hide the noise.


For five minutes, I’m not there at all
And he’s not doing time. Carefree,
he ends with a song.
‘I made that one up. She likes songs.’
I carry away eight minutes of happiness.
Never thought you could measure that.

© Stephen Wade 2006

Yep – not just a Babe Magnet.

And yes, Marilyn (thank you) - very special to me