A few people have asked recently what made me zoom relentlessly around the conventions mentioned in Wiffle Lever. Especially considering that, at the time, there wasn’t any sniff of this resulting in a book… and that the whole strange escapade took a relentless toll on my credit card bills (from which they’re still recovering, in fact my Natwest Maestro card remains in a critical condition in intensive care, having a handful of 10p pieces fed to it intravenously at the end of every month).
The answer, I’ve realised tonight, is that I have a staggeringly addictive nature. I’ve always suspected this to be the case, but it was really driven home this evening when, at 11pm, I went to the all-night Tesco to buy two packets of chocolate digestives to see me through a few days of intensive writing ahead. I always eat lots of biscuits when I’m writing, usually averaging a packet of custard creams for every 1000 words, and then treating myself to a Penguin at the end of every chapter. Although sooner or later I’m going to have to face up to the fact that he belongs with his family in Antarctica.
Every one a winner.
Anyway, I arrived home at 11.30 and decided – unwisely – to eat “just one” digestive from the top of the packet. You guessed it… I’ve just finished the lot.
Which is pretty much a biscuity metaphor for the conventions in Wiffle. The Doctor Who convention I went to in November 2005 was the “just one” at the top of the packet, but then Star Wars a month later became the “no-one will notice if I have another”, and Blake’s 7 in the New Year was the “what’s wrong with eating three biscuits anyway?”. By the time I got to Robin Of Sherwood I was on a mad sugar rush, babbling to Nickolas Grace with crumbs all over my lapels, and when I got home from Red Dwarf at the end of 2006 I was a bloated mess in the corner of the house – belching, feeling unbelievably guilty, and wiping milk chocolate from around my mouth with the back of my hand. Before starting on the Penguin again… or “Mr Flibble” as I insisted on calling him.
So now I feel a bit ill. And that’s not a metaphor, I genuinely do – I’ve just eaten 24 chocolate digestives in two hours and I need to go to bed. I’m the Amy Winehouse of the biscuit world, and should probably thank my lucky stars that I’ve never dabbled in anything stronger – crack cocaine for example, or Jaffa Cakes.
Digestive Rehab here we come.
No, no, no.
(None of this has anything to do with Frankenbiscuits, by the way)
Wiffle Lever To Full! 
So did the 24 digestives fuel this post or did that take another packet?