The Master Plan.

(From Newsletter)

WALTER had worked out a long and quite complicated strategy for winning Margaret back. It involved a lot of surveillance. It meant following her to and from her work. Working out who her friends were. Where she socialized. Seeing by how much the information sheOd volunteered to the LetOs Be Mates web site differed from the reality. He would become an expert on every single part of her life, and in knowing her so thoroughly he would be perfectly equipped to slot himself into her life. If she was interested in movies, he would invite her to the QFT or the Warner Village at the Odyssey. If she was an expert in wine, he would attend classes and try not to get drunk. If she liked mountain climbing he would wait at the bottom until she came down. It would be like Romeo and Juliet.

Except, these days, youOd call it stalking.

He was aware of this, but it did not deter him.

Nevertheless he did not undertake any of it. Because, he reasoned, at the end of the day, if sheOs really not interested at all, whatOs the point? And also, he had no patience at all. He never had. It was a fact of his life that he always went for the quick solution, the easy option, if it didnOt happen there and then, now, then he lost interest. It was the same at school. He had the intelligence, his reports said, he just lacked application. It was the same with his hobbies. He had overwhelming, passionate interests right up to the point where any genuine work was involved, and then he lost interest. Once he was going to be a rock star. He thought about it eighteen hours a day for months, what he would wear, the songs he would write, how to get over that difficult second album syndrome. Eventually he put his money where his dreams were and went out and bought a synthesiser. It cost him pounds 800 and the instructions all but boasted that even a moron could learn to play it. Walter wasnOt even up to that level. He messed around with it for three days, but could only ever manage to make a sound like a car alarm. He tried to follow the first tutorial that came with it on a CD-Rom, but quickly lost his way, and then he was distracted by the football on TV. Shortly after Wayne Rooney scored another wonder goal for Manchester United Walter decided that being a rock god wasnOt for him. It was a little late to become a professional footballer, but there was nothing to stop him getting fit. So he sold the keyboard to a gay Christian, losing pounds 300 in the process, and reinvested most of what was left in a yearOs membership of an upmarket gym in the Culloden Hotel. Despite all advice to the contrary Walter went hell-for- leather on every piece of equipment the gym had to offer, squeezing into one weekend what wiser bodies might have slowly built up over months.

Walter strained every muscle in his body, and could hardly walk for weeks. He never went back to the gym.

He was aware of all of these things, but seemed helpless to do anything about them. Because there was always the next time ETH he had learned his lesson, he would take things more easily, he would be patient, he would chill.