Mr Smug Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

I have just been flicking through the blogs of other members of the Novel Racers, though I am not sure I am still an official member, when I looked in on JJ's blog. She is, to quote, a 'British woman in Bangkok: living, writing, drinking tea.'

She recently returned to England for a break during the course of which she met up with fourteen other Novel Racers. What courage! I would feel totally inadequate in such a gathering. I feel faint just thinking about it.

It is a peculiar calling to write. In many respects it is nothing more than a childlike desire to show off. A desire to hear the oohs and ahhs, the sighs, gasps and laughter at all the right places. Above all, it is the desire to hear unalloyed praise and prolonged applause.

The last thing you need is someone else hogging the spotlight. And the last, last thing you need is to meet fourteen others all harbouring the same desires yet neurotically trying to disguise the fact.

I would dribble. I would become hopelessly drunk. I would behave completely inappropriately. They would have to replace the carpet.

JJ nobly claims she was astonished at the generosity of published writers.

Think the worst of me, but if I were a published writer I too would be generous to the unpublished. I would be lavishly extravagant with my generosity. With the aid of a crane and bucket, I would ladle out massive portions. People would stagger away and die of my generosity.

I, for my part, would return home to swell up and explode from a surfeit of smugness - having uttered one single, fatal, wafer-thin, patronising comment too many.