Kill me, kill me now

So I’m going to a writers’ group. I turn up early ‘cause I’m Billy; I go to the room and there’s this guy there, looking like an escaped mental patient with a ½ scale replica of the cross lashed round his neck. And I know I should have said “is this goat fuckers anonymous?” but I didn’t, I said “is the [writers’ group]” and he said “yes it is, I’m Colin”. Twelve others join the room, four Colins, it’s a Colin rich environment.......

It is 2 hours of aural torture. I was ready to ‘fess to 9/11, 7/7 anything; just don’t read me another poem! I’ve always subscribed to the view that the only good poet is a dead poet, and this lot were doing nothing to dissuade me. There’s a guy, he’s about my age, in a backwards baseball cap, riffing like Reverend and the Makers done acapella. But y’know, with a message. And he’s stuttering his sentences with air quotes. Air quotes for words like ‘soup’ and ‘pencil’. And I’m thinking ‘dickhead’. Another who's channeling Jesus through their lumpen prose.

They are quite the most barking bunch of half-wits. And in the midst of this shit tsunami is [insert name of bestselling novelist here] – and I’m thinking is this some form of community service, was there some drink driving case we haven’t heard about, ‘cause there’s no early reason why you’d be within a hundred miles of here???????