had come to the unsurprising conclusion that all sheds are alike in the dark. Even when the column’s remit had been extended, in the mid-1980s, to include greenhouses and any other temporary garden structures (such as the ivy-covered car-port), the interviews had always required a masterly touch to bring them alive. Here, for example, was a sample of this week’s notes:
Had shed since bght house. Quite good sh. Spend time in sh. obv. Also gd 4 keeping thngs in. Never done anythng to sh, particrly. Cat got locked in sh once, qu funny. Don’t thnk abt sh often. Take sh for grantd. Sorry. Not v interstng. House interestng. Sh not.
Time was pressing, The official deadline was 2.30, and it was now a quarter past twelve. Osborne typed a few words, hoping that the act of writing might jog his memory. He looked out of the window and tried to free-associate about Highgate, but curiously found himself thinking about Marmite sandwiches on a windswept beach, so gave it up. The experience of thirty years in journalism, a dozen of them in sheds, seemed to have deserted him.
In fact, he was just beginning to consider turning the column into a kind of mystery slot this week, calling it ‘Who and Whose Shed?’, when Tim, the deputy editor, ambled past, carrying a page proof towards the subs’ room. Tim was one of those aforementioned people who sometimes dropped a few encouraging words in the direction of a torpid geranium, and he did so now. But it was no big deal, actually. Tim was a thin, aloof young fellow (twenty-four, twenty-five?) with a generally abstracted air, tight pullovers and bottle-thick kick-me specs; a young man whose emotional thermostat had been set too low at an early age, and was now too stiff to budge. Now he stopped at Osborne’s side and crouched down to read on the typewriter ‘Me and My Shed’s’ recently composed opening sentence:
When the cat got stuck in the shed for 24 hours last year, there were red faces all round at a certain house in Highgate.
Tim wrinkled his nose and chewed his biro. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘How did things go with Angela Farmer?’
Osborne thought for a second. Angela Farmer?
‘Quite a coup getting her, I thought,’ continued Tim. ‘In fact, I made a note somewhere. I think we’ll splash it. Nice to have your name on the front of the magazine again before –’
Tim stopped abruptly, but Osborne didn’t notice. He was experiencing a strange sense of weightlessness. Was it possible to meet Angela Farmer, glamorous middle-aged American star of a thousand British sitcoms, and have no recollection of it? He tried picturing the scene at the door, the handshake, the famous smoky voice of Ms Farmer barking, ‘C’min! What’re ya waitin for? Applause?’ but nothing came. His mind was a blank; it was as though he had never met her. Panic welled in his chest, and in a split second his entire career as a celebrity interviewer flashed before his eyes.
‘So what was she like?’
‘Is it hot in here?’
‘Yes, a bit. But what was she like?’
Osborne decided to bluff.
‘Angela Farmer? Oh, fine. Fine, Angela Farmer, yes. Very’ – here he consulted his notes – ‘interesting. Very American, of course.’
Tim nodded encouragingly.
‘Good shed, was it?’
‘Angela Farmer’s shed, you mean? Yes, oh yes. Ms Farmer has a surprisingly good shed.’
‘Did you ask about those hilarious gerbils in the shed in From This Day Forward?’
‘Did I? Oh yes, I’m sure I did.’
‘And I think I read somewhere that she was actually proposed to in a shed by her second husband – whatsisname, the man who plays the shed builder in For Ever and Ever Amen – but that they broke up after a row about weather-proofing.’
‘All true, mate. All true.’
‘Should make an interesting piece, then.’
‘I’ll say.’
They both paused, staring into the middle distance, pondering the interesting piece. ‘The cat got stuck in the shed overnight once, too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The cat. Got stuck in the shed. Overnight. She said it was quite funny.’
The deputy editor wrinkled his nose again, and changed the subject.
‘Oh, and you ought to mention the Angela Farmer rose. Smash hit of last year’s Chelsea. No doubt propagated in a shed, of course, ha ha. But I expect you covered all that.’
Osborne gave a brave smile.
‘Well, mustn’t hold you up.’
‘No.’
‘See you later.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you ever get tired of sheds, Osborne?’
‘Never.’
‘Unlike some,’ said the deputy editor darkly, and girded himself to do battle with the subs.
Waiting for Osborne’s column later that evening, after everyone else had gone home, Michelle donned her pastry-cuffs, strapped a spotless pinny over her outfit, and tackled the reference books, rearranging them in strict alphabetical order, fixing them in a perpendicular position, and drawing them neatly to the extreme edge of the shelves. Having accomplished this, she scoured the coffee machine and dusted the venetian blinds, in the course of which activity she deliberately elbowed a large economy packet of Lillian’s cup-soups into a bin. Then she sat down at her typewriter and wrote some much-needed letters for the ‘Dear Donald’ page.
She loved this task. Few bona fide readers were writing to the magazine these days, and Michelle’s particular joy was to write the bogus letters ungrammatically and then correct them afterwards. Subbing was a great passion of Michelle’s; it was like making a plant grow straight and tall. ‘Dear Donald,’ she would type with a thrill. ‘As an old age pensioner, my Buddleia has grown too big for me to comfortably cut it back myself …’ She could barely prevent herself from ripping it straight out of the machine, to prune those dangling modifiers, stake those split infinitives. How quickly the time passed when you were having fun. The only thing that stumped her – as it always did – was the invention of fake names and addresses, because she could never see why one fake name sounded more authentic than any other. ‘G. Clarke, Honiton, Devon’ was how she signed each one of today’s batch, hoping that inspiration would strike later. She often chose G. Clarke of Honiton. She’d never been there, but she fancied that’s where all the readers lived.
Time to check up on Osborne, she thought, when ten letters from G. Clarke were complete, photocopied and subbed within an inch of their lives. She dialled Osborne’s number on the internal phone. It rang on his desk and startled him, so that he dropped an open bottle of Tipp-Ex on to his shoes.
‘Bugger,’ he said, as he answered the phone.
‘Going well, oh great wordsmith?’
Kneading his face,
