Bolton or Bust (by text)

Tuesday 9th February

The sun was shining making the cold seem not so bad.

I was all set for an nice stressfree pleasant drive to Bolton to do some more Brain Teasers with Steven Kay.

They’re becoming a bit of a regular thing. The day after I got back from Lapland in December I was in his classroom doing some Christmas themed mind melting posers.

Olly the producer in London called to ask if I had set off.

The way his question was asked rather breathlessly and his audible sigh of relief when I answered to say that I hadn't, had me thinking straight away that there was a problem.

There was a chance that Steven could not do the planned filming this afternoon.

His brother was all over some of the front pages of the tabloids for having rather raunchy text message conversations with sexy ladies.

Steven felt that he might have to go and look after their mum and dad and possibly protect them from the posse of paps that could besiege them.

It was not a firm no at that point so I set off fully expecting to be turned round. I would rather have to turn round than sit waiting and end up having to rush.

Sure enough after about forty minutes down the road I was making a u-turn and going back to Edinburgh.

I was happily enjoying a few free hours when the phone rang.

“Private number calling”, it said on the phone’s display.

I knew that was the bell ringing to end my free time.

Steven’s shoot was going to happen tomorrow afternoon and there was a little interview to do in Manchester before that.

So I wandered back out to the car and retraced my route south.

At least there was no time pressure because I was just heading down to a hotel to spend the night so that I would be ready for the job in the morning.

The journey was uneventful with the M6 not putting any barriers in the way like breakdowns or accidents, just a couple of average speed camera sections through road works.

I got to the hotel in time for a proper nights sleep. That doesn’t happen very often.