A man wid' a wonderful Dutch accent rings and says he has 'yust bought a copy of zee Vriter's Handbook and vould like some clarification of our submission criteria.'
It's at times like these that you wish you came further down the alphabet.
However, I'm all loved up as Australian and South African Ducks are Waddling around the office for a sales conference and a few of them have read my book and liked it, and I've been kissed and hugged, had my photograph taken, and generally felt momentarily elevated from my position of authority as conference room cleaner in which, apparently, Mr T's 'coalition of the willing' consisted of me and me alone.
But the phones are always with us, and I had to drag myself back down to earth but not - spreading the joy, spreading the love - without a radiant, Mother Theresa smile on my face.
And so I didn't snap. Oh no, I waited patiently, enjoying his lovely undulating voice like a gentle fairground ride - gosh I like a Dutchman - and let him get all the way through his question (which was vondering vat the different categories such as history and biography meant) with calm and grace. I then explained, as kindly as though to a child about the limitations of Santa when it comes to wishing for a pony, that the most relevant criteria on our submissions policy was that we don't accept them.
'Oh...' He sounded dejected.
'We only accept submissions from literary agents, so what you should do is look at the section for agents and try there.'
'It's not for me, I'm trying to help a friend, but ve yust weren't sure where to send it. Now, since I've got you on the phone, could you clear something up for me...? If someone has vritten a book about demselves and deir life vat vould ve be calling it?'
A novel with the names changed, I didn't say. 'A memoir, or an autobiography?' I proposed instead.
'Even if it's only about part of der life - for instance der troubled childhood?'
'Yes, it doesn't have to be an exhaustingly comprehensive summary of their entire life.'
'So it vouldn't be, for instance, history?'
'No.'
'And dere isn't a specific yenre for say troubled childhoods?'
Oh dear Lord, I bit my tongue. I swallowed the words misery and that usually associated with it and said no.
'It's yust that dis book is a story about a troubled childhood,'
'So many of them are, unfortunately,' I said, sadly.
'You mean childhoods?'
'Troubled,' I agreed. 'Very troubled.'
'So dere's really no special category for dis?'
Now I could have said, yes, it's usually the top tray on my filing cabinet, overspilling like lava from a volcano of troubled childhoods, but I am mellow, I am empathetic, I feel their pain. It has been mine, albeit usually associated with tales of my miserable life regurgitated as journalism and renamed 'a feature' for £300 a pop.
'But vat if it's vritten in the t'ird person?'
'So it's a personal memoire, about a troubled childhood, written by the person who experienced it but in the third person?'
'Yes.'
'Ah well, it still doesn't have a specific category...' I say and wish him and his friend good luck.
I hesitate to say more. The last time I made even a vaguely encouraging remark it turned up on a letter to my agent masquerading as a recommendation. Then yesterday, I shook a book out of an envelope that was, unusually, addressed to me, and out fell a copy of this very same manuscript, self published, with my quote slapped on the back.
It was accompanied by several others (a slightly unusual ploy to put quotes from rejection letters on your book) headlined by a colleague at Cannongate, a couple of agents, and with 'my friend Dave' bringing up the bottom of the bill.
To add insult to injury he even spelt my name wrong.
I would write and tell him to remove it (along with the extra 'a') but I'm afraid I'm much too busy. The Ducks are still arriving, from India this time, and if anyone needs me I'll be upstairs in the conference room pushing in chairs and attending to the important business of making coffee.
Slap that on the back of a book jacket and see how much credibility it gets you.
