Stinking on the bus and tram home soaked in very fishy haddock water.

The Wednesday evening is all planned. After work - plan to go to Nottingham University - and have some cheap food in the student bar. Maybe a tasty burger and chips with gerkins and something that passes for a warm salad accompaniment. Then I propose to hang around for an hour with my friend 'Mr Lager Beer'  then go to Nottingham New Theatre to watch a tense sounding drama, Frank McGuiness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.

After the play I will return home on a tram and a bus (an hour plus journey) and stay up until one o'clock reviewing. Then I will triple check my review for content, style and worthiness. Tired, I will retire to bed and then be up again at 5.30am to set off for work once more. This proposed incident is after reviewing two plays earlier in the week with similar routines and working hard preparing salmon at Tesco in the daytime. "I'm not getting any younger don't you know?"

Haddock fillet

Five minutes before I am about to leave the counters and set off for the university I manage to accidently knock a whole tray of haddock down my trousers and the very strongly fishy iced water goes everywhere including through my protective coat and apron on to the only pair of trousers I have me with and subsequently, like a mini raging torrent, into my socks and shoes. Great!!!! Freezing cold, wet and stinking of fish. Just the thing to be as I look forward to sitting in a packed theatre studio under the hot lights.

I semi dry myself off in the mens' room but I still smell badly of fish and by the time I get on the crowded tram and later the number 10 Ruddington bound  bus (goes the long route home). The heat from the crowds means that I really start to pong. I could see people giving me an odd stare as if I have pissed myself and smell like a warm urinal or Grimsby/ Immingham - in the summer.

By the time I get home it is too late to have a quick change and head back in the direction of the very remote university theatre. Buses from my village are a bit random of an evening. I send the theatre staff an apologetic email and get a very supportive message back. Such is the adventurous life of a butcher/fishmonger and theatre writer.