Chapter One: Facebook

As I mentioned in my status update this morning, there is a small dusty grey beetle, or to be more precise, a weevil, called Alfonso who lives on my desk. He is a fan of early Tom Hanks movies, and some of you have come across him before, I believe. He is often too busy with his own projects to stop and talk, but this morning, I saw him perching on the corner of my porridge bowl, eyeing me suspiciously.

"What are you looking at, Alfonso?" I said, unable to ignore him any longer.

"What do you think I'm looking at?" he said.

I looked around behind me, but there wasn't anything there, just some books on a shelf, and a pile of unopened post.

"Am I being thick?", I asked him.

Alfonso climbed down off the bowl and onto the strip between the edge of my keyboard and the screen, which he finds a very convivial temperature.

"I'm looking at you", he said. "Why are you always on facebook?"

"I'm not always on facebook", I said.

"Yes you are. I'm not stupid, you know."

"Prove it."

He got out a small weevil sized notebook, and flicked through the pages, and began to read off a list of times. "9.30am, 9.45am, 10:00am, 10.14am, 10:16am, 10:58am, 11:04am - I thought you were meant to be writing a book?"

"It's not that simple", I countered, beginning to feel a little uneasy. "What do you know about it anyway, you're only a weevil?"

"Precisely", he replied triumphantly, and I could tell he was giving a rather smug grin.

"Precisely nothing! You're not even on facebook" - and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw that I had fallen into his trap.

"No", he said, in that way of his which always makes my blood boil, "I'm not on facebook. And what have I accomplished this morning? Would you like to know?"

I pretended I hadn't heard, and busied myself with an urgent email demanding my attention about a extra cheap cialis clearance sale in somewhere called Umbutano.

"Do you know where Umbutano is, Alfonso?" I asked him. But he was not to be diverted.

"First" he began, "I walked all the way across your desk. That's quite some way, you know. And then, I walked all the way back. I climbed all over your books. I crawled up the wall a bit. I found some toast crumbs to eat, and a piece of lint. What have you done?"

"It's different! You're only a stupid weevil! I've got- you know, invitations to reply to, groups to join, people to spy on- it's a whole new dimension to my social life."

"Whatever you say", he said, smirking, and he leant against the bottom of my screen, with some of his legs crossed, and filing some nails with the others.

"Now if you don't mind", I said, flicking him off so he bounced with a crack against the window sill, "I really am trying to write a book".

"Yes", came a weak little voice streaming up from the floor, "and I really am trying to climb Mt Kilimanjaro".

So I squashed him, dear reader. But don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow.