The passage of time...

Unlike the Alex cartoon in the Daily Telegraph, my characters have never grown up. Twenty years on, Sir Geoffrey still hopes to be promoted to the high court bench. Edward Longwind, his understudy in pomposity, still longs to become a QC. Poor Quentin Crawley, long-suffering pupil barrister, has still not got a tenancy after 20 years of hoping and waiting. Rachel Underwood still wants to make partner. She never will. Well, never say never.

Time has stood still. Maybe one day the clocks will move forward, but I somehow doubt it. Like the Peanuts cartoon strip by the wonderful Charles Schulz, I like the idea that the characters are fixed in time, never getting older. Every year Charlie Brown would try to kick the football and have it pulled out from under him by Lucy. Every year Linus would wait up for the Great Pumpkin on Hallowe'en.

My characters are the same. They never grow old, they never get want they want. They just endure.

---Alex