PIES

I rang Tom Saturday to ask him if he wanted to come for lunch. He told me he was "Too Busy", which annoyed me because I know he isn't that busy, yes it's lambing season and there is work to be done on the farm where he now works at Bystock - he ditched the paper shed a while back.

Really though, I suspect he just wants to hang out with his best mate Jeffrey on the massive white leather Lay Z Boy sofa in Jeff's room, watch telly, chat, drink tea and coffee and eat cakes and pies.

There's quite a lot of talk of pies at the early part of the film, Tom could see we found this chucklesome, and played up to it. I seem to remember asking him on camera at some point what he loved, aside from Metallica, and he patted his expanding belly and went, "Pies, mmmn, I love em."

The older (read nagging, read concerned) women in the family, Mum, my stepmum (Jane), me, have been increasingly concerned about Tom's less than ideal diet. His room is full of fizzy pop of every conceivable hue, Mr Kiplings slices, crisps, large blocks of cheese and crisps, and a withering length of cucumber that my Mum likes to put in his fridge, like a feeble totem of hope for a healthier future.

Tom's mate Jeff has convinced him eating Bystock Court's food is a bad idea for reasons I probably shouldn't go into too deeply. I've eaten Bystock food a few times, especially in the last year or so while making the Mission, and its like good school food, which I've always had a taste for. Roast chicken, mash, gravy, veg Tom? No, it's a ginsters and a couple of bags of beef crisps, tea, coffee and fancy cake in Jeff's room, no wonder my once string bean of a brother is taking on a round bellied avuncular form.

But, in many respects, its none of my business what he eats and none of his what i eat. the human rights act has also enshrined his right to eat pies, even though we think he should be cajoled into eating a jamie oliver type 'good' institutional meal three times a day.

I want Tom to live long and be healthy. As a shallow, image conscious, fat snob, I want my sylph like bruva back. he keeps saying he's going on a diet which so far means giving up sugar in his tea, well, giving up four of the sugars in his tea.

However, I have indulged many vices over the years. Tom doesn't drink much, smoke, spend cash on stupid things, he doesn't take drugs or owe Heidi Fleiss $50,000. If he wants to indulge himself in pies and fancy cake and sweet milky hot beverages, I really don't think I can object without looking like a patronising hypocritical nag.

I shall continue to nag and he will continue to ignore me. I'm posting the picture below because it shows us as the happy family we occasionally are.

NO word from TriBeCa film festival on whether we have been selected; no word from Wellcome as to whether they will give us a grant to finish the sciencey bits of the film and do a cool outreach programme. But lots of people asking me about it. Today, the builders, Franco and Reggie (two of Tom's less celebrtiy heroes, although Franco is quite well known in the town of Ashburton and is definitely quite rock n roll) and the more lofty Mr Holy Moly.

People's interest is f'inawesum man.

Writing this has made me decide to have a pie for supper

Buon Appetito