I could write a sitcom about an incompetent poet, says Ian McMIllan

By Ian McMillan

Published 10th Sep 2022, 06:00 BST

However the problem is that not only am I writer with my weak writer hands, I’m also a writer who sees anything as a potential piece of writing; a metaphor, a simile, a plot twist, a joke, an image, the start of something or the end of something.

Still, the opening of the jar must come first before the writing about the opening of the jar. You can’t put the glass cart before the beetroot-coloured horse. Now stop it, McMillan. Just unscrew the jar. She’s standing there, wanting a beetroot sandwich. She can’t eat your purple prose.

I apply my hands to the lid. I made noises that are written down as GNRRRR and GNFFFF. I exhale loudly. I sigh. The jar remains stubbornly unscrewed. I look quizzically at the jar as though by staring at it I will cause the lid to spring open.

I wonder if, once I manage to open it, a genie will spring from the vinegar inside and grant me three wishes. And the first wish would be for superhuman strength so that I could always open jars, and the second wish would be…

Look, McMillan, stop making narratives where there are none. This isn’t a Disney cartoon, it’s a tiny domestic moment. Yes, but what would the second wish be? And the third wish?

“Give it here,” my wife says impatiently. She tries again, without the daft noises and the sighing that I was doing. The jar remains, frankly, unopened.

"This could be the opening scene of a romcom,” I say. “It could be our first date and we’ve gone on a picnic and neither of us can open the jar of beetroot and a passing hunk opens the jar for us and you briefly fall for him but then you realise that you’d rather have the sensitive poet type even though he can’t open a jar of beetroot.”

My wife rolls her eyes and passes me the jar again. Maybe all mytalking has somehow loosened the lid.

I try again. Nothing shifts. I do what I often do in these awkward situations: I begin to improvise a musical number from an as-yet-unwritten West End hit. That’s the West End of Barnsley, in case you happened to be wondering.

“I’m trying to open a jar, but I’m not getting very far, like I didn’t get far in the car, when we visited your Ma and Pa…"

Imagine the tune with a bit of a swing jazz feel. Swing jazz combined with the kind of bossa nova they favour in Nidderdale.

I imagine the song taking Broadway by storm, but at the moment it’s taking this South Yorkshire back room by calm.

I carry on trying to open the jar; I will not be defeated. Or maybe I will.

In my head I construct a one-man drama about an old Music Hall star whose novelty act consisted of opening jars.

I reckon that might be a winner, you know. I’ll do a synopsis just as soon as I’ve got this jar open, which at this rate will be the year 2032.

And then suddenly the jar opens. And then suddenly my trousers are covered in beetroot.

Ah, well: there’s the image of the first episode of a new sitcom about an incompetent poet, don’t you think?