Act V, scene 6, Ext Watershed, Bristol, Day, lets call it Sunday (for the sake of argument)

A woman cries on the bridge, tears in her eyes, mobile phone to her ear. “I can’t see them, I can’t see them,” she says. The epitome of distress, worry and fear.

A couple walk past noticing this woman, but since they have a baby buggy with a sleeping child in it and are heading for St Georges up the hill they don’t stop. But then, in this scene no one stops because who can intervene in someone else’s personal woe like that?

A few minutes later, the couple with the buggy see two girls, sisters, holding hands walking down past the Watershed. Tears in their eyes. Ages about seven and maybe two years younger. Looking for all the world, quite frankly lost.

Having walked past the two girls, the female of the couple with the buggy stops and wonders aloud whether the two girls just seen are in some way connected to the woman on the bridge…

Taking the initiative, and the sleeping boy in the buggy, they alter their course by 180 degrees and go back to the girls.

They ask if they’re lost. Sure enough they are. They ask if their mum has long brown hair. Yep.

So while the female looks after the two girl and the buggy with the sleeping boy in it, the male runs back to the bridge… the bridge….

The crying woman is no longer there, but there’s a man with interesting (white) facial hair looking off shot as a younger man, grey hair all the same, dashes into shot.

“No nothing,” says the man, “Can’t see them. Been all round the block.”

“You looking for two girls?” asks the male, running into shot.

“Yes,” says interesting (white) facial hair.

“We’ve got them,” says male.

“They got them,” repeats (white) facial hair to younger grey haired man.

(In retrospect this piece of dialogue will be deleted since “We’ve got them” looks sort of ominous on the page. In reality it was the first thing that entered the male’s head and seemed to do the trick. I mean it wasn’t like a ransom demand was following and this is a fairy tale ending, not Last House on the Right behind The Arthouse Cinema or nothing. Speilberg in cuddly mode, not Tarantino. I could go on but you get the picture.)

Male and younger grey haired man run run run across the bridge, the wind tousling their hair, the sun dappling across
No, overcast.
People dissolving into a mist of…. well they get out the way, kind of. Occasionally.

“Been long?” asks the male.
Another piece of dialogue that looks stupid on the page and will end up on the cutting room floor.

“Three quarters of an hour.” It’s a clumsy time to have to say while run run running to find your loved ones.

“We saw your… partner? on the bridge when we came over and then saw the girls.”

“My wife’s in the lost children’s tent now.”

Again, not really moving anyone.

Even though the male is trying not to burst into tears with the emotion of it all. Could be really embarrassing.

Family are reunited. Thanks given. Kids collected.

Male and female and sleeping boy in buggy contiue on past the Watershed and towards St Georges.

Maybe there’s poetry in losing your kids on Father’s Day. Maybe there isn’t.

relive it here

Rock out.

Click this: That’s a fab song, Simon.

yeah yeah yeah

Arlo likes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Of this I am proud. Moreover he picks me up when I change the lyrics for comic effect. Naaaaaaaaah says Arlo.

He’s gonna have fun in his teenage years when I do the same trick with the latest thrash metal band he’s into, turning satanistic lyrics into comments on how great it is to do the washing up.

ask the arlo, the arlo who knows

Last friday Morning Arlo said he would need calpol at the end of his french songs group because he would be hurt. During french songs he fell over and hurt his nose. No calpol required but it makes you wonder.

So if anyone has any questions about their future they would like answering… I’ll pass them on. Though at the moment the answer is likely to be samosas.

but the other chick’s still okay

Sorry if you’ve all been a bit down on the plight of the first chick. Chick number two is fine. Moving about up there though. Bit worrying but clearly bigger than the other one. Hopefully a bit more aware that he’s on top of a high chimney stack and everything.

chick’s dead. sun’s up. not callous. not happy with the layout of this post though…

Erm. So the chick slwoly, ended up in our guttering which we thought was fairly safe really… until in the morning it became clear he’d chosen the bit of guttering where the down pipe is so ended up half in and half out the guttering pipe. Not sure if he fell all the way down the inside of the pipe or went over the edge and was just trying to hide in the pipe. Either way, chick is deceased I’m afraid. He was very very little indeed, and even if he’d made it to the flat roof above the utility room I don’t think he’d have made it through to adult hood. Be a bit confusing and tiring for mother gull.

Mother gull didn’t see me deposit chick in the bin, wrapped in newspaper, but did make a fuss when I was trying to drill the bike hooks into the wall. A sense of perspective would be nice – don’t mess with a man with a drill in his hand.

Second (and possibly third) chick can still be heard up chimney. Don’t think they can fall down the chimney itself which is a relief….

So sun comes up and Arlo is promised seaside. So Arlo gets ready:

hat, glasses, bag and La La who rides on my back, model's own

We play putting stones down the back of our necks, football and sitting on car, taxi and fire engine rides. We don’t make them go. Oh no. We pretend. This is much better.

run

run

look

pollen counts. no it really does

Awful hey fever day today. There will be some vaguely amusing video footage available some time in the not too distant of me teaching myself piano accordion while sneezing and dripping over diverse musical instruments.

It is difficult to do the following things while holding a hanky / tissue in the other hand and trying not to sneeze on anything vital.

Just about everything.

Went to a play type thing tonight and was meant to network after but would probably just drip on people. Fave joke number two revolves around being so bad at networking I come away with fewer friends than I went with…

can’t talk. busy doing interpretive dance

there’s been a seagull or seagulls on our chimney for a while. They have chicks and have been shouting very loudly whenever I go out to the car or indeed anywhere. Tonight one of the chicks took a wrong turn at the second chimney pot on the left and has ended up on the roof of the conservatory, piteously chirping while mother gull stands aloft wondering what the hell’s happened.

Chick has since slid down the conservatory roof – it being reinforced plastic and offering little grip to little webbed feet. Unsure what to do we’ve left him for now, but I think he’s just sat in the guttering, looking at the stars with any luck.

Mother gull may not know when chick has gone but there’s no way I’m going up the roof. I might have to go and stick the chick on the flat roof in the utility if he falls further but even then it’s not clear if the mother gull knows when little ‘en has gone. And the flat roof leaves chick a bit exposed. Any passing peregrine falcon would be down like a shot – actually I may be maligning aforementioned falcons here but you know what I mean.

And cats. What about the cats. Actually there aren’t many round here – apart from the mystery one who discovered my pea-growing ‘raised flowerbed’ drawers out the front and took a shine. (Well, not a shine, actually….)

I will keep you posted.

And here is my favourite joke of today: The chick is twittering on the roof. I think he’s doing it from his mobile phone rather than a laptop.

I thank you.

[dance dance dance]

breakfast at auntie lil’s and uncle mark’s

Arlo helps himself to… krispies i think…

yum yumm

You can tell the time by how many bags are under my eyes.

Really not sure

Today me and my dad took a bunch of stuff to the tip to throw away.

It included a series (5/6) of photo albums and scrap books that I’d used in my teens to store memorabilia. There are ticket stubs, receipts, flyers, posters, the very occasional photo, notes, stuff like that. On the way back I realised there may well have been a run of photos I should have held on to. But I don’t know if they were there to be honest. And even if they were they were of me being a goth in a Northampton drama group. Interesting but not earth shattering. All the same, I hope I’ve done the right thing. I think I have. Time to clear out and move on. Focus on future etc.etc. Hence the chucking out of so many script copies and notes for shows that will never get made.

It occurred to me, as I loaded up more photos on iPhoto, computers haven’t really brought more logic or rationality to the process of storing images and memories. I’m happy to agree this is just me, but there’s no real structure to my storing of media – there are duplicates and back up copies everywhere and I don’t delete stuff from the phone camera as it’s still there for backup.

My file structure for scripts in progress is hardly better – countless saved new versions of stuff that doesn’t even have an ascending order or anything like that. Completely un-navigable by anyone but me, and then even I’d have problems telling you what was what beyond the file I was working on now. (and even then I’d probably end up comparing the dates). Even with the iPod my only sense of order is knowing that a track is on there and having a logical way of finding it, rather than knowing exactly where to go to.

Craving chaos? Or not significant at all.

At least the blog is automatically sequential, otherwise we’d really be screwed.