How The Gimps Stole Christmas

I had a total hip replacement last December and couldn’t fly to Canada for Christmas.  The surgery was to correct a sporting injury, not to offset the effects of being really, really old. Although Chris, my producer here at MYPC, thinks it suspect that I refer to tobogganing as a sport – ‘Where’s the skill? How long did you train? Do you get points?’

Not flying meant Christmasing in London which, if all my friends had been in town, would have been a joy.

But they weren’t. The selfish lowlifes were in Ireland, Germany, Hastings and North Africa (yoga retreat). I was panicking when Emma, the ingrate skipping off to Frankfurt within days, said ‘What about Lisa? She’s great at Christmas. Spend it with her.’

Lisa is great at many things. She is great at friendship, evidenced by her rubbing my back as I threw up five times within twenty minutes upon getting out of recovery two weeks before; she’s great at laughing because she weeps when you’re really funny and I test myself to see how long it takes me to ruin her mascara; she’s great at singing, composing, conducting.

And yes, she’s great at Christmas. I lit up like a bulb, rang, invited her and she agreed. She’d come for Christmas Eve, stay the night, and wake up to presents with me the next morning.

I ordered all our feasting on line - I could only carry one bag at a time on crutches, and it banged repeatedly against the metal as I lurched – and the groceries arrived on the Eve itself.  I threw myself into making my sister-in-law’s irresistible spinach-dip-in-bread-bowl, a salmon-dill starter and put out enough Christmas cookies to choke a reindeer. I found the edited copy of A Christmas Carol Lisa and I had agreed to read aloud (with our friend Melissa, - who miraculously had materialised in London - if she were free), yanked up the volume on the Spotify Christmas channel and felt the waves of excitement and transforming joy the season inspires in me, something that other people find delightful and infectious or sick-making and repulsive (in almost equal measure) (maybe 60/40).

I also put a ‘Happy Birthday’ sign on the door. Not as a message for Baby Jesus, if he happened to drop by, but because, Christmas Eve is Lisa’s birthday.

She arrived just as the sun was setting, the lights on the tree making the front room glow, standing on the doorstep like the Elf of the Season (she’s even shorter than I am): bright-faced, dark-haired, green-eyed, timeless. We embraced.

I noticed as she made her drooling way towards the birthday cake, ready for her on the table, that even her speedy glee could not disguise the fact that she was limping. If I were someone who could raise an eyebrow I would have. Instead I said

‘Lisa?’ and pointed at her leg. She looked down.

‘Oh, yes, yes’ she said brightly. ‘My knee. I was painting rather a lot. I might have strained it. Up and down ladders. And steaming wall paper. A bit of sand-blasting. But I’m fine.’

She propped herself up on the sofa. We put pillows under the offending joint. I plied her with gifts and all the cards that had been sent to her, sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and the holiday kicked off.

In the midst of our second piece of cake and my third verse of the song  -  ‘How ooold are you,  how oolld are youuuuu’  - we heard a knock. Our heads shot up. Dared we hope? Could it be? I hobbled to my feet, opened the door and screamed ‘Melissa!’

‘Melissa??’ Lisa shouted

‘MELISSA!’ I hollered.

And Melissa, slightly deafened, it was. She hugged me and dived head first into the spinach-dip-in-bread-bowl, stopping en route to notice that Lisa had her knee propped up. She pointed.

‘What’s going on? You look worse than her. And she has a titanium spike in her thigh.’

‘Nothing. Bit tender. Too much plastering.’

Melissa narrowed her eyes, unconvinced.

‘Is it swollen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘A little.’

‘Can you walk?’

‘Not much.’

‘You should see someone.’

Lisa scoffed. I paused. It hadn’t occurred to me that Lisa should see someone. Anyone who didn’t actually need her rotting femoral head cut out and replaced with a ceramic ball and socket shoved into her through an incision 20 stitches long didn’t seem to me, at this point, to be someone who needed to see anyone.

‘Should she?’  I asked, feeling negligent.

‘She should see someone.’ Melissa stood in her jacket, looking ready to carry Lisa to the lift if necessary.

‘I’m fine,’ Lisa said. ‘Have a cookie.’

After ten minutes of protesting, remonstrating and finally accepting that Lisa was refusing to go anywhere further than six inches away from her cake, Melissa sat down with a red-frosted reindeer and a cup of tea, her eye warily on Lisa’s knee. I handed out the salmon and dill starter, picked up the edited Dickens and said, full of delight ‘Shall we begin?’

It is doubtless, dear reader, that you have heard of Charles Dickens and I am sure I may attest, without contradiction, that you have had some experience of his Christmas Carol. But if you’ve only seen this story adapted for stage or screen, only watched it on the telly in any of its deservedly famous versions, then, my beloved English-speaking comrade - you have got to read the fucker. It is unalloyed genius. It rolls from one perfect sentence to another. I challenge you to career to the final chapter without feeling uplifted and changed. Melissa, Lisa and I took turns, beginning

‘Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that - ’

And moving on through every exquisite, pulse-quickening, heart-gladdening phrase.

‘The writing, the writing’ Melissa would murmur between chapters.

We saw Scrooge through to his redemption, finished the dip, the salmon and most of the cookies and it was almost 11, time for Melissa to go. She took a parting glance at Lisa’s leg.

‘If you need a doctor – call me.’  (She said this not because she is a doctor, but because she has a car.) (She could drive us to one.)

I hopped on my good hip to the door, pooh-poohed the suggestion, wished her a Merry Christmas and said good night.

Lisa and I settled into the final hour of the day, Perry Como asking God to rest all gentlemen merry, the popcorn strung on the tree looking like a localised white Christmas. I kept my hand on Lisa’s knee, wishing it better, and she was comfortable enough to try to stand unaided and stagger to the kitchen (the home of more spinach-dip-in-bread-bowl).

I rose at the same moment, adjusting the volume on Perry – I love a good, loud ‘Joy to The World’  - when I was nearly toppled backwards on my crutches into the tree, hearing Lisa scream as though someone had just gunned staples into her eyes.

‘What!??’ I shouted.

She was pale.

‘It – it- hurts,’ she whispered.

I got her to sit back down and together we lifted her trouser to look.

A large, red throbbing mound was rising out of her leg where her knee should have been. It extended down to her shin. Resting and elevating hadn’t seemed to have helped it at all.

It was 11:10 pm.

Lisa and I looked into each other’s eyes and knew there was nothing for it.

Within twenty-five minutes of going – Melissa was back. The doctor we rang gave the name of the local A&E, open at midnight on Christmas Eve. Melissa knew the way.

I gave Lisa one of my crutches to make it to the car.

‘I got my hip replaced for this reason alone!’ I shouted as we made our slow, gimpy way to Melissa, standing outside her idling vehicle, all doors open for us and our support devices.

The streets were lit and quiet. We arrived at the emergency room of the all-night clinic in under 12 minutes. Whether it was because of the good humour in the car,  the delayed healing effects of Dickens or knowing we’d only eaten half the cake and still had half to go, Lisa was feeling better.  She was able to put weight on her knee and could even manage the stairs by herself. Melissa and I exchanged looks over her short, dark-haired self.

Had this been necessary?

If it wasn’t it was too late to ask because suddenly we were in reception, being met by a nurse who told us a doctor would see us shortly. The waiting room was empty but, sure enough, within moments a doctor emerged from his office, escorting out a mother, father and baby, closing the door behind them.

The young family sat and smiled at us, we smiled at them. They spoke Arabic amongst themselves: a remarkably handsome family, the little boy almost irresistibly alert and intelligent-looking. Lisa leaned across me to Melissa and whispered.

‘We’re the Three Wise Guys,’ and sure enough, we looked like nothing so much as attendants on this Holy Waiting Room Family.

The doctor re-emerged and called Lisa’s name. ‘I’m coming with you,’ Melissa announced and Lisa beamed her gratitude, walking suspiciously well across the room.

The Family and I continued to smile at each other. I couldn’t take my eyes off the boy who kept swivelling his head around to grin at me. I heard them exchange one or two words of English. I was emboldened.

‘What is his name? He’s very beautiful.’

‘Oh thank you! Thank you’ the father said, stroking his son’s face.

‘He had a cough but he’s fine.’ The mother looked at the little boy who, obligingly, gurgled healthily.

‘He is Philo,’ said the father, ‘”he who loves his father”’.

I was enchanted.  I wanted them to keep talking.

‘And – and does Philo like music?’ I asked.

It was the right question.

‘He LOVES it, he loves music. We sing and he tries to sing along, he dances.’

‘What do you sing?’

‘We sing Christmas carols. Arabic Christmas carols. He loves them.’

‘No!’ I shouted, in delight. What a thought. An Arabic Christmas hymn.

‘Yes!’ they shouted back, laughing.

‘Sing them, sing them for me!’  (You can see on which side of the delighted/repulsed scale I was hoping they felt.)

After a few moments of shyness and conferring with his enthusiastic wife, Philo’s father agreed. He would sing. (Delighted!)

‘This is a Christmas hymn he likes. We sing in Arabic, but it is a famous English hymn as well. It is about the joy of Christmas, “Ring bells, announce the love of Jesus Christ”.’

I leaned forward.  A Christmas hymn from the Middle East.  This was going to be good. I anticipated the aching beauty of an ancient chant, that spine-thrilling sound of the Muezzin’s call to prayer or a Jewish cantor.  Philo’s Father cleared his throat and began, in a sweet voice, his rhythmic Arabic lilting with the tune.

And he was right.

I knew the song.

It was famous.

But it wasn’t a hymn.

It was ‘Jingle Bells’.

I blinked rapidly, trying to keep my composure as mother and father sang the chorus together and baby Philo grinned and flapped and cooed.

They finished and I applauded wildly. Philo’s father was radiant.

‘You see? the same as in English.’

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that ‘Jingle Bells’ in English is the 19^th century equivalent of Eminem’s ‘Shake that Ass’ – advice on how to pull, basically – so just thanked him, thanked his mother and laughed with Philo who, I could swear, winked at me.

Lisa and Melissa emerged, moments later, Lisa, unless I was much mistaken, looking slightly-shame faced. I introduced them to the family, we all wished each other Merry Christmas in English and Arabic (wishes all the more satisfying when you know Melissa is Jewish). As the automatic doors opened, letting us out into the cool, damp night, we turned to see the father holding up his baby son’s hand. Waving.

I asked Lisa if she wanted one of my crutches.

‘No, no. I seem to be better.’ She hobbled expertly down the steps.

‘What did the doctor say?’

Melissa pressed her car keys. The door unlocked.

‘Not enough cake,’ she said.

I raised both my eyebrows (yes, this I can do). I inhaled sharply.

'No. That's my fault.' I said. 'I bought the cake.'

Melissa shrugged. 'She needs more.'

Lisa limped to the car. 'He seemed a bit put out. I think he thought I was wasting his time,' she admitted.

We were home in ten minutes. Melissa freed us – and our crutches - from the back seat. I hugged her, back lit by the twilight-blue snowflakes suspended from the lamps lining the empty street. It was the last moment of Christmas Eve. Something imaginary and powerful was happening in the minds of most children (and the adults who had minds like mine) at that very moment. I held Melissa tighter and felt a surge of all things possible, of what people can do when they feel hopeful and loved.

'Urgent Care Department of St Charles's Hospital,’ she said, getting back in the car. ‘That's where I want to spend my birthday.’

'I'll book it,' I said, waving as she drove off.

Lisa and I tottered towards the building. Trees left on all night were blinking in one or two windows. The sky was close with clouds.

‘Alright. One of us has to say it,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think that’s true.’

‘You’re more tiny than I am. And you look, I don’t know, more Dickensian.’

She laughed (I think this was her way of agreeing). 

And she asked for blessings on us, everyone. 

Then we went home and finished the cake.


***

Click here to listen to Philo's favourite carol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-AYz_VvtYc 

Click here for my sister-in-law's famous spinach-dip-in-bread-bowl. Add enough mayo to smother a very big Elf to death. (Not that you'd want to, of course.) (Unless you're one of the 40%...)

http://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/spinach-dip-in-bread-bowl-recipe/1/

Pitch Perfect

Chris and I are on the verge of worldwide recognition. Well, verge may be misleading. ‘On the way to’ is more precise.  ‘Heading towards.’   Yes, we’re ‘heading towards’ worldwide recognition.
   

If you want to be a stickler perhaps ‘Planning for’ could describe most accurately our relationship to worldwide recognition.  ‘We are planning to prepare for worldwide recognition.’

Now, having said that, we are closer to worldwide recognition in the great scheme of the evolution of the universe than the first oceanic life forms were to growing feet and walking out of the water. That took 4,666 million years.

We’re closer than that.

And I’ll tell you why. It’s because our pitching  - and our attitude to pitching  - has got better. We are pitching to people who are more likely to catch.

For those of you not hip with industry lingo – unlike Chris and myself who are on the verge of preparing for worldwide recognition - pitching means to throw an idea into the mind of an editor/developer/commissioner and see how it blooms. Watch it come to life behind their eyes, blossoming into a fragrant and life-enhancing garden of hilarity, eroticism and poignant observation. The possibilities of the idea reach into the gullet of the developer and grasp her, asphyxiate her, knock her unconscious until, 18 months later, a fully-fledged runaway, worldwide hit is born.  

I know that in this scenario, our idea is like the alien gestating in John Hurt. Maybe with happier consequences, but still not pleasant for Mr Hurt.

Forgive me.  I’m distracted, preparing to plan to be on the verge of worldwide recognition.

We had our most recent pitch yesterday. I won’t say it was at an internationally recognised broadcasting corporation based in Britain that rhymes with -  KGB; I’ll say it was at the… Schmee-Schmee-Schmee. We were met by what looked like a (tall, handsome, warm, friendly) 12-year old in charge of development. Midway through the meeting I found myself leaning forward, looking desperately for a line in his face. Some indication of life etched on his brow.

‘Like a baby’s was his skin!’ I shouted at Chris through the foam of a chai tea latte at our debrief an hour later. ‘As though he’d just been ripped from his mother’s womb.’

‘Uterine skin,’ Chris agreed.

This pre-birth look didn’t keep us from liking him immediately – his clarity, his eagerness, his focus, his attention and the fact that he was obviously competent and probably, now we listened to him, over 21. He said yes, there was a home for our project. Schmee-Schmee-Schmee 2 did this sort of thing all the time. He’d been ‘entranced’ by the pitch, said it was convincing and I was obviously passionate. He was funny, present. Very nice smile.

‘But,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to mislead you. The bar for the writing is very high. For the spot you’re pitching, we are going with big names. Well known names. The biggest.’

He said a few well-known names. We knew the names. I won’t repeat the names but one of them was Schmom Schtoppard.  

He went on. ‘Not that a famous person can’t write a bad script. It happens. And someone no one knows can write something fantastic.’

He looked at us. ‘And that’s exciting. That’s what we want. How far have you got? Is there a script?’

I didn’t look at Chris.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There’s a script.’

His eyes lit up.

‘May I read it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You may not read it.’

He blinked at me. Here was an editor at the Schmeeb asking if he could read my writing. Asking for a copy of the script that I had written, presumably, for this exact purpose. And I was saying ‘No’.

I didn’t tell Wunderkind that that first draft of the script inspired the kind of comments that, in the most constructive way, tell you to treat every page as you would, say,  a waste oil: combustion, storage. Interring. Anything to prevent uncontrolled discharge of the words.

I looked him in the eye, steeling myself, as though he might reach into the nuclear waste compartment of my mind and retrieve the script.  ‘You will never, ever read that draft,’ I said. Icily. ‘No one I respect will ever read that draft.’

‘Ah,’ he said, negotiating the waves of defensive hostility rising from me like heat from a reactor.  He was very still. Then broke into a smile. ‘At least you respect me.’

After a luxuriously generous 50 minutes, he walked us to the door, saying he looked forward to reading my next draft.

 And he meant it. He said it several times.  We exchanged goodbyes. He had a nice hand shake.

‘Did you notice, Chris, he had a nice handshake.’ I sucked back a wave of tea and wiped away the foam moustache (the foam of the chai isn’t necessary but it adds the opportunity to impersonate Jerry in episode 157 of Seinfeld when George suggests they take a vacation from themselves and grow facial hair).

‘He had a nice handshake?’ Chris bit her lip. ‘That probably means mine was crap.’

I gasped.

‘You give crap hand shakes? Why would you ever give a crap hand shake?’

‘Because I’m distracted. I’m not thinking. I’m wondering where I’ve left my umbrella.’

‘You know, the crappest handshakes I’ve ever got, you know where they were?’

Chris downed her chai and shook her head.

‘In prison. When I worked in prison. These guys had broken and entered and stolen and committed grievous bodily harm and they had the coldest, weakest, flimsiest handshakes in the world. You’d think they had the cojones to rip off a bank, they could give a firm grip.’

I used the long spoon to stir the chai powder that gathered at the bottom of the cup.

‘One of the ex-offenders I worked with said it was because they didn’t trust me yet.’ A horrible thought occurred to me. ‘Maybe the prodigy thinks you didn’t trust him.’

‘He’s on our side, he liked us.’ She downed the dregs of her tea. ‘You just have to write a fantastic script.’

For whatever reason – the great confidence my parents had in me, the fine schooling I received, the support of my teachers, the fact that my friends still like to read excerpts from FLAXY: THE STORY OF A DOG, my first novel, at dinner parties – I know I’ll write a fantastic script. I’ve almost just told you, dear reader, ‘I’ve written a fantastic script.’ As it feels already done.

What is new is that I know I will allow this script, and from thence, all subsequent scripts, to burst out into the world and live. Do its job. Entertain the masses. I’m an entertaining-the-masses kind of girl.

And I thought to myself, biking home from the meeting, of the reason why I am only now ready for this new chapter to begin.

It’s because to negotiate worldwide recognition takes a degree of mental and emotional health I am only now capable of. Not to be overwhelmed by attention, demands, expectation – not to be cast into despair after you’ve reached the pinnacle of your profession and there’s nowhere better to go, not to be anxious as you break with old ideas that you’re not lucky, not deserving, that it’s dangerous to aim so high and to desire so much, that all this attention is immodest and obviously not lady-like – takes a self-awareness I have only begun to know.

If I had blasted forth, my hugely populist self, at any moment before now I could have – no, probably would have -  followed in the steps of Janis Joplin. Or Karen Carpenter. I would have ended up putting unwanted things into me (heroin) and keeping wanted things out of me (food). I would have thought external recognition had something to do with my worth. I could have been launched forth on the strength of one or two ideas then left twiddling my thumbs at the top of the tower thinking ‘Well, what the fuck do I do now?’ Devoid of further content. Panicked.

Every single pitch this year has been enjoyable; every single commissioner/developer/editor has been friendly, receptive, intelligent, funny and kind. We have gone from ‘It’s very well written, but too dramatic for comedy’, to ‘It’s very well written, but too funny for drama’ to ‘It’s very well written but tonally not right’ to‘ Go on. Show me.’

The real reason guys in prison don’t shake your hand with more confidence is because people full of self-regard don’t hold other people at gun point and demand their money. People who know and like themselves don’t break into other people’s houses, don’t beat up other people and don’t do heroin.

Just as people who know and like themselves know worldwide recognition isn’t the same as success. That success is something else altogether.

Chris and I are verging on preparation for plans to head towards worldwide recognition. Because right now we’re enjoying success. Everything else is foam.

***

Because all the writing and pitching and succeeding at MYPC is taking priority, this blog will now appear monthly. Thank you for reading and being part of the story.

Ode To Joe

I’ve just come from the Munch exhibition at Tate Modern. I went with my ex-boyfriend. We hadn’t seen each other since November 2007. I asked him, standing at the bar of the Members’ Room, how long he thought it had been. He looked at me.

‘It’s been a couple years,’ he said. He read my face. ‘Maybe three. Or four.’

‘Four years and nine months,’ I said. ‘But who’s counting?’

‘Well, well,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I have stories to tell you.’

After coffee we went to the exhibition. I took the pamphlet the steward handed me at the door and read, as I strolled through the familiar images of heightened colours and obscured faces, that Munch  belonged to a bohemian set whose first commandment was ‘Thou shalt write thy life.’

A thrill charged my spine. I looked at my ex-boyfriend and said to Munch, silently and you might think incongruously, amidst the tortured self-portraits and sick-green evocations of illness and despair, (incongruous as I’m basically an artist who wants to write about jokes and sex) ‘Mon semblable, mon frere’.

Because.

My ex-boyfriend – I’ve got to make up a name for him, it’s getting tiresome writing m.ex.b, I’m calling him – Silvius. No. Guillaume. No. Joe.  He’s Joe. JOE has been the inspiration for two, count ‘em, two stage plays and a screenplay, stories with which I’d spent more time than I had him (we dated for just under two years). And ninety minutes into our reunion, a meeting which involved me seeing, for the first time in my entire life, outside of bad situation comedy, someone take a mouthful of tea and laugh so hard she spat it up over herself, her skirt, the table and the leather seat while Joe calmly handed someone a handkerchief from his pocket so she could mop it up and wipe her face as she continued to make gasping noises, keeling over on the banquette and not caring if she stained the only summer wardrobe she owned – ninety minutes in, I say, Joe had already said half a dozen things I tried to type into the iPad of my mind; remarks and insights and passionate expression of belief -  ‘It is not your job to get in your own way; that is other people’s job’ that reminded me why I loved him so much and why the scripts had to be written.

If Munch had known Joe, his picture would have been here.

**

I had started writing my life just before I met Joe. I was commissioned to create a one-act for the Bridewell Theatre in 2004, a play that became the first half of Torches -  a story about what happens when you sleep with a good friend (you fall in love, cry a lot and escape to Greece for a week if you must know). Both Date With Dillon and Sirens are autobiographical stories I’ve performed as what I called ‘Stand Up Tragedy!’ And in the summer of 2006 Joe and I broke up and the second half of Torches was born. It is now a full-length play about two couples who meet on the 5th November to reunite or part forever, as bonfires go up all over town.

These stories have been performed and broadcast in fringe theatres, small cinemas, and read a few thousand times on line. My first radio play, they told me, reached an audience of 300,000. I clutched my chest and swooned until my producer said that was just very slightly average. And average just isn't good enough.

I have always been hugely ambitious. I have always imagined a world-wide forum for every story I tell. I want an intimate conversation with as many people as possible.

It’s not that I don’t I think my producer and I are on the right track. Chris and I have met commissioning editors at Sky, the BBC (Comedy and Drama), Channel 4 in September, The Royal Court. The Soho is in the offing.  That public, intimate conversation is swirling, in the potential universe.

But seeing Joe at the Tate Modern, the site of our very first date in 2004  (a date in which I sat opposite him, knowing after five minutes that we’d have amazing sex) (reader, we did), me still single in 2012 and not yet having the world-wide conversation, drop-kicked me into a vertiginous spiral of feeling that I was very unchanged from the woman he charmed eight years ago and wondering just what the fuck I had accomplished since.

http://www.google.com/imgres?num=10&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=665&tbm=isch&tbnid=2zN4mZNABxI2-M:&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Munch_Ashes.jpg&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Munch_Ashes.jpg&w=925&h=795&ei=hro4UK2gBKmN0AXKhYGIBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=186&vpy=149&dur=887&hovh=208&hovw=242&tx=91&ty=123&sig=106025660298364628340&page=1&tbnh=148&tbnw=174&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:76

**                                                      

When I arrived, they were evacuating the building for a fire alarm. I had a panicky clutch in my chest, ‘Oh no, maybe this is an omen!’ (An omen of what? Joe and I already broken up. And got back together. And broken up; there was no more blood under this bridge) but within ten minutes I was walking up the six flights to the Members’ Room, wondering if I would recognise him. I wondered if I would know him right away or only eventually, after that shocking moment when you think ‘Fuck. I used to kiss you?’ I was happy on the settee, watching what seemed like a parade of Italian-looking men (Joe is American but his last name is Guidicianni), thinking he might not recognise me, when there he was, coming out of the lift, a little wet (it had bucketed during the alarm), but smiling, and walking towards me with open arms.

He looked good. His face entirely unchanged in five years; freakishly young, like he bathes in the blood of virgins or loaned his soul to Beelzebub. In his late fifties, he could pass for early forties. His hair is a bit thinner (‘I am glad that I can still chew most of my own food; not much dribbling either’), a bit more silver but it all suits him and he was in a white cotton shirt that set off the slight darkness of his skin and brown eyes.

He flashed his pass at the desk. He was frustrated that they’d renumbered the floors. Had been six, now it was five.

‘This is why I don’t carry a gun.’ He held open the door to the café. ‘I said “Is it the same altitude? Is it the same number of floors?” Oh yes they said. ‘But now we have a floor ‘Zero’. For the Olympics. It’s better.”’

He was funny about his frustration but I remembered it was this kind of intensity that made me nervous when we were dating. A GUN, already? I am the product of a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture in which you inhale your negative feelings or feel very bad if you express them. Joe had neither of these reservations, which had resulted in pyrotechnic misunderstandings more than once.

But. It had made for great material.

We ordered our drinks. As he expressed his views about bad committee decisions that you wish you could have heard to shoot down in the planning stages, rather than watch die slowly and painfully, about the absurdity of a fire drill I knew, as I hadn’t known when we were dating what was bothering him. He had told me to meet him on the 6th floor, it was now the 5th; he had arrived on time, more than on time, half an hour early, but they kicked him out and he was late. He had made a commitment, honoured his commitment, and then, beyond his control, had not been able to keep it.

His heart leapt out against the externals. He’d done everything he could to be the man who keeps his promise. Not being that man was untenable.

Munch understood. Joe felt kinda like this:

http://www.ovaering.no/filer/ImageArchive/image.asp?imageid=184116

I knew, instinctively, this was true. And wondered why I hadn’t known it when it mattered most, when I was sleeping with him and wanting him to meet my family? Was it another instance of experience being what you get just after you need it?

And then I remembered.

I’d written three scripts about Joe, two stage plays and a screenplay. In every one of those scripts Joe is a huge-hearted, clever, powerful and erotically-motivated man who wants to keep his promises.

I’d written my way into knowing Joe.

Ten minutes later I was spitting tea.

At  4:00 we walked my bike along the Embankment, towards Waterloo and his tube. We discussed dating. He’s recently single (I’m still single, get the distinction?) and remembering his un-partnered self.  I told him how I’d been found on line by someone I’d fancied hugely when I was 18, when I’d thought of myself as a greasy schlump with bad skin, only to discover the guy had actually liked me.

‘Well of course,’ Joe said. ‘There are two things you have to know. You have to realise the profound effect you have on people. And you have to go back and readdress that story. The story of the schlump.’

We entered Blackfriars’s pedestrian tunnel, me wheeling my bike behind him. He called over his shoulder, his voice echoing off the tiles.

‘And you can do this. You recreate yourself every morning. You wake up and you say ‘Hm. Which Stephanie am I going to be today?’ It’s a playwright’s job, of course. Not a problem for you.’

I kept my eyes on the crowd, ostensibly to prevent my pedals from impaling children in push chairs, but mostly because I couldn’t look him in the face. I laughed, in a fake way, and confessed that these days I felt slightly less able than usual. I didn’t mention the lack of world-wide recognition and sky-scraping income but thought I could talk about dating.

‘I seem to have a stamp emblazoned my forehead,’ I shouted, threading through a French family of six, all eating ice cream.  ‘It says “Are you married? In a relationship? Chat Me UP!”

We emerged into the sun.

‘Every guy who’s liked me for the past 36 months has been involved with someone else.’

Joe kept up his steady roll beside me.  He’s not tall which suits a woman whose friends have taken to calling ‘Hobbit’. His shoulder felt familiar, just above mine.

‘Last week four of them checked in,’ I said, sadly. ‘Within 36 hours. Three of them had DREAMS about me.’

(This is true. My astral body is getting a lot more action than any other body I’m connected to at the moment.)

I told Joe this couldn’t be coincidence. I must be putting something out there. A vibe. Something in my less sanguine moments I call ‘The Chump Frequency’.

‘No, no, it’s them,’ Joe observed, loyally unequivocal. ‘Married guys. I have no moral objection, I have no philosophical aversion to what married guys do with women who are not their wives. But it just seems So Hard To Focus. It’s like – you’re at a meal. You’re at a wonderful meal and someone has slapped a nice, juicy steak down in front of you. And you’ve got your knife and your fork and you are just about to bite into this luscious steak and you look over there, over there, and you see, someone has shrimp scampi with linguini and you reach over, you lunge and you shove it in your mouth! and as you’re shoving you look over there, and some guy has ravioli -  and you jump up, grab the ravioli and shove THAT in your mouth. And I’m just saying, guys, eat what’s in front of you. You don’t want to be grabbing food off someone else’s plate.’

The day was hot but the river, whipped in small waves, looked cool. We approached the Hungerford Bridge, watching the sun ping off the water. I felt an ease rising under my ribs. The air, the light, Joe’s warmth. The sense that he’d said something of huge importance, if I could metabolise it, or if he could just say it again.

‘Now, this is all here for you,’ he said, waving his hand in the direction of either the Shell Building, the National Theatre or a man in a stall selling bratwurst. ‘You know that right? You would have no trouble, seeing an opportunity and leaping? making like the cobra? You have this effect, you will meet so many men in your world and business, you’re not stuck at home writing by yourself, and god knows you’ve got the goods.’ He looked away and inhaled sharply, remembering our intimacy (which he said I enjoyed at particularly high decibels). ‘Jesus Mary, my left ear still hasn’t recovered. I was sure the cops would break down the door. “Sir, are you responsible for this noise?” “No, officer. Well, yes, officer – “'

We stood near the steps to the bridge.

‘I want you to change your perception. That schlumpy girl, you see? she had it wrong. And next time I see you, I want tales of how you have implemented this wisdom. All right? You change your mind. Let the game come to you.’

We embraced with a promise to meet in the autumn.

It was too beautiful a day to go home so I sat at the counter on the Riverside Terrace of the Royal Festival Hall and watched the red buses, gleaming on the hot bridge.  I had the beginning of a feeling, difficult to describe but undeniable and strong, that from now on my plays would be better produced, and probably better known. My focus was shifting, and shifting fast. Joe had given me the key to my own desires. Which is to value them. Value the woman, not a schlump, who has those desires.

A woman he has always made feel valuable.

The ease in my chest rose higher, sped up and turned into joy. Maybe, in an alternate universe, Munch had known Joe. And they’d had tea. So he painted this:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.edvardmunch.org/images/paintings/sun.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.edvardmunch.org/the-sun.jsp&h=500&w=854&sz=91&tbnid=gVURQiWQSUL9xM:&tbnh=70&tbnw=120&zoom=1&usg=__UdSffw9jnOSSAoPZ-N9PrN8Np5s=&docid=Gfvwn_sfipqZ4M&sa=X&ei=3nAyUKPsOoWY1AWQl4HwDA&ved=0CFUQ9QEwAw&dur=32

127 Hours (actually, I think it was 12 minutes)

 I was just trapped in a lift.

That’s not accurate but I felt as though I was trapped in a lift because my bike was trapped in the lift.

I’ve had this bike in this lift 1,347 times but today,  as I stood in a reverie of how to solve act two of draft 11 of my play SIRENS,  the door opened slowly on the 9^th floor, the back wheel of the bike caught, rose up with a deathly squeal and jammed.

I could see the wide, verdant world beyond, through the half-metre of open door. I could have slid out but sans bicyclette.

As those of you who own bicycles know, those of you who cycle your way through a happy, free-wheeling life, this was not an option. You do not leave your wounded comrade on the muddy field of Passchendaele; you don’t leave your bike in a lift.

Not if it seems remotely possible that you can get it out.

I will confess to you now, there were some very long moments – feeling like 127 hours and giving me a stab of almost unbearable sympathy for Aron Ralston who cut his own arm off rather than die in a remote crevice in the badlands of Utah – because, let’s face it, the decision was of precisely the same import – a bike, an arm, THE SAME, RIGHT?  - there were moments when I thought I could not get it out. When I believed my bike and the lift would remain in this fused state, like an abusive domestic relationship, for their rest of their physical lives.

The countdown to panic began.

I tried brute force for a while (three minutes). Just yanking the fucker as hard as I could in the hopes that it would lodge free.  I’m stronger than I realise. One vital tug, one painful screech later and I’d managed to push the lift door off its rails.

The automated voice began to speak.

‘This lift is out of service. Do not operate. This lift is out of service.’

She sounded calm. Not furious, not blaming me. Not saying ‘You slobbering moron, why were you worrying about the end of act two of draft 11 of SIRENS and leaning, unwittingly, against the handlebars as the lift door opened?’

I took comfort in her neutral tones and plotted my next move.

As I fiddled with the release bar on the back wheel, I couldn’t help noticing that the situation in which I found myself was, in fact, precisely where my characters had ended up at the end of act two. They were stuck in the virtual lift of their own neuroses and I had no idea how to get them out.

 I loosened the locknut and fed out the skewer. The back wheel didn’t budge. It was pushed into the body of the frame. I leaned on the frame, trying to jiggle it back and forth.

No jiggling happened. If Vesuvius had erupted and set the bike and lift door in stone there could not have been less movement.

I leaned against the mirrored back wall of the lift and sighed. And, because thinking about my bike wasn’t working, I thought about my play.

It had a history of feeling just like my bike looked.

Two years ago Chris and I had hosted a reading of SIRENS at a friend’s mansion in Connaught Square. We had invited friends and guests, asked someone to film and gathered under a chandelier to discover the script was nine drafts away from being ready for this kind of publicity. The audience, expecting a much more finished piece, were accurate in describing everything that didn’t work. ‘I was disappointed’ one of the actors said. ‘You have to ask yourself why bother?’ someone else said.

I realise I’d been heading for this. The company was only four weeks old and I wanted Chris and me to have a charming success on our hands.  I wanted the charming success more than I wanted a useful night for the play.

The notes came thick and fast and I felt like an anaconda swallowing a goat. I thanked everyone as best as I could and said it would take me a while to digest.

I went home and wept until 3am.

Two years later I was ten days away from the next public exposure of the story. Chris and I, wiser now, had booked only actors and a script editor.  We kept expectations low. There were no cameras, no chandeliers. Everyone knew it was a work in progress. I was writing eight hours a day, moving the story moment by moment to where the three main characters had lost faith in themselves, their desires and their ability to realise their dreams.

And I had no idea what to do next.

‘Do not operate’ my incorporeal buddy said. ‘This lift is out of service.’

I leaned on the door, seeing if I could ease it back on its rails. A huge gap extended between where the wheel was and where it should be. I was going to need 13 men, a winch and a hydraulic jack (what they used to remove the 800lb boulder and free the remains of Ralston’s arm) (it’s THE SAME, RIGHT??) to get it back on track.

‘What do I do?’ I said out loud. My voice was blanketed in a half-sob. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘You and your bike are going to be fine,’ a voice said. 

I looked up to see if it was coming from my automated friend. The words OUT OF SERVICE moved peaceably across the display screen. Nothing else. Silence.

‘It’s all going to be fine.’

I glanced to see if anyone stood in the lift door. No one was calling from the floor above. I was alone.

I realised, then, it was not an external voice.

This was Me. Talking to me.

I calmed down. And listened.

‘You’re getting out of here. Just imagine you’re out of here. Feel as calm as you’d feel if you were out of here. Then do something,’ I said to myself.

I felt even calmer. On purpose.

And I thought.

Perhaps there was more give in the loosened back wheel than I’d found. What if, counter-intuitive though it was, I pushed it closer to the frame?

I gently straddled the back wheel and put my hands against the tyre. I pushed.

There was a quiet ‘pop’ and the frame slid to the side.

I picked up the locknut and skewer, hoiked my bike on my shoulder and eased everything out of the half-metre of open door.

The air was sweet. I noticed the vibrant green of the summer trees. Constant rain in July had made London fresh.

A friend rang the service contractor – who was paid a yearly fee and always on call - I re-attached my bike wheel and knew what my characters needed to do.

They needed to ask for help and listen for the answer. They needed to be calm  - on purpose.

**

Addendum: We had the reading. Reactions from actors below:

I thoroughly enjoyed it and I really like the play..

..the lovely script to read, the splendid food and company.. I really enjoyed it and was sorry to leave

There's never enough time at these things but I could've quite happily told you 300 things that were good about it. There's so much good in there...

It was an absolute pleasure Stephanie, just glad to be of assistance. Really enjoy where you're going with this.

(As Chris and I share a collective sigh of relief..)