“When are we going to have sex?” the girl asked.

“When you say ‘I love you’ and I say ‘I love you’,” the boy replied.

“I love you,” the girl said.

The boy looked at her and he felt sad.

I just watched Grizzly Man, a 2005 documentary about a man who lived in the Alaskan wilderness with brown bears for thirteen summers, filming them and campaigning for their protection, until he was eventually killed by one of them. It was an engaging look at a man’s obsessiveness, in this case an obsession with bears, with leaving the human world to live in their world. Why are stories of obsession so interesting? King of Kong: A fistful of Quarters is similar in that it brings the viewer to identify and empathise with a man who devoted a vast amount of time to being recognised as the greatest Donkey Kong player in the world.

I suppose obsession and enthusiasm make people interesting, and perhaps tell us something of the doggedness of human nature. Perhaps people just like to see people with focus to their lives, regardless of what, or how absurd, that focus is. Do we all feel lacking in focus at times? All the time? I certainly do, quite often. I try to focus my life on writing, but that’s not always possible. I only put Grizzly Man on because I didn’t feel in the right frame of mind to write, and I didn’t want to spend hours forcing words or staring at blank pages.

A good friend of mine told me she felt jealous sometimes of people who had focus or hobbies or know what they want to do. She cited my writing as an example, that she felt she doesn’t really have anything like that. I worry though, as I suppose, or hope, all creative people do, about whether I really am good, or as good as I want to be, which is very good, or if I just want to be so much that I convince myself I am. Especially now, it feels more of concern, because as I go forwards I stake more of myself on writing, as I spend years at university paying to learn how to become a better writing, working towards leaving with a degree in writing and nothing but.

(more…)

I am sitting on a train from Nottingham to Norwich as I write this. I have spent a few days at home, and now I’m thinking about my grandfather, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it is because of the old gentleman who asked me which train I was catching when I was stood on the platform, who mentioned in passing how he was stationed in Norwich sixty-five years ago, as an RAF pilot. My grandfather would have been only seven or eight years old then. Not that this man really reminded me of my grandfather, even if I could imagine him as one.

Perhaps too it is because the other day I saw a man, again completely unlike my father’s father, wearing an old jumper like the ones he used to wear; the ones which had that particular thick-woollen smell; the ones which I can still remember the coarse feel of against the skin of my little hands.

Today was also the day I sat on the flowery living-room settee watching Eurosport with my girlfriend and remembered, unexpectedly, that this was the same settee my grandfather lay dying upon in the summer of three years ago. That settee holds better associations too though, like the December we got it, when its fresh-cotton scent mingled with the anticipation of Christmas, or the afternoons when my cousin and I would lie languorously across it, eating sweets and watching children’s television.

(more…)

Read Part One

SCENE THREE

Extra 1 and Extra 2 sit on the two US chairs. Horatio and Esmerelda enter SR, Esmerelda’s arm linked somewhat uneasily through Horatio’s.

HORATIO: Here we are, at (with strong emphasis for the audience’s benefit) the theatre.

ESMERELDA: What are we going to see?

HORATIO: A play.

TRENT: Obviously.

Emma stifles a snicker.

ESMERELDA: What play, Horatio?

HORATIO: William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’, a classic love story about two starcross’d lovers who desperately want to be together, but cannot be because their families are at war and they do not have the benefits, the freedoms, of our modern- day life where there is nothing to keep two people who love each other apart.

(more…)

Unfortunately I have been, and continue to be, rather too busy to write anything for the site. There should be some new content in a few weeks, but until then I’ll post the short play I wrote for submission at the end of last year. I realise that reading plays is rather boring, but this one barely merits performance, so this is the only form in which it’s available. Hopefully this will tide over my miniscule, though much appreciated, readership until I have some time to get something decent up here, and in the meantime I might bug Molly to let me put some more of her poetry up (or anyone else that wants to volunteer something). Here’s the play:

Horatio & Esmerelda

SCENE ONE

The Stage is empty and illuminated with white artificial stage lighting. HARRY walks out to the front of the stage. TRENT is sitting, as he will be for much of the play, in the first row of the audience, writing in a notebook.

HARRY: Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Harold Singer, writer, actor and casting director, and I would like to welcome you to the first performance of my first play, ‘Horatio and Esmerelda’. Tonight I shall be playing the part of Horatio, a shy young man who overcomes his insecurities when he meets the girl of his dreams in a library. Slowly, as their love blooms, she brings him more and more out of his shell, bestows him with that lustre that only love can-

TRENT raises his hand, a pen between his fingers, as if in a classroom

HARRY: (To Trent) Um, yes?

TRENT: What are you doing?

(more…)

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11

12

“Mark, sorry about Friday night, just leaving like that. And sorry that I’ve not been in touch. I really owe you an explanation, and here it is: a couple of months ago, I got really involved with this guy, and it was all going well. Apart from his children, and though we got on really well, his kids just hated me for some reason, and it was like no matter what I did, I could not get them to like me. And eventually they kind of just broke up our relationship. Like even though we were getting along really well, he told me it just wasn’t working out, and it was all because of his kids. And it really hurt me.

(more…)

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

11

“Hi, Mum, I can come pick the girls up today.” It was Sunday.

“Mark, I tried to ring you yesterday.”

“I wasn’t in.” When I got back, I had been overcome with tiredness and had gone to bed and fallen asleep almost instantly.

“I know, but I tried ringing your mobile.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little telephone. It was switched off.

(more…)