“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. (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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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