Coming Up Short

May Day Bank Holiday; a whole week late and pouring with rain, which figures. I had meant to sit down and write up the short film script Work Buddy and I had been mulling over for too long now.

Following Dolly’s example I was going to throw myself in and bash the first draft out in the allotted five hours. Typically things got in the way while I skimmed over the notes. By the time I got through The Sunday Times yesterday Prime Suspect 3, Perfect Dark and a few too many chapters of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys put paid to making any real headway.

Today there were other things on my mind as well. For instance, outside the neighbourhood M&S Food Hall, a MISSING poster was taped to the lamppost. It’s not unusual for families to post pictures of kitties that have gone astray or pooches that have gone walkies all by their lonesome. Which is why I’ve avoided the recently opened Pacific Fusion restaurant up the street.

From a distance the picture looked like a toasted ciabatta. It was only on closer inspection, coming back with the groceries, that I realised it was a missing tortoise. Somewhere in the area a family’s tortoise had gone walkabout. Unless it had gone into hiding and back into hibernation, or been on Benzedrine or had a lit firework lodged in its arse, just how far could it have gone?

I had the beginning of the script and the end. I knew the central character and his motives. Somehow there wasn’t enough connective tissue in my line of sight to join it all together. Trying to picture it all in my mind I absently snacked on the chorizo that was supposed to go into an egg dish saving me from having to nip out for a take away Foo Yung.

Bizarrely it was only when I was in the bath that I came up with a secondary character’s name. Once he was identified it magically all fell into place. By then it was too late to make a start so I scribbled down some notes to plough into it another day.