Sleeping With The Dead

In my final message of an email exchange last night, I happened to mention I was soon of to bed with The Times’ obituary pages. The response, read this morning, was that one they certainly hadn’t heard of before.

The last four or five nights have proved difficult trying to get to sleep, especially when the weather has been reasonably balmy. The computer has stayed on longer as I did a re-write on a script and then prepared for the third sit-down next week.

Rather than just an afternoon, the agent has arranged it so that we have the flat to ourselves for the whole day. Referring back to an earlier tape, I came across a point in the conversation where the Actress calls to her agent, “We’re talking about sex!” I'm sure the friend who first introduced us will want to use that as his ring-tone.

Yesterday afternoon the second reader gave me notes of a script she had kindly taken the time to read. Luckily they were as positive as the first reader’s response, earlier in the week. (If you’re feeling left out, I did ask for readers at the end of a post five days back but nobody responded).

As the evening drew on, taking into account both sets of notes, I eventually figured out what adjustments needed to be made to approve the material and started jotting down notes of my own. That was going to be it for the day but somehow the computer stayed on, even when I switched to a scratch pad and started putting together dialogue exchanges for the next script.


By then midnight had come and gone. It didn’t help that BBC2 decided to show Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent Magnolia. Start a three-hour movie just short of the Witching Hour why don’t you? The DVD is up on the shelf, which means I can watch it any time I want, but maybe because it was in the schedule that I kept it on with the volume down to begin with.

It’s easy to get caught up in the multi-strand narrative. If I had just been waiting for the frogs I could have reached for the shiny disc. But before that there’s the group sing-a-long to Aimee Mann’s Wise Up. And then before that there’s... well, you see my point.

Working well into each evening has left my mind still racing when I eventually retire. Trying to read before lights out hasn’t been as beneficial as expected because I’ve simply got caught up in the books. Instead I’ve experimented taking the newspaper with me, picking items I’d skipped during the day.

Yesterday happened to be the obituary of Lieutenant-General Alain Le Ray, the first man to successfully escape from Oflag IVC – Colditz Castle. That, and the next couple of pages, helped do the trick. Eventually, like Green, Berry and Hill, Delmer Darion, Sydney Barringer and the frogs, I finally dropped... off.

Apparently the weather forecast for the day I see the Actress again is for 25C, light showers.