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The next phase of house renovations begins today and so I headed out to Hitchin to avoid the scaffolders (in case they were the same ones who had bullied me off the road and were ready for a round 2 that only they could win). I plugged away at script 3 in betwixt drinking coffee and then buying a nice lunch. I look forward to the time when I can do the last two without having to worry about the first. Having a decent (and I am only talking about Cafe Rouge here) meal on my own makes me feel decadent and grown-up. Once upon a time I would have been miserable and self-conscious about dining alone, but now (provided it’s not the norm), it is an oasis of wonder.
By the end of the day I’d almost got script 3 into a good enough shape for tomorrow’s read-through, but had failed to get started on script 4. I love writing for these characters, but the pleasure is almost exactly balanced by the burden of getting the work done. The burden should feel lighter now that I am three quarters of the way through (probably more like a half as I anticipate some rewrites), but it doesn’t. My plan is to finish the book in the next 10 days and then return to the sitcom and knock out episode 4 and the second drafts before we go on holiday in June. The recording date keeps getting pushed back, which is good in most ways, but means this project is going to eat into my proposed grande vacance in July and August. Need that grande vacance.
"Un jour pendant la grande vacance, Jean a dit a son ami, “Puisque les temps c’est turne a beau, pourquoi ne pas en profite”” That’s the sentence (from memory and I couldn’t be arsed to do the accents) that our French teacher made the whole class learn to start our O level exam essay with. Seemed foolish to me even at the time, as surely the same person was likely to mark them all and at best, get annoyed.
But look, spelling mistakes aside, I still remember it. Also “euge, euge, acricolae hodie non laborant” from a Latin lesson where I had to act that out.
If I ever meet a French person during the summer holidays or a Roman during a farmers’ holiday then I am going to be golden. Until they ask me to elaborate.
It was a fairly relaxed day and it’s really only the lack of sleep and days off that is getting to me. But I hope I live long enough to retire, if only for a couple of months a year and can live the kind of lifestyle where I get to spend the afternoon in a cafe and am not expected to knock together a sitcom script.
