Continued thanks to those donating to the programme fund. There are too many of you to email back personally, but I am very, very grateful. Hope more of you will join the gang! Be great to be in profit before the things have even been printed. You're all brilliant.
Stamford is a pretty town that I had never heard of before until they asked me to play its art centre. It's near Peterborough. Spalding isn't far away. It doesn't get much better than this! I had a chance to take a quick walk around once I got there. For some reason being in an oldee stylee town with nice pubs and antique shops and every other premises being an antiquarian book store makes me want to eat fudge. This is not a euphemism. I get a craving for fudge. And even though I am on a diet, I succumbed to that craving. Mmmmm, fudge.
I finished my circuit of the town, now also wanting to buy an antiquarian book, but alas being too late cos all the antiquarian bookshops had closed by 5.30. All of them. Not even one of the hundred that I passed thinking it might be worth staying up for the early evening fudge-fuelled visiting comedian trade. There was a small church opposite the venue, with old gravestones displayed up against the walls. I always love the bitter-sweet feeling of looking at gravestones and so took a few minutes to see who had once been buried in this yard, but had now had their markers moved to line the graveyard.
Alas most of the details had been worn away by the weather, but a few more professionally enscribed tombs had retained their information. All the people I read about had been dead for at least 150 years. It doesn't take long for pretty much everything we have done to be forgotten, except for whatever details survive the wind and rain on the bit of granite that we're given at the end of it all. Or that we used to be. Most of us just float on the wind with maybe a little inscription on a tiny metal plate somewhere. I love death. And also life. It's important to enjoy life before we become some bones in a hole with a gravestone that can't be read. Or even one that can be read. It's no use to you anymore if people know who you used to be. Or at least what your name was, how old you were when you died and the fact that someone who put you in the hole is under the misapprehension that you were just asleep.
In the unusually smelly dressing room, there were some photocopies of some old bills from the theatre from Georgian times. It used to cost 5p in old money to see the shows, but the theatre would be warmed with fires beforehand to make it comfortably warm - I like details like that. All the actors were listed by name (all called Mr or Miss or Mrs with the respect that is due to all actors). All of them were as equally dead as the people in the church-yard. In fact, I would think it's almost certain that some of the people in the graveyard saw the people on the theatre bill. I love stuff like this.
I don't think that the fact our life is over and out in this way makes it any less significant. In fact it sort of makes it more significant. If it's over when it's over then this little window of time is all we have. If you think we live for infinity afterwards then life isn't very significant at all. After all what is a finite amount of time when compared to an infinite amount of time. I'm not mathematician, despite my two A levels, but as a percentage of a finite immortal existence, 70 odd years would be an irrelevant number. It's not even a percentage is it. Cos it's 70 out of infinity. But I am sure you get my point. If we believe life is over when you die then the whole thing takes on an extra significance. But only for you of course. No-one else give a shit. Some sappy twat might look at your grave-plaque or name on a poster in a couple of centuries time and go "Ahh!", but he'll only be doing that because he is considering his own mortality. It's himself he'll really be thinking of, not you. And anyway you are only some symbols etched on a paper, stone or metal by then anyway. Or possibly a picture. Of you being caught eating one of several yoghurts. No-one cares.
I see some of the relatives of the victims of the 11/9 atrocity want the bloke who took the training but didn't do the flying into the buildings bit to be given the death penalty. This is stupid. That bloke believes that when he dies he is going to heaven to be serviced by 72 virgins. Killing him isn't going to put any extreme religious fundamentalists off of their mentalist plans. I think they should make his punishment be to keep him alive FOREVER. To begin with just in a small room, but as he gets weak from old age to be kept on a machine that will artificially extend his life for all time. And when the human race is about to die out he should be placed in a rocket with life-support so that he circles the universe for all time. That would not only prevent him from getting to the virgins and teach him a valuable lesson, it would also put off all the other zealots who thought they'd discovered a quick route to being up to their plums in virgins (if such a notion isn't a contradiction in terms). Don't kill him you idiots. That's just what he wants. If atheists commit crimes then kill them (then they get the double punishment of having their life curtailed and spending eternity in burning sulphur), but why reward the religious with an easy route to paradise.
You'd think as religious fundamentalists themselves the American Christian Right would appreciate that.
