One giant leap for me

Dear Mum,

The photographs of family and friends that line my walls and shelves have been privy to a one woman show this weekend.

Their silence as I took my bow implied they were very severely underwhelmed by my script and its performance – I’m realistic, doubting their silence was reflective of their wonder at the spectacle.

I performed in my pyjamas, hair unwashed, no make-up on. It’s not a surprise they didn’t seem impressed. I didn’t bother changing my voice for different characters. I didn’t even try with the special effects – a dog barking being substituted by a weedy ‘woof’ whispered by yours truly.

Their reactions were not, however, my chief concern. The mission of this exercise was to time my script as if it were being presented.

As I paced my bedroom floor, stopwatch in hand, I was elated to learn that the script’s performance took 29 minutes and eleven seconds.

Scripts for the BBC Writers Room are meant to be at least thirty minutes in length. As previously mentioned, I did not have the facilities for sounds effects and I did not hugely worry about dramatic pauses etc. At times I also slightly rushed the dialogue, anxious to be sure about the length and flow of the piece (as discussed last week).

And yet I have produced 29 minutes of dialogue. The relief! It was celebrated with a vodka lime and lemonade and an embarrassing dance to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ around my bedroom. Friends and relatives continued to look unimpressed.

This week requires a huge trip to the post office – sending endless forms to banks and a tetchy letter to the student loans company. Plus, of course, the script – with the required cover sheet, properly formatted, secured by a bulldog clip, all just as the BBC Writers Room specifies.

Trying to not think about the costing of this trip (cheers, Royal Mail, for the new costs of postage – let’s just say you won’t be getting a Christmas card from me this year) I am feeling both excited and anxious about posting the script off.

It will be read again and again and again before then. Sorry friends and family who look at me from the surrounding photoframes. You’ve not heard the end of this yet...