It began, then.
It began on my mother’s birthday.
My mother, who was born itchy-footed, wanted to celebrate her day with a trip to the seaside–we both get a kick out of wild waves pitching into lighthouses and all that stuff–and so booked us into an hotel in Scarborough for the night. The hotel was within easy walking distance of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where Alan Ayckbourn still occasionally directs. In fact his current play, Life of Riley, is on its World Premiere tour with the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company at present. We therefore booked tickets for Fiona Evans’ The Price of Everything, which is also a World Premiere. This play was billed as “tense and thrilling”. They weren’t kidding. It was well written, beautifully directed (by Noreen Kershaw), and so convincingly acted that my mother feared for the sanity of the lead. It had moments of humour in it amongst the darkness, and a great deal of tenderness. All this, but if we’d known the plot in advance we’d have avoided it simply because it was very, very dark. Definitely not birthday celebration material. Brilliant play, go see it when it comes your way, but be warned that you will go home tense and emotionally drained and in need of large amounts of alcohol.
My NaNo word count for November 1st: 0.
Today we drove home from Scarborough. Mum took the wheel as far as Flamborough Head because it was sunny, despite the icy gale-force gusts. We went for a walk along the cliff top, then sat drinking tea in a nearby café until we could feel our hands again. And then it went dark, and the rains they did rain down. All the way home, I drove by other peoples’ rear lights. Couldn’t see a darn thing. For hours. We arrived home–but you guessed it already. Tense, emotionally drained and in need of large amounts of alcohol.
My NaNo word count for November 2nd: 503 (because I felt I really, really ought to write the first page at least.)
Not quite the flying start I’d envisaged, then.
The weird thing is that my first page has absolutely nothing in common with the first page I must have written and re-written at least a hundred times in my head before I actually sat down with the laptop. I’d planned to begin with an Inuit legend, but what came out was more in the way of a job interview, written as a monologue, with the reader as interviewee.
This story isn’t going to head in the direction I expected, at all. I just hope it doesn’t miss the best bits out!
