The festives are over, life returns to normal. Sporadically a Thank You note arrives from someone’s children, which only serves to remind us that we never got our own children to write thank you notes. Meant to, the Christmas holidays seemed so long that it appeared inevitable that at some point we’d all have time to sit down and do them… yet the Thank You notes never happened.
Now that school has returned, I can go back to working on my movie script, The Monkfish Cowboy, which is in development with Dan Films. Despite the fact that I usually write serial killer books, and that Dan have in recent years made both Creep and Severance, Monkfish Cowboy is pretty straight romantic comedy, complete with comedy sidekicks and not a slasher or homicidal lunatic in sight.
Saturday morning, I dragged everyone out of bed by eight, and we went skating. The new family activity. Having learned to disengage myself from the sides, I’ve quickly got over the general excitement of being able to do something that I never thought myself capable of, and now I just look like a guy who can’t skate very well. I’ve thought of getting a big “I’ve only been doing this for a week” banner for my head, but that would just be stupid.
We came home, and TPCKAM took the kids for haircuts. This allowed me to do some work on Monkfish Cowboy. I’ve been tasked with examining the journey taken by my two romantic leads. Film people always talk of the journey that the characters take through a film, and by that they don’t mean the 12.35 from Paddington to Bath. I’ve also been asked to invest my male lead with ‘dynamic lethargy’. I didn’t quite manage that in the ninety minutes that the others were out of the house.
A couple of months ago our ambassador held a cocktail party for Michael Palin, who was on his way through Warsaw in the middle of his latest travel show. I nearly didn’t go, because I imagined I would just stand there like a complete lemon staring at the man in awe, before asking if he wouldn’t mind saying, ‘Listen, mate, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…’ the finest single line in all movie history. In the end I went. Didn’t talk to him for a while, mingled in that way that I hate, before our ambassador dragged me over to introduce me to Palin, which he did with the words, ‘Michael, this is Douglas, he’s one of your lot, he’s written a film script.’ And then he left me to it. ‘It’s a romantic comedy about monkfish,’ I said to an actual member of the actual Monty Python team. He laughed nervously and said, ‘Don’t tell me any more, that’s all I need to know.’ I suddenly realised that due to the paucity of the introduction, he had me pegged as a civil servant with a film script, and that he thought I was going to ask him to read it or give me advice or some other awful thing. Without blurting out hysterically that the script had been optioned, I managed to get across that it was in development with people who actually make films, and that he didn’t need to worry about me asking him to star in it. He visibly relaxed, but I felt like we never really recovered in our roles as a couple of guys standing at a cocktail party.
Apparently Michael Palin had a part in You’ve Got Mail, but he was left on the cutting room floor. If ever a movie needed Michael Palin. He said that Meg Ryan was really nice, which I just thought I’d mention because everyone thinks Meg Ryan’s awful since her brief stint on Parky.
On Saturday afternoon we went to an exhibition of the Terracotta Army in Warsaw’s oldest shopping mall. Despite the fact that it’s more of a detachment than an actual army, and that most of the soldiers on display are replicas – there are a few in glass cases which (presumably) are the real thing – it’s a fascinating display, kept the kids interested for up to fifteen minutes and made us all want to go and visit China. Or at least to have a no.37 with fried rice for dinner.
The kids then charged to the nearest toy shop to spend some of their Christmas money. Two of Two bought crap. It’s his inalienable right as a wee boy. One of Two bought a giant teddy bear. We waited for the official naming ceremony, hoping that it was going to be something cool. She has a giant dog called Angelberry, which is a cool name for a stuffed dog. However, all her other toys have names like Mrs Pink, and Miss Flower, and Happy and Giggles.
She named the giant teddy bear…Giggles. You’ve already got a Giggles, we said. Now I’ve got another one, she said. Giggles has taken his place at our dining table, place set and everything. Today I’m supposed to be teaching Giggles, the stuffed teddy, mathematics. To be fair to the lad Giggles, he’s picking it up a lot better than the kids.
Saturday wound down with the kids watching the newly arrived Biker Mice From Mars, an education in popular British culture, and probably more important than maths and learning about the Terracotta Army.
The day drifted to a conclusion. Patches chewed the wires, Giggles sat in a big fluffy motionless heap in the corner, and outside the first hint of summer ruffled the tops of the trees...
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