To sleep, perchance...

With apologies for using an image that has appeared here before, I’ve just realized that I promised to send part of my novel to the person who had agreed to act as the pilot of the balloon in my forthcoming play about the Great Tullamore Balloon Disaster of 1785. The trouble is, I failed to keep a copy of his email address and so I fear that without that, the email will never be sent and most probably, the play will never be written. I also agreed to send him a subliminal message in the form of an exquisitely written piece of (meaningless) prose – something I have also failed to do. How can I be so recalcitrant?

I went to see a play this evening. It was Stephen Poliakoff’s ‘Breaking The Silence’, performed at Nottingham’s Playhouse Theatre. Fabulous set design and beautiful staging but, I am sorry to report, the direction left something to be desired. I felt apologetic for the actors who battled hard with weak direction and a not-so-clever script. I think the play was written in the mid-eighties and bore some of Poliakoff’s trademarks in as much as it contained his epic themes of tortured family relationships that swirl amidst catastrophic and momentous historic events, but it failed to ignite the reasonable emotional response that it was supposed to (with me, at least). There was a fantastic piece of (presumably very expensive) stage management at the very end of the play, but it left me cold because there was no exploitation of this (and this was not Poliakoff’s fault). However, all live theatre is good and so it would be churlish of me to denounce this slice of drama as a failed effort, particularly as I was a guest of my good friend Fintan Ó Higgins who should be thanked for giving me the opportunity to view this spectâcle for free. He's a good man, so he is, that Fintan.

And now for that exquisite prose (well perhaps not the most glittering of styles, but heavy-eyed and hunting the ombres of the night as I am, it's the best I can do): "Reclining lasciviously on a high balcony, I wet my swollen lips on the fragrant blackberry taste of the red wine whilst appraising the luminescent qualities of a watery full moon, dangling in the clarity of a barren night sky (that’s the moon, not me). The shiver of an uncustomary May breeze upon me, I struggle to reassure my timid friend that there is no displeasure to be sought from his paramour’s apparent coolness. I endeavour to bolster his trembling heart by facing him with the supposition that the mysteries of the female affection are as perplexing as a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." (Yes, yes, I know that last bit is really Winston Churchill and not my own exquisite prose; but it was ever thus). I continue: "My friend must take courage and strike out for the valiant solution. 'Action Cures Fear' – an aphorism that scatters all hesitation for the faint-hearted; a maxim by which to live if any of us is to realize what we truly crave".

But what I crave now is the email address of my erstwhile pilot for the balloon. I can't believe that I was so stupid as to have lost it, and if anyone out there knows it, please send it on.