Okay, don’t get too excited, Steven Spielberg isn’t calling me on speed-dial begging for the film option, in fact, strictly speaking the American publisher has not offered to buy the book, but rather the idea of the book, on the basis that I will set it in America. And, em, elaborate on the ending.
In other words. Rewrite it (for the third time).
‘But what if you win the Booker?’ says Val in the A Team Office. ‘If people try to read your back list they will find that you have two different versions of the same book.’
This, of course, is true. But then if I win the Booker, then it will have to have a brand new category, just for me and hell will probably have frozen over and so we'll have bigger problems. I don’t think I’m going to lose very much sleep over the fact that there’s a New England Agnes and a Scottish Agnes living parallel lives on either side of the Atlantic. I think it’s pretty safe to say that winning the Booker is about as likely as me going home and finding a bottle of champagne cooling in the fridge for what should have been my wedding anniversary.
So I’ll do the rewrite, and try and perform a one woman show of enthusiasm, tell myself well done, and try not to dwell on the things that are not happening in my life.
In any case it’s all too premature to book the marching band but as part of the pre-jubilation cheer-me-up scheme undertaken by one of my long suffering friends, I was transported last night to the ballet at Sadler’s Wells.
Mmm
A Moroccan-Belgian choreographer with a group of Shaolin Buddhists and a lot of coffin-sized crates – sort of Jenga with Monks doing marshal arts.
The coffins were variously bookshelves, temples, graves, beds, boats, dominos. You name it, really. But instead of what I had imagined – namely small athletic men leaping up and down in synch making Ayeeah noises, it was small athletic men leaping up and down occasionally making Ayeeah noises while doing an awful lot of dragging big bleeding boxes around, which squeaked and groaned when moved, and then fussily reassembling them in various shapes then hiding inside them, writhing inside them, hanging upside down in them, moving gracefully around inside them, then leaping up and down occasionally making Ayeeah noises before dragging big bleeding boxes around, etc, etc.
The audience loved it. The girl next to me was rapt, hanging over the seat in front of her entranced, or possibly catatonic with boredom. I just got rather irritated when, once again, the boxes were shuffled about. I wanted to shout: STOP BLOODY FIDDLING WITH THEM AND JUST DANCE.
I was, I admit, in a minority.
At the end when there was about ten minutes of absolutely sublime movement I finally began to enjoy it.
And then came the talk.
My friend is a serious artist. She always stays for the talk. The stage designer was Anthony Gormley, so she was definitely staying for the talk. (Apparently he too got irritated with the boxes not staying where he had put them.)
Seven people sat on the stage, one signing for the deaf, one translating for the two Chinese monks, with an empty seat for Antony who was, lucky bugger, in Japan so did not attend.
Sigh, too late, we were hemmed in Gormley-less and the microphone was circulating.
Audience member: This is a question for the monks. How much cooperation was there between the Monks and the Choreographer?
Silence while interpreter stares into space.
Embarrassed pause. Question repeated by the chairperson to the interpreter.
Interpreter: short stream of chah chah chah chah chah, Chinese dialogue.
Monks: Stunned silence, followed by hesitant but very, very long stream of chah chah chah chah Chinese dialogue.
Interpreter: They say there was a lot of co-operation.
Signer: Rapid hand movements
Choreographer: Oh yes, we co-operated all the time, followed by long stream of explanation and lots of jazz hands while looking all the time at the Chinese monks for confirmation, who continued to look blankly into the audience.
Signer: Very rapid hand movements
Audience member: I’m interested very much in your love of Kung Fu because I do discovered Kung Fu when I was a child and very much enjoyed Bruce Lee’s autobiography when I was younger. When I was at art school, in fact (little laugh), yeah it was when I was at art school that I discovered Bruce Lee, and he had a tremendous influence on me, like…..
And thankfully the swinging door of the auditorium closed behind him as finally, FINALLY, we left.
Leaving definitely cheered me up.
It was that easy.
Note to ex-husband. This does not apply to you.
