Blog 23 – The House that Dear John Built … Ms Paige Turner tells an intentional porkie pie on each blog. This bi-month four Creative Ink handout sheets to be won …
My house is raining dust. The builders found a 1985 packet of crisps down the back of the kitchen cupboards and for one indigestible moment I thought Mr Justin Case was going to open up and eat. We are not culprits – we moved in here in 1986 – so the packet of crisps was here already when we arrived and has silently lived alongside of us all these years.
We’ve been living with dust and builders for weeks and I’m learning a whole new language. The other day I asked a solitary visiting workman at lunchtime when I had not seen sight of one all morn, “Where have you beeeeeen?
“Drying out,” he said.
“Drying out?”
“Been plastered,” he said.
He meant the bathroom – it needed time and space – but I frequently know how that feels and added to that rain is stopping play. Anyway, the solitary workman had just come to collect a broom and bucket. They are busy on a house around the corner.
They talk about ‘ripping out’ the kitchen and stripping down and building up from the foundations and it ‘getting worse before it gets better’ and as Master Brylcream and Ms Juke Box and Master Sound Advice (Dear John Production Team) struggle with locating locations and seeking props and juggling dates on a production schedule, it sounds pretty much like what we are doing on the Dear John project. For work on words in rehearsals are about taking a missive apart and exploring its possibilities and finding something new in what we have been familiar with and well, extending ourselves. Jack built a good house.
We now have a dozen great Dear Johns and the short list will be posted on my website very soon. We are well into Phase 2 (Rehearsal) of the project (Phase 1 being the publicity of the project and receipt of the entries) and like the building or extension of an old house we work hard and hope that the final package will be good for consumption. Unlike that packet of 1985 crisps …
John Moore won last bi-month’s blog. Of course there is more to concrete than cement, John. You did seem to take flight with the issue. Four handout sheets on concrete poetry despatched …
Delay in posting this month – building works on the line.
hmmm…ehr….
1)why does the bathroom plaster hold up work on the kitchen?
2)house that Jack / John built? suppose they are the same name.
3)Why does the bathroom need time and space? Are we in the realms of Einstein here and shouldn’t we have energy next?
4)Presumably a short list is precisely that and not a shortlist?
5)Beware of builders with another job around the corner. It’ll end in tears.
so many red herrings here, I give up.
regards,
His master’s voice,
John
The short list is of eleven and not twelve as stated in your blog. But if it is twelve and my entry just dropped off the end that would be lovely.
We’re re-furbishing. It’s the sanding of the dining-room floor this week – and next. Hot water tank burst. Back wall need re-pointing. Cupolo leaks expensive heat through the winter. You have my sympathy. Anne
Two guesses at your fib!
You have 11 Dear John finalists, not 12.
Or, your kitchen is drying out, not your bathroom!
Maggie
surely mop and bucket not broom and bucket? Now off to find CreativeInk on Facebook…..