Blog 113 – Pillow Talk
Now that my Masters in Creative Writing has been spirally bound, catapulted down the chute and registered by ‘special delivery’ now is the time to put my house in order and get to the cleaners.
The local dry cleaning firm has an offer on: £15 for any duvet. I phoned and asked the sales assistant, (she sounded young) how long the offer was on for and was it £15 even if the duvet was goose down stuffed. She said she didn’t know but would phone the manageress and ask her. This sales assistant sounded not just young but very eager like it was her first day at a summer job. A few minutes later she called me back and said it was £15 whatever the stuffing. I said but what about the length of the offer. Would it be on next week? I explained that I couldn’t get in until next week as I was changing my guest room sheets (I do that – not everyone does) for my best friend Miss Carioke and I’d like to bring some pillows in too. She wasn’t sure if the offer was on next week but sure it would be all right with the manageress. I said could she check. She said, “Oh, you’re like me. You’re a Virgo. You like everything settled.” I said, “No, I wasn’t a Virgo. I just wanted to know that the £15 offer was still on for next week. Well, I’ve trusted her but I’ve learned to never ask two questions at the same time. You will only get a response to the last question.
It’s been a good week. My play ‘A President in Waiting …’ has been long listed for the British Theatre Challenge www.skybluetheatre.com and the opening sestina of my dissertation which carries the title ‘God and Lipstick’ was highly commended in the Words for the Wounded fiction, memoir and poetry competition. We also had a great evening on Wednesday at the Blossom and Grey coffee shop in Chesham Bois when I lectured on ‘Deception and the Unreliable Narrator’. Mister Red Hat has finished all the changes on my new-look website www.janmoranneil.co.uk and you can access not only my Marlow FM interview with Dermot Fitzpatrick by clicking on the bottom left hand corner of the Home Page but also listen into the ‘Dear John, Dear Anyone …’ monologues under the Creative Ink for Actors/Dear John drop down. These were written by Elaine Mulvaney who won the Creative Ink prize for that competition in 2012. Mister Red Hat has also mounted some of my stage photos under a new section entitled Performance. I’m so looking forward to seeing him at our Royal Central School of Speech and Drama reunion of T75 next month. I’m also feeling as brand new as I can possibly feel with all that clean bed linen.
Creative Ink classes: Tuesdays – Get Inspired – 1 place left.
Thursdays – Get that Book out of You – a few more places left.
10.00am until midday at the Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield.
I like the idea of “A duvet in waiting …” A suitable title for a tale about a President. And a fitting shake of the feathers in the face of that other temptation ‘Fifty Shades of Grey Sheets”. £15 – it’s a bargain.