An email arrives. Apparently our lifelike rubber lobster should arrive today. I am not perturbed. Even though I know it’s for my husband. Even when he calls to ask: “Has my lifelike rubber lobster arrived?” I don’t bat an eyelid. It’s about par for the course round our house these days. Despite a lifetime of being militantly anti limelight and hiding steadfastly behind a keyboard, our place is now a hub of creative genius. Creative something anyway.
Husband does the publicity for the local farmers’ market and is mocking up a film poster starring the lobster. It stares at me balefully as I stand up to my elbows in suds trying to get the labels off some wine bottles – props for my play ‘Friller ‘at Haworth Festival on Saturday.
Once a week the cast of ‘Grim’, the amazing new musical from Untold Theatre Company, make full use of our piano and tea-making facilities as part of rehearsals.
We do call them the Kids From Fame – in a loving way – and did accidentally let them know that but they don’t seem to mind. When Friller director Adam Wollerton mentioned Grim was looking for rehearsal space I thought why not?
“Let’s do the show right here, right now,” I said. “I’ll get the kettle on.”
So fake lobsters littering the house, a musical about love and death being rehearsed in the living room, the fluffy dog on the sofa watching and it’s all a bit worryingly ripe for a reality TV show.
Nothing puts those legendary female multi-tasking skills to work like being a comedy writer and a working journalist and a parent and, oh, all the rest.
That’s why a weekend chez vous is full of moments such as shaking out many smelly male socks so the washing machine has a fighting chance while checking the first name of Mr Gladstone for a ‘Friller’ script tweak.
Fact-checking some copy to file before downing a big coffee to check travel to Haworth into the night (how many people can you pack in a Fiat Panda, d’you reckon?)
It’s no wonder I’m having all the mad dreams, really.
A lot might happen in the next seven days but I’m fairly confident being chased across the Yorkshire moors by a giant rubber lobster in Edwardian bloomers won’t be one of them.
Then again, you never know.
