Mad Dreams

Naomi tells me that she is often murdered in her dreams, like a doomed femme fatale from some long-forgotten film noir B movie. Freud says that dreams are weird and twisted wish fulfilment fantasies, but I’ve seen enough David Lynch films to know that dreams are just meaningless scenes of dwarfs dancing and talking backwards.  I reassure Naomi that dreams don’t mean anything, and then as the conversation shifts onto our shared anxiety about the US Presidential Election I also reassure her that there is just no way Trump can win the White House.  Then the world goes mad and suddenly everything is wrong, and I too now dream of being murdered.  By Freud and his dancing dwarves.

".dne lliw dlrow eht dna tnediserP eb lliw pmurT .mees yeht tahw ton era slwo ehT"

The writing goes well as we start bringing our cast of characters to life.  This section of the play is set in a casino, and we work out where each character will be sitting at the roulette table, and get them talking to each other.  Naomi often knows exactly the right line of dialogue, and I often know exactly when a character will make an entrance, and often it feels to me like the play has already been written and we’re just discovering it line by line, and I know how weird that sounds.  Maybe it’s the pub – there’s a definite oddness to the Llandoger Trow, a feeling that anything can happen.  Though what usually happens is that the cheerful and very friendly bar staff will play Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams over and over and over and over again until I snap and go on a murder spree.

We talked about Naomi’s terrifying shopping expeditions in Tunisia, the Halo Effect, and we googled the signs of the zodiac ‘cause we kept forgetting what they are and what they supposedly mean.  Naomi, like Freud, is a Taurus, which means dreamer.  I am Sagittarius, like David Lynch, which means weirdo.  I’m sure there’s some sense behind all this nonsense.  Naomi explained all about firing synapses and neurotransmitters being the thing that jolts us awake, but though that maybe true for most people the thing that jolts me awake is an obese cat jumping on my groin from a great height.

Last week we were delighted to be guests on Andrew Parsonage’s Stood Up weekly radio show, where we chatted to the amiable Andrew, and as we nattered on about writing comedy Naomi and I sketched Andrew’s portrait live on air, much to his horror.  You can listen to it here, if you dare:

(approx. 30 mins)

Little Epic on Stood Up - November 3rd 2016