Advanced Post-Structuralist Scriptwriting Theory with Elvis Presley

When it reaches Bristol, the River Avon courses through the deep Avon Gorge, spanned by Brunel's wonderous Clifton Suspension Bridge, and then snakes its way seductively through the great city.  Along the riverbanks, harbours, locks, and beaches there live thousands of creatures, from ducks, gulls and other seabirds, and rare dragonflies and hundreds of other insects, to voles and badgers and squirrels and mice, foxes, beavers and bats.  And every week as I casually stroll along the river to our usual meeting place, every single bloody one of these bastard creatures tries to kill me.


Because of all the drama and excitement last week which meant we didn't actually do much actual writing, we made up for it this week by actually doing some actual writing.  Naomi's nimble fingers were a blur as they danced across the keyboard, and she threw back her head and laughed manically. Line after line of really good dialogue appeared on the computer screen, then disappeared to be replaced by more lines of even better dialogue. Pages of script were created in this mad dervlish of unfettered creativity.  Then Naomi popped to the loo, I got a text message from home demanding I pop into a store on my walk home to buy a six pack of chicken in gravy Whiskas cat food, and there was the obligatory half-amused cheer as one of the bar staff dropped a glass.


We talked about royal, noble, heredity and chivalric ranks of the Peerage (did you know that a Marquess outranks a Baron?), Hammer horror films, and art criticism.  At one point we fired up YouTube on my laptop to watch the opening titles of Hammer House of Horror (1980).  Then we got stuck into the really important work of listing the Top Five Elvis Songs.  They are:

5. Return to Sender
4. Devil in Disguise
3. In the Ghetto
2. The Wonder of You
1. Always on my Mind 

During a sell-out show in Vegas, the King of Rock and Roll tries not to let on that he's desperate for the loo.

The play we're writing has a rather tricky structure, so we paused for a bit to work out what the hell we're doing.  Naomi came up with various brilliant structural ruses, and I drew a rubbish diagram in my notepad.  After we'd worked out what we're going to do, we did that thing of not doing a high-five because we're the sort of people who don't go in for giving high-fives, except ironically.

On the way home, I forgot to get the cat food, and a black-crested gull crapped on my shoulder.