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Sunday 22nd June 2014

4228/17147

Back to blind terror on the script. The audition process threw up a few issues with the characters and whilst I had hoped to get a workable first draft together today, I got bogged down in reworking the bits I had already done and then overcome by the task at hand and hit a brick wall. Typically after dinner things started to flow a bit better, but I had to leave for a gig. Whilst I managed to make a few notes in the beer garden as I waited to go on, I am still a lot further away than I had wanted to be. So I slip a couple of notches down that table of the process of writing. Looks like I chose the wrong week to give up eating yoghurt.

It's a battle, but one that I hope I can win.

I went to do some thinking in our little back garden and got a bit of a shock because something was lurking beneath the sun lounger. It was alive, but it took me a while to realise what it was. It was a bird sitting very still, only his eyes occasionally moving, puffed up in a ball. He wasn't freaked out by me being just a few feet away from him and didn't fly off in fear. I was a bit freaked out by him though. It was quite sinister. Birds are a portent of doom and one lurking beneath your sunlounger is bound to make you worry. Was it a tiny vulture waiting to feast on the cadaver of my Rasputin script? It didn't look like it was injured, but then again it clearly wasn't in any hurry to fly away. Had it come to my sun lounger to die?

I didn't really know what to do. If it couldn't fly and I moved the sun lounger to get to it then it would be more scared and maybe attack me with its beak, but if I left it then it might die and I'd have to get a dead bird out of my back garden. If it was just old and about to go then I don't know if there was much to be gained from feeding it, but if I left it then it might get attacked by a cat or a fox, but I didn't think I had the guts or the desire to batter it to death. I hoped it was just sheltering from the sunshine and left it where it was.

He was still there later when we were having dinner. But I still didn't know what to do. "Should we give it some lettuce?" said my wife (we were eating salad at the time). It made me laugh to think that the bird might be holding us hostage, sitting there waiting until it got some lettuce. Then if satisfied by the lettuce it would fly away and choose another victim. I didn't want the bird in the house and I didn't want to catch any bird diseases from it. Feeling slightly ashamed I decided we should leave him there to recuperate and hopefully build up the energy and strength to fly away. But I am not looking forward to looking under the lounger tomorrow.



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