Warming Up

Friday 4th November 2005

I watched Grumpy Old Women again tonight and was sitting high up in the theatre in the dress circle. I had an almost irresistible but thankfully ultimately resistible desire to go to the edge and dive the thirty or forty feet down into the main auditorium. It’s not that I particularly wanted to die (in fact it was the probability of death that convinced me to stay in my seat), it’s just it’s another of those awful impulses that one occasionally has, like putting your hand in a circular saw. A big drop can be inexplicably tempting and there was a part of my brain thinking that if I launched myself off the balcony that I would almost certainly be able to fly around the theatre. Most of my brain reasoned, probably correctly that I would more plummet than fly and probably land on some middle aged women below and turn their poultry laughs to piggy squeals of pain and probably kill them. In fact they would probably break my fall and my life would be spared, though I would still be hideously injured and disabled for the rest of my life. It might provide some unneeded publicity for this sell-out show, but it would probably be the wrong kind of publicity. “Grumpy Old Woman Script Editor attempts Suicide at Show and Kills and Injures Several Audience Members.” That’s not a headline we really want to see. I don’t think it would be an excuse if I said, “I felt I might be able to fly”, in fact I think that would make it worse.
Luckily I resisted the temptation and the show went better than ever, uninterrupted by a plummeting fat man, or even more distractingly a flying fat man.
The Grumpy Old Women were lucky this time. I only have to be lucky once.