Play Time...

It's the end of my five days off work to finish and revise the first draft of my play, Meat, before it goes in for the Vertity Bargate Award next week.

The play is about prostitiution in Victorian England and, with all the characters coming to a bad end, it basically argues that anyone who treats sex as a commodity is ultimately tainted by it and loses their humanity in the process.

Finishing and making the play much darker's been a bit of a grim process, but amid the gloom there's fun stuff happening. For a start we're finally getting the garden landscaped and the Boy's been at home too as he's finished his exams.

So here's what I've learnt with five days to write and ponder things...

i) You get what you pay for. We have paid top dollar for our garden people and they're doing a superb job. They arrived when they said they would, they've worked with minimum fuss and they've been astoundingly polite and upbeat about the whole job. And it looks great already and it's not even finished yet.

ii) I am rubbish at shaving. The Boy had his end-of-school Prom and he needed to have his first shave so he asked me to talk him through it – and it was only when we got under way that I realised how cack-handed I am when it comes to shaving. Between my idiocy and the fact my expensive Molton Brown shave wax didn't work it'll be a wonder if he ever wants to shave again. On the plus side he could form a ZZ Top tribute band.

iii) I am an obsessive martial artist. With my hapkido teacher away on honeymoon for two weeks I have been climbing the walls with no classes to go to. So much so that I organised a class between myself and another brown belt and actually felt like hugging her when she arrived at the Dojang. I did, however, feel less like hugging her when she executed a perfect wrist lock that had me yelping in pain.

iv) I am possibly the gayest straight man in the world. After class today I was on a real high as I cycled into town then trained and the endorphins were raging. In the changing rooms there was nobody about and after I'd showered I was singing along to Erasure on the radio and bopping around. I then caught sight of the naked me doing this. There are some versions of himself a man should never see...

v) Goats shed their coats. My Other Woman Who Loves Other Women is currently in charge of a theatrical goat in a play but the said goat, called Bruce, has apparently shed its coat and the play calls for a fully coated goat as it's a metaphor for raging sexuality or some such thing. It was a crisis for a while but apparently the goat coat is now back and the metaphor is intact.

That's quite a lot to learn in a week...