"I want to tell you about bridges."

Alexei Arbuzov's The Promise is well written, and written well before us, in the sixties (when there was a lot of fine cud chewing). We're reading from a new version of the play (by Nick Dear) this week at The Attic. Momo loved this play instantly. I know because he said very little about it at first. After a while he did say, "We have to do this one someday!"

We're also reading David Mamet's measuredly stammering re-write of The Cherry Orchard, where every now and then someone says something and it means something else or it doesn't at all, because the ripe fruits fall sideways, don't they? ... That's what my grandmother said ... Anyway, it's our tenth reading at The Attic. I expect there will be fanfare. I've wondered whether ten times is some kind of jubilee ... wood, paper, plastic? Our first reading was also re-writings. Of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare to Chekhov. That's a whopping distance to swim for tadpoles.

Moo!

But reading The Promise with Momo and Kriti the other day, I felt sure the real anniversary is a little ahead, in the days between July and September. M moved here; K finished college; I quit my job; and a joke was made a party - "Imagine you dressed as a Mouse." There is hardly a 'rest' yet to say, "the rest is history". In fact there is no rest.* We plough ahead, then chew the cud, over and over. It's called rumination in the dictionary.

But we're also working. I'm writing two monologues for the two other cows in the pen. I stole the idea for one of them from another playwright - an old friend, who was lovely enough to give up on the idea herself. That means I can claim authorship in the future ... Oooh! You know how priceless THAT is here. Which reminds me, if you're reading this then you should actually be reading this. Or watching Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind. Chicken stew for pirates and plagiarists. Dub. Recycle. Art upon art.

* Puns are tiresome, I know. I'm trying to quit. I'm wearing a patch.