Fog and fast dialogue

The fog in Highgate today has been intense. I met Llio for coffee in Muswell Hill and walking back was like being an extra in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Bicycles loomed out of the gloom, silhouetted in front of the giant lights of busses. The roads glistened with melted frost. My moustache tingled with condensation!

Lli and I had a wonderful catch up in the cafe. As we chatted, Philip Sallon's sister, Ruth trotted past the window, spotted me and spend a good minute waving and showing her appreciation of my moustache... in mime.

The woman at the next door table was plainly listening in to our conversation in a way which felt really inappropriate. Things got quite intense at one point. Llio has, after all, just lost her brother. But the woman almost seemed like she was trying to join in, as though, at any moment, we were going to hear her take on grief. At one point I mentioned echolalia and I thought she was going to burst!

There's not much else to say about the day. I've been working on Em, with one hand attempting to up the levels of humour in the piece, and, with the other, attempting to raise the dramatic stakes and imbue the show with a bit more grit. Those things seem utterly contradictory, but, for the first time, I understand the tone of the piece I'm writing and this is making a lot of things slot into place. Dialogue is probably the fastest I've ever written and needs to rattle by at top speed in the style of some of those American TV shows like Moonlighting and Gilmore Girls. In fact, I've nicked a joke from Gilmore Girls. Shh, don't tell anyone!