Frank
The first of Coverdale’s contributions to our Burn’s night story arrived yesterday, it excited and petrified me in equal measure. It looks great, and is perfect for the story in style. But it’s very very real. This is actually happening and I need to ramp up the writing pronto.
I got a page of A4 out yesterday. It needs work, but there’s a couple of lines I’m pretty happy with. I don’t know if it’s actually going to be funny. But it makes me smile. Either way. With stand-up you can tell if it’s going to work, or at least be confident that it will. But this is a bit different and daunting in a new and terrifying way.
Here he is.
He’s an old curmudgeon who sits, smokes and responds to his newspaper articles by writing profanities under them. This person actually exists, he’s not as old, but I saw his newspaper last week when he left my local bar. Under a football feature discussing the merits and otherwise of defences playing a high-line, he’d simply written ‘Bollocks’. Simple, un-punctuated and concise. I imagined him screwing shut the nib of his pen. Sliding it back in to his pocket. And sitting back to enjoy the newspaper’s silence. Another debate well and truly in the bag.
It’s almost one down. With 16 days left to find 9 more.
