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Another man wanting to prune my tree arrived at my door just after I’d got my daughter to sleep. Are they queuing up in the road, waiting for the most inopportune moment to ring the doorbell. Is there really enough casual tree-pruning business and enough people prepared to give money to total strangers to keep this many men employed? This one was at least nice about it when I told him that I would never entrust this service to someone who turned up uninvited.
I had fun looking after my daughter, though I was still exhausted, which is a bit worrying given how much I have to do. After listening to Hitler Moustache I fed her some runny brown vegetable mush and it went all over her face, looking like a little goatee or Beppe’s beard. I then fashioned it into a Hitler Moustache and wondered if it would be possible to train her up to do the show on Saturday, so I can concentrate on Headmaster’s Son.
I am a bit disappointed that I haven’t abused the power I have over my daughter by dressing her up in more ridiculous costumes. We put her in a reindeer outfit at fake Christmas and my wife dressed her as a slightly sad Hungry Caterpillar once, but I really need to dress her as more fascist dictators, Eastenders characters or serial killers. Or just teddy bears or ducklings. But I consistently just dress her as a baby. I keep saying to her, “it’s time to put on your costume†as I put her in a baby-grow, as if she is just pretending to be an infant and playing a role. And maybe she is. I know I am pretending to be an adult by putting on one’s clothes.
She’s been pretty static up to now, which is good in terms of being able to plonk her down and get on with other stuff, but she managed to do a very slow rollover today and is threatening to start crawling. It’s going to get a whole lot more demanding very soon.
Friday’s show is coming together at least and I had another crack at the first half of it tonight and I know a lot of it, somehow maybe by osmosis. But there’s a lot of complex bits and the same is true of Hitler Moustache so I think this will be a tough weekend. But Headmaster is a lovely show (in spite of the less lovely bits) and the end made me properly blub again today as I listened to it in the bath (if anyone had seen I could have pretended it was just water running down my face). The potent combination of the father/son bond, the lost innocence of adolescence and the enduring romance of first play love (though sadly no first love play) is heady. Will I get through the show on Friday with my veneer of cool in tact? I’d better apply a veneer of cool int he first place to give myself a chance.
You can hear my podcast about menage a un here and buy a pass to the audio of the first 10 shows in the run here. Fifteen hours of comedy for just £12, which isn’t too bad, and a chance to experience the high-wire excitement of this project if you can’t get to the Leicester Square Theatre.
