A headline in the paper informs us that scientists have created a virus that kills cancer cells. The other night Douglas watched on Greek television a film starring Wilbur Smith called “I Am Legend” (I gave up after about fifteen minutes) all about scientists developing a virus that kills cancer cells but which, unfortunately, also had the end result of killing ninety-five percent of the world’s population. Coincidence or prediction?
We have been discussing a publishing project – “Fifteen Plays & A Book of Lyrics”. This is really and truly vanity publishing with a vengeance. The volume would come to well over 1200 pages which, in hardback, would make it a very expensive book. However, looking at similar books advertised on Amazon, they ARE very expensive books - £60, £70, £150, £175, and more. I had previously noticed that books aimed at academia are always extremely expensive. Maybe the thinking is that universities are rolling in money and can afford them. Anyway, the fifteen plays could not be called the collected works of GIJ because there are others that would not be included: for example, the three plays already published by French’s, a play called “Bay Rum” which was produced at Buxton way back in the sixties and which has been in the script drawer ever since because, although the first act went a treat, the second was so bad I wanted to crawl under my seat in embarrassment. I can still remember it even after all these years, and it wasn’t the direction or the performances, it was the writing which was, to be quite frank, rubbish; a sort of bad hybrid of “My Three Angels” and “The Little Hut”, both pop plays of the time. Then there is a play called “The Green Stare” the writing of which is even worse. The title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman. Then there are plays that have been lost and of which I have no recollection. One was evidently called “Paradise Row”. What was that about I wonder and whatever happened to it? Of the first musical I wrote, only the second act exists. Whatever happened to the first? Not that it matters. It was total crap influenced of course by “Salad Days”! Then there are five other musicals, book and lyrics, including my version of “Peter Pan”, half a dozen original television plays, odd TV scripts, scripts for series, pilot scripts and screenplays. Hmn … quite a body of work if you add to that the autobiography, three Thornton King adventures (a forth in the making) and two novels, both currently idling away with London publishers, as is one of the plays with a producer – six months of silence. Taurians might have a reputation for being patient but even our patience has to give out finally. Come to think of it though, at my age, why should I worry?
The story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, is evidently having a spectacular production in the park where the story was first conceived but, for a boy who never grew up, I must say Peter has very hairy legs.