Noisy building work on my block in front of my flat sent me packing to Essex to play with volcanoes (and hang out with Steve, plant some seeds). When Dad texted did I want to meet tomorrow in Greenwich Park I said yes! Regular meeting up with him since the end of lockdown #1 last year, has been a high point of the pandemic for me. For us. Since Mum died nearly 3 years ago, he rightfully started making up time with getting into his music playing, catching up on Irish sessions and socialising. He needed it (Mum had been ill a long time.) But by 2020, he needed a rest. He had been out every night for 18 months perhaps.

With life radically simplified last year, he had more time for family, and it was truly a healing opportunity, still is. Being able to meet in parks when restrictions allow, is a very fine thing. We don’t live close enough for when the rules are tightest, to casually happen across each other in a local patch, so a little travel is necessary. It’s a risk I’d always want to take truth be told, after the horror of lockdown #1 in that respect. The not knowing if… when… And for people living alone, the isolation can be bleak. Being able to meet in a park is a very healthy option.

After spending time admiring ancient trees, elegant deer, Spring flowers, and passing on the week’s thoughts; I walked back to my place and he drove to his. In my flat without laptop, my usual screen suction was curbed. Mobile can’t hold me so long. I remembered old folders I’d wanted to organise; a chore not a treat. From when I’d been at drama school; feedback forms from Spirited Bodies; and especially a Girl in Suitcase script from 2014, through its many edited variations. This, contains golden nuggets in a raw unpolished slab. The file opens on a page which arrests my disinterest. What’s that I wrote? I remember it now but why has it eluded me lately when I had to produce my best work to impress X? I have to scan the play to see what I have done.

It goes like this. In 2009 when life was more precarious, I wrote two pieces of good script. In 2011 when my life was a bit more sorted, I combined them to create the first ‘Girl in Suitcase’. (2010 was a write off until Spirited Bodies began towards the end. 2012 and 2013 were entirely devoted to Spirited Bodies.) By 2014 I was itching to write and perform again, and I had stuff to get off my chest – the narrative of Mother/daughter relationship dysfunction, reached its zenith in the script. I pushed it too far in places, fluffing it out in others. As far as I could get away with. Further! Because I knew my parents wouldn’t see it – up too many stairs and we didn’t film it.

But the words written down – how did I block them from my – – remember that drug I was fond of?

Pieces. I want to hammer myself for not continuing with that script all its rightful way. How could I just push it aside? It needed to be worked up, smoothed out and sharpened. It’s obvious! It reaches out from the page screaming for life —

Hold on, calm down. Real life. The script imagined her already dead. There’s only so much you can keep on with that before — I had to let real life be. Just be. It’s not that the script was unkind; really it gave a lot of depth and compassion, articulating far beyond what was actually verbally possible due to illness. But, that stuff just needs to play out by itself sometimes, without the interference of art, I felt. With respect.

And there was my real life as well as theirs/ours. Connecting with Outsiders and the Sex Maniacs Ball in 2013 for potential Spirited Bodies collaboration, while tantalisingly tempting — I hadn’t been prepared for the attendant trickiness I’d attracted — which took till the middle of 2014 to shake —

There was a lot going on that year. I was heading for a relationship jumble, and by the time I performed Girl in Suitcase again, it was 2015 and I’d decided it shouldn’t be about me any more. It was about mythical Goddesses! And that’s how some of my most daring play-writing got blackholed to the bottom of a file for 7 years.

I performed twice in 2014; in March at Telegraph Hill Festival; and in June at Hampstead School of Art. The THF show had one of the best audiences I’ve performed for. The house was packed and friends were turned away. I was practically walking on people as I tried to move round the stage. I was accompanied by 4 live musicians – Roddy Skeaping and friends, on strings and percussion. That was very powerful and added an extra live dimension where we jammed body and sound in real time. Luckily they were up for working together with me again for the HSOA show. In that second show, my friend – model, artist and performance poet Ursula Troche joined me on stage to perform a few scenes. We had a bit more space this time, another wonderful audience, and artistically the script was tighter. If there’s any performance of mine I could have filmed but didn’t – it was that one. I guess some things are meant to be ephemeral. I even lost most of the brilliant photographs taken by David Alexander Murphy, who I think also lost his copies. Computer melt downs. I just have a few photos. And feel somehow more complete for rediscovering that script.

Images above and below were taken by Ursula at the Hampstead School of Art ‘Girl in Suitcase’ performance, June 2014.