Diary

This is the end of the year...

Thinking about the year that's past, i wrote a very up beat account of it.

Which is strange in a way, because this year I seem also to have been exposed to so much evidence about the folly of government.

The implacable cruelty of the aging process.

The devastation caused by cruelty and greed.

But I stand by this: this HAS been my year.


This is the year my beautiful daughter got married. To a beautiful man, with a beautiful ceremony, in a beautiful place. And I was so happy being parent of the bride...

This is the year my other beautiful daughter got a job in journalism, and a beautiful flat in Brixton, and settled down there with her beautiful man.

This is the year my Every One was performed at the Lyceum, and made many people cry there...

And my Princesse de Clèves was broadcast on Radio 3, and she gave me huge pleasure...

And I worked with a certain Mr Chekhov to adapt The Seagull for Theatre Alba to perform very beautifully at the Edinburgh Fringe...

And rewrote my Tree of Life in the hope that next year it will flower and flourish.

This year Nick Hern Books published my translation of Yerma, and she came in time for Christmas; and I got to ‘C’ in ordering my bookshelves, and what a lot of books I seem to have written.

This year I became a fellow, and a jolly one, a creative one too, at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Edinburgh University, an oasis of free thinking, and loved it there, and started writing my Tree of Knowledge to celebrate the wonderful Mr. David Hume.

This is the year I also filled in the forms, and a Certificate of Gender Recognition came in through the post, and so I became officially female, and this moved me: moved me profoundly.

Also this year I filled in another form to get money from the Playwrights’ Studio Scotland to develop a new play with a lovely actor (David Walshe) and a lovely director (Susan Worsfold) and discovered I could improvise in character, and act too, and almost certainly could have all along, if I hadn’t been made to feel so ashamed.

And then wondered what to do with the joy and the anger and regret with all that.

And yet another form this year gave me ten thousand pounds to turn God’s New Frock and Jesus Queen of Heaven into a piece of poetic prose; and I found a lovely agent to help me publish it.

This is also the year I turned 60, and collected my bus pass, and my winter fuel allowance, and can claim my state pension.

And the year I meant to have a party, but didn’t, because I had a play on, and celebrated in the most unexpected way instead...

... by falling in love, and staying in love, and living in love...

... and I can’t write about that, or describe my dearly beloved and beautiful lover, because my heart is too full.

But I know something else about this year, the amazing year of two thousand and ten:

this is the year new life began.

Labels: the year two thousand and ten