Moving On Up and Down Under

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is Chris and her handsome family are upping stakes, leaving London and moving back to Australia in September of this year and we’ve finally decided, after months of deliberating whether to keep the company going (difficult at 10,500 miles) make it dormant (paying Companies House an annual fee for what?) or close it down (sad face goes here), we are closing it down.

Sad face goes here.

The good news, however, is that Chris is going home.  She wants the sun in her face and grass under her feet and while that is gloriously possible today in Hyde Park (28 degrees, mid-July, blue sky, blazing rays) don’t try it in February.

London is not the place for a barefoot, outdoor life.

In my generous moments – which I am feeling increasingly – I am thrilled for her.  She will be close to family, her children will grow up as she did, near beaches and relatives and, get this, her husband will KEEP HIS JOB (have computer programming degree, will travel). Of course I have known far less generous moments in which I’ve wept into my chai and stared forlornly out café windows, imagining my life without Chris and MYPC. And tried to her run her over with a car (‘THIS will keep you here!”).

But there is no question these four years have been a kaleidoscope of huge pleasures and accomplishments. These are the highlights:

Developed and held four table-reads of Torches, the full-length play about two couples deciding on Guy Fawkes’ night whether to reunite or separate forever, ready for production;

Developed full TV mini-series adaptation and held two table-reads of a Virginia Woolf novel and attracted Billie Piper, now attached;

Two table reads of Sirens, first produced as a one-act now a full length play;

Official selection at In Short Film Festival and the London Independent Film Festival for our first scene of Home Movies for which we raised £4,000, a project which now boasts a fully-developed on line pilot episode;

Two drafts of a film adaptation of Fiona Leonard’s novel The Chicken Thief (published by Penguin South Africa)

First completed draft of Constance Over The Hill, the novel that began as part of MYPC on line.

In all of these creations and achievements we have been supported by our Board of Directors – a high-octane collection of passionate, endlessly enthusiastic and inventive businessmen and women who loved us and our mission to promote women over 35 in all media. The projects live on and the Board, wonderfully, will keep an open door for me and my questions (do I enter this option agreement? can I expand my USP? where is the best place for croissants aux amandes on the South Bank?).

And -  in spite of how my throat clenches and my face tightens into deeply unappealing twitches at the thought of saying goodbye to Chris and our company - I know her going is a blessing. She is forcing me out of the nest. Already, I am finding the confidence and vision that comes from having to stand alone on the new heights to which she introduced me (we have pitched at all the highest levels of television, theatre and on-line production in this city, because of her).  I am becoming the next version of myself as an artist, borne of these four delightful, hilarious, wildly energetic years of us working together.

During our last routine meeting, ensconced in her comfortable and well-loved sofa in the living room that has passed for our office since 2010, I asked Chris what the company had meant to her.

She tilted Tick Tock tea down her throat and thought about it.

‘I discovered work can be fun.’ She looked over the generous green of the high trees in the park below, her voice deepening in a way I recognised as meaning I’m-about-to-say-something-like-totally-awesome. ‘You don’t have to check your soul at the door. If you do that, you’re ripping yourself off, because this –  (spreading her hands out) - this is it.’

And she’s right. Isn’t she right? Isn’t this it? Meaning time is what you’ve got and fuck, make the most of it.

‘I got to be on a shoot. Nothing is more fun than that. And so many people said “yes”’.

Which is also true.  Chris and I were consistently moved, awed and gleeful at the number of people who met and worked with us – from supporters, directors and musicians to producers, publicists and performers. We met some of the most talented and appealing good old people in this good old town. ‘If you’re in a happy world,’ she said, ‘you attract wonderful people.’

More tea and gazing. The sofa sagged, quietly, beneath us (I’m thrilled it will live on in Australia and remind them how often I contributed To That Sag). She looked at me and I could see her examining old mental files, comparing then and now – the time of our deciding to launch the company because it was just too much fun not to. Her leaping out of full-time paid work into full-time freelance life. The most risk, the most glory.

She pulled back the final curtain on her past. Laid it bare.

‘I was sleep-walking through life,’ she said.

(See why I love her?  Which of us has the courage to admit we’re sleep-walking? Then the greater courage to wake up?)

‘And now I’m not. I’m taking all this with me.’

It was a good last meeting, if sad – we finished bits of admin, prepared to close the bank account – and went out for a celebratory chai tea. And if I’m struggling now, as I write this, feeling that lumpy-throat sensation and the hugely oh-so-attractive face-twitching -  it is because as always, in her quiet, consistent, perspicacious way Chris put her finger on the most important fact of what these four years have been about. What, hand on heart, life is about.

 ‘It’s okay to be afraid. As long as it’s exciting, too.’

It’s been wildly exciting. And because of her and Mofardin Young Production Company and everyone who has joined us on the journey, I’m less afraid.

And that’s good news.

Final Board Meeting and Farewell Lunch for the Mofardin Young Production Company Board of Directors, from back left: Richard Baudin (Chair); Julian Eardley (Secretary); Stephanie Young Alison O'Neill (Treasurer); Chris Mofardin, Jenny McCarthy; Della Hirons and our best production yet, Joshua.

Future Truths

In these chilly, grey, late-winter days, Christine and I inspire ourselves by living future truths. There is a West End production of my play Torches. Home Movies is a series on line. Our televised adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel, to which actor Billie Piper is attached (present truth, yipeee), is green-lit.

These are professional plans. And, for me, there is romance. These latter months I have been on dates and gathering ‘date-a’ (thank you, Woking, I’m here all week), knowing more and more clearly what I don’t want in a lover. Which, of course, is only half the equation. That’s fine, Chuckles, the universe says – but what do you want?  And I consider myself profoundly blessed among women, lucky enough to have had a glimpse of a model for a future married bliss, an image I received four summers ago, that still serves:  the possibility of a life that hovered in warm August sun, over a French lake, on a fast boat as I gazed at a movie star.

For 30 seconds.

You gotta start somewhere.

 ***

It began innocently enough. ‘Do you want to come to France?’ my dear friend Jennifer asked. ‘We’d love to have you.’

I did not have to consider this request for long. Did I want to come to their Swiss chalet on the lake with bedrooms that opened onto a veranda whence one could see mountains and still, turquoise waters?

As I am not sectionable, I said yes.

I got on a plane, was driven 40 minutes through the dark from Geneva airport to arrive at the huge Heidi-house – green-shuttered, window- boxed – and was led into the dining room where a table that could seat 25 was seating – well – 25 and groaning under the biggest game of poker I had ever beheld.

I was greeted warmly, introduced to the heaving mountain of breads, cheeses, condiments and pastries that were on offer throughout the week, was led to the BEST bedroom in the house – complete with piano - and forced into my bathing suit for a night swim.

I awoke the next morning to the smell of croissants and coffee.

At 11:00 am we cycled, en masse, ten minutes along the lake – parents, adolescents, single friends – to arrive at a marina. Our host had arranged for all the kids and anyone else who fancied a go, to learn to wakeboard. The kids were hysterical, their parents delighted (there were drinks in the café). You could hear mater and pater chuckling to themselves as they ordered their pale beers and delicate cocktails, pushing their children into life jackets and onto the boat.

As I have a healthy respect for my corporeal self, I passed on the wakeboarding and asked the driver, in French, if I could join the spectators in the back of his vessel and WATCH these under-age maniacs flirt with their untimely ends.

‘Mais bien sur,’ he said, gallant. ‘A pleasure.’

The sky was Chagall-blue and the water jade green. The day was hot, and soft and mossy trees flanked the mountains. The boat went fast and the younger kids hung on to the sides, shrieking with delight, as brothers and sisters rose slowly from the water, like Neptune’s children, up for a sight of the dry earth.

Two hours and 14 laps of the lake later, the last eligible child had run her course, was peeling off her wet suit and the boat – with me in it like a dog, almost panting, hoping for another go around the block -  sat idling at the dock.

‘Quelqu’un d’autre?’ the thickset, dark-haired driver called out, looking at the unpromising collection of adults, doped with the heat on chaises longues. ‘Enee one elss?’

‘Yes, I’ll have a go.’

The voice was resonant and clear. I turned from my spot in the back to see one of the house guests rise, spry and limber, holding a daughter by the hand as he came to the edge of the dock.

It was a Uni mate of my hostess. Just another friend invited with his family for the summer break. Well, that’s what he was to everyone else. To me he was, and is, the cripplingly charismatic and unendingly charming actor Jason Isaacs. Lucius Malfoy to you H.Potter followers, alumnus of the National Theatre, a new NBC series out this spring. Good actor, good guy. This hot August afternoon he was sans long, white wig and Flintlock pistol and just having a quiet week with his wife and kids. Just quietly hanging around being cripplingly charismatic and unendingly charming.

I find him so charismatic, in fact, that I choke on my own saliva when I try to speak to him, my knees forget their purpose is to hold me up, turn to blanc mange and I blotch.

JI doesn’t notice because he is modest as well as unendingly charming, probably just turns and murmurs to his wife as I lurch out of the room’ Who is that woman with the speech impediment?’

He arrived at the edge of the dock, handed his daughter and her camera into the boat then turned to suit up.

I wheeled away. I spoke as much French as I could to the driver who was surprised but polite in the face of my sudden interest in his working life. ‘Vous travaillez chaque jour? Et c’est comment, vous aimez votre metier?’ I kept my eyes fixed on his face, willing myself not to watch Jason getting into a wet suit. This just wasn’t something I needed to see as a single woman sleeping alone in a chalet on an Alpine lake. He called out ‘Ready!’ and as the boat slowly turned I could see him poised on the wake board,  grinning.

‘Haven’t been on skis in seven years!’ he shouted to someone on the deck.

‘We’ll all enjoy watching you drown,’ someone called back, lifting a glass of a light French wine.

But after four and a half seconds  - ‘No, no never done this before’ Jason confirmed to the driver who then throttled up and hurled us into the middle of the lake  - it became patently obvious that Jason wasn’t going to drown. He was going to dominate. And with style.

Within moments he was standing. Within moments of standing he was traversing the wakes. Within moments of traversing the wakes, he was doing it all with ONE HAND.

His daughter laughed and filmed, calling out to him in his wet suit – oh.my.god. in his wet suit– flanked by fountains of water and a sky split by mountain tops.

I breathed in. I felt the beauty of the created world around me, the melting warmth of the sun and the sting of water on my face and hands.  I watched this poised, strong, fit, athletic, cripplingly charismatic man navigate with unbridled joy the peaks and valleys of the lake under his feet.

The driver glanced over his shoulder.

‘Il va bien,’ he shouted, nodding at Jason. ‘’Ee iss good.’

‘Oui, oui!’ I said with the alacrity of someone who wants to share her obsession. ‘Il va tres bien.’

‘Et c’est sa premiere fois? It is a first time? Magnifique.’

‘Oui!’ I shouted. Not wanting the conversation to end. ‘Formidable!’

Jason, still grinning, veered off to the far side of the boat, throbbed on the waters for a moment before turning to the middle of the wake where the waves were highest, flexed his knees and, with the ease of a young cheetah, leapt into high into the air. And there hung for breathless minutes, a scuba-suited Baryshnikov, frozen immortal in the mind’s eye, before landing, upright, chest high, head thrown back in glee.

 The driver had been watching too and, at the sight of my mute, admiring face, nodded, smiled and then called out  

‘Il est votre mari?’

I wasn’t sure I’d heard properly.

‘Pardon?’ I said, squinting in the sun that, combined with the effect of Jason’s  - animal spirits  - was making me dizzy.

‘Lui, la bas.  Him. Il est votre mari? He iss your ‘usband?’

My brow furrowed. The clouds tilted. I clamoured for traction in this wholly unexpected and impossible world.  Not so much aghast at the reality suggested by this question, playing out on red carpets, hotels and opening nights across the world, over croissants where I am The Wife of Jason Isaacs but more in the thought that arose directly after: do I present as someone who could be the wife of someone who is Jason Isaacs??

And is she someone I could be?

***

Christine and I are extremely excited at the future truths we are plotting now, the scripts that are the blueprint for productions to come. The readings will be riotous fun, the pitching is a hoot. We are meeting directors for Home Movies and at this point it is a mental game. The work has been developed, the scripts are sound and our job is to move forward into the realities we have already created.

Through all of this, in my quiet moments, I choose to be just as excited by the thought of the romance I am drawing to me – the colleague who is hilarious, loves Tolstoy, hockey and sex on the kitchen table, a helpmeet who adores my family and shares his with me; a companion on a bicycle who quotes Seinfeld and knows Austen and as I prepare to meet him my heart is warmed and inspired, knowing all things are possible.  Knowing, whatever else is going on in my love life, on a green lake under a blue sky in high French summer –  at least in the mind of a friendly and conversational boat driver – I was the wife of Jason Isaacs.

In a wet suit.

And that’ll get me through to spring.

The ever-lovely Jason

Fear and the Ducati

I’m dating a 6’2” Glaswegian with a motorbike. Three weeks ago I sent him an email with the subject heading

‘I Am, Like, So Superficial’

and wrote

'I want to see you in your leathers’.

He showed up three days later on a big, motherschtupper of a bike, kitted with gear and a spare set of leathers he demanded I put on. Well, mine weren’t leathers – they were reinforced Gortex with more zips than an Air Force jumpsuit – but I managed to catch a glimpse of myself in the window of a Land Rover, ostensibly to clip on the helmet, and although no one would have mistaken me for Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels, neither would I have been taken for a black nylon, moon-suited incarnation of the Michelin Man.

‘Why do you have such tiny clothes?’ I asked as the wrists, waist and collar all snapped snugly into place.

‘For my daughter,’ he said, putting on his helmet. He paused and grinned. ‘And my girlfriends.’

Contrary to received ideas on this subject, I like hearing men I’m dating have had other girlfriends. Multiple girlfriends, even.  Heck, wives. I benefit hugely from all the awareness my sisters have infused into the vocabulary, attitude and sexual confidence of the guy I’m going home with.

I wish one of those girlfriends or wives, however, had carved a little message onto the back of the Glaswegian’s helmet that I could read before I was riding pillion on the M25 going 70 mph: ‘This man is a maniacal speed freak and he will try to kill you.’

I must say, at the outset, that there is nothing more relative than the experience of speed and time. Einstein knew it and pointed it out and we’ve been toasting him in our GPS-equipped vehicles ever since (apparently without Einstein’s special law of relativity the satellites could not coordinate accurately with your car and would be narrating your journey to Brighton with the cheery announcement, as you pulled into a disused lay-by at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, that you had Reached Your Destination.) I understand the fly sees the world in slow motion and that’s how it’s able to avoid the swatter. One woman’s saunter is another woman’s dash. I get it. However.

This awareness did not make for a less gut-quakingly, bowel-clenchingly, artery-hardeningly terrifying experience when the Glaswegian, who up till this point had obviously just been puttering along, now decided,  crouching over the engine of his royal blue Ducati, to make good use of a bit of open motorway and speed up.

I could have sworn that he started to hum. Some tuneless little melody speed freaks obviously sing as they trifle, murderously, with the psyche of their passengers. All of me pressed up against quite-a-bit-of-him could feel his shoulders, back and legs quivering with increasing delight. He was in heaven.

Whereas I couldn’t hear the traffic around us because of the throat-rending screams inside my head. I couldn’t feel my arms around the Glaswegian’s waist because my body was sending all useful blood to my vital organs. I was on the verge of losing consciousness, not because I was somehow channelling the airman whose uniform I seemed to be wearing and was pulling G, but because going that fast so close to the ground was an experience I just wanted to get away from. How could I make this stop? And suddenly, in a blinding flash of insight, the answer occurred to me:

Jump Off.

It’s at this point in the narrative that I’m reminded of what it’s like, at times, to be a writer co-running a production company.

Christine, my producer and I, are rather ambitious. Very, in fact. In truth, our desires for our work hurtle at breakneck speed across the cosmos of our lives. We adore developing scripts. We thrill at the casting and hiring of actors, are gleeful producing films and working with directors.  We are passionate about our mission to showcase women over 35 and have attracted a board of directors (with credentials up the wazoo) who support us. And want a worldwide audience for the stories we love to tell.

These dreams are fast dreams. And if we don't keep up, if we look down, we can tense up, get scared and want to abort. In mid leap.

Yesterday I dropped off a script we’ve been refining for the whole three years of our incorporation (and that I’d been redrafting for the seven years previous)  at a good London theatre with West End connections. The day was weirdly warm, I had to take off my coat and scarf after dismounting from and parking my bike, and as I strode up to the theatre, glancing at the five star reviews on the posters in the window, sporting names like ‘Anthony Sher’ and ‘Anton Chekov’ and before I opened the doors I thought  ‘What if they don’t like it? What if they say ‘No’? What if I fail?’ Part of my brain shouted ‘Get back on the bike! Go home! Go to bed! Go to sleep! FOR YEARS.’ Because sleeping is something I can do quite well. And no one ever tells me my sleeping isn’t what they’re looking for or something they’re already producing, but many thanks for letting us see it and good luck elsewhere.

But. There just isn’t that much uninhibited, heart-launchingly, spirit-quickeningly, life affirming joy in sleeping. And desire and ambition as intense, as fuelled, as large as ours require another technique.

The Glaswegian slowed down to neatly duck the cluster of cars ahead and I gasped a whisper of air into my lungs, allowing some blood to flow back to my brain which gave me the resources to question the wisdom of avoiding terror by leaping under the oncoming rubber, chrome and steel, leaving my heart – and lungs and kidneys - in Buckinghamshire forever.

We took the next exit and, idling at a traffic light I lifted my visor with a shaking hand and whimpered ‘That’s a bit fast for me.’

He put a warm, gloved hand on my thigh, nodded, and from that point on we had a leisurely motor through green and pleasant countryside. Over a sapid pub lunch, apologising for my wimpiness, I reconfirmed we Wouldn’t Go That Fast Again. He was receptive and kind and assured me we wouldn’t.

‘I was just trying it out,’ he said smiling. ‘Different passengers, different speeds.’ I wondered if he was thinking of other, racier girlfriends. I imagined them, clutching his middle and urging him on to greater and wilder miles per hour. I saluted them.

‘How can you enjoy it?’ I said, my lunch all the tastier after the adrenalin rush. ‘How come that doesn’t scare the fuck out of you?’

He didn’t have to think about it.

‘I’m relaxed,’ he said.

 Which, in the face of both raging artistic desires and land-speed-record-breaking motorway journeys, seems like a pretty good choice.

 

 

The equation used to get you to Brighton. From outer space.

 

 

Awards

I like awards. I think they’re fun. They’re fun to get and they’re fun to give.  As I believe in the innate justice of the universe, I figure anyone who gets an award has put themselves in the position to receive it and should get it. Bravo I say.

The friend I know with the most awards –  his office shelves are in danger of collapsing onto the head of the receptionist and knocking her unconscious in the middle of ordering his lunch – laughed about what it would be like if EVERYONE got an Oscar. Just for showing up on the red carpet in front of those art deco columns.

‘Hello, welcome, here is your Oscar. Aaaaaaaaaaaand -  one for your husband! He does what? Data entry? Fabulous! We love his work.’

Obviously there are some who think that universal award-giving deflates the value of the award. But I don’t agree. Universal oxygen does not deflate the value of having it.

This posits that winning an award is tantamount to breathing. When in fact what I want to suggest is that breathing is tantamount to winning an award. We just don’t think of it that way.

Not until someone has shoved a pillow over our face or our SCUBA gear has packed up at six fathoms deep. Then, if Jack Nicholson were to show up in a designer submarine, brandishing an Oscar and mouthing the words ‘Congratulations!’ while offering air to the schmuck in the suit next to you – you wouldn’t feel like a winner. You’d think ‘Jack! Throw me a tank! I don’t NEED the statue! I don’t WANT the statue, it’s HEAVY, I’ll take the Air!!’

But no, you hadn’t been nominated for oxygen. Only for Best Supporting Actor in Best Short Film Live Action (Two Reels).

Awards are in the eyes of the beholder.

I worked in prisons on and off for three years. I facilitated workshops for The Forgiveness Project, a glorious organisation that explores forgiveness through real stories – stories of people who have experienced criminal trauma and made the decision to forgive. The guys who took the course often lived on the ragged edge of life, exposed to treatment that would have levelled creatures of a lesser species. At the end of the three-day workshop every participant got a certificate of attendance. An award.

We sat in a circle, 25 of us. We’d bonded, after our three days of hearing and telling stories, doing role play and reading journal entries, and no one wanted to leave. The prison governor stood at the front of the room calling names. One of our staff stood beside him, giving the certificates and shaking hands.

The men would rise from their chairs as their names were called, to huge applause. They beamed. Some cried. One confided, gazing at the paper that had been printed off in the Forgiveness Project office two days earlier, ‘I’ve never won a thing in my life.’

We get to decide what counts.

I was in Paris last month, visiting the city with my family who had flown from Canada to spend the season in Europe. I don’t see them often enough and every moment in their company is a joy.

Strolling down the streets of Montparnasse en route to an evening by the Seine, my sister asked ‘What’s on your bucket list, Steph? What do you want to do before you die?’

I’ve thought about this. My answers were quick to hand.

‘I’d like to learn to tie knots,’ I said. ‘You know, good ones. I want to speak fluent French. And I’d like to win a BAFTA.’

That is an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. I think it would look good on my desk. Well, I don’t actually have a desk but if I had a desk, it would look good on it.

My sister was two steps behind. She quickened her stride to catch up. She looked down into my face, her eyebrows raised.

 ‘A bathtub?’ she said. (She’s from Canada. They have different awards.)

Two days later we were ascending the charming and history-steeped streets of Montmartre, six of us looking for a café with a view and good food, maybe tables in the shade. I was arm-in-arm with my bilingual nieces, trying to get them to speak French so I could pick it up, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw my sister pointing straight ahead.

‘There it is, Steph!! Just what you wanted!’

I looked in the direction she indicated. I saw what she meant. I ran up the hill, my family followed, I stood before them and made my speech. And as humbled and honoured as I was to win what you see on the bottom right of your screen – a life’s goal, my heart’s desire – I think the greatest achievement I could ever hope to know is the love and faith of the six hilarious, kind-hearted, generous-spirited supporters and fans recording the event for posterity:

Stephanie wins her first Bathtub. (Photo by Graham Young)

Summer Romance (Some Are Not)

The nights are long, the air fragrant and summer is finally swishing its skirts around us in London , which means MYPC is about to celebrate its third year of incorporation with a Board of Directors’ picnic on Saturday.

We will drink champagne and eat innumerable chutney and pickle sandwiches. Settling back onto the gingham blanket, dodging French tourists and kicking the prams out of our light, I will tell the Board my most recent Urban Tale of Men and Music. As we pass the cheesy snacks, I will turn to their six well-fed, attentive faces and begin the story of

 The Guy in the Grey Tailored Suit

We’d met on line last autumn.  We’d exchanged quirky details. He took my cue and refused to use emoticons in our instant messages but described the emoticons we, in the free cyberworld, SHOULD have.  For instance, I’d mistakenly referred to Highgate as being in Zone Two and he wrote

Wait, isn't Highgate Zone 3? (insert ahem-cough-cough face here)

Me: That was one of the best verbalised emoticons I've ever seen.  (Eyebrows-raised-head-nodding-respect face here.)


Him: Why thank-you (insert hands-in-pockets-while-avoiding-eye-contact-and-kicking-softly-at-nothing-in-particular-in-a-golly-shucks-kinda-way emoticon here)

He was American, cripplingly well-educated, adored opera and thrash and, when he sent a photo, jolly nice looking. He was a former professional athlete, loved dogs and wrote well.

What was not to like?

I’ll tell you what. He lived in New York. Do you know how difficult it is to get home in time for the last chai tea at Starbucks in NW8 when you’re cycling from New York?

We had emailed intensely for the best part of a month before I realised, sadly, I wasn’t going to meet him any time soon and, with a weakness for three-dimensional relationships, I told EmotiLogos Guy I was leaving the site and sent him my email address, in case he wanted to stay in touch.

I didn’t hear from him again but that seemed fair enough.

Every now and then I wondered how he was. When I heard about stem cell research or the mapping of the genome (Geneticist, PhD) and that we are more closely related to mice than any of us had ever been willing to admit, I was sorry not to have him to ask. But he’d become a corporate lawyer and wasn’t in London and I had to wade through Science Daily on my own – (Novel Nanoparticle Delivers Powerful RNA Interference Drugs! – how was I to make s sense of THAT without HIM?)

Then out of the blue, five months later (three weeks ago today)– he wrote. It seemed a shame we’d never met. He was in town. Would I like to grab dinner?

I said yes, immediately.

Any guy who puts nineteen hyphens in one sentence just for a yuck is someone a girl wants to meet.

**

I recognised him immediately from the photo. Tall, blue-eyed, full mouth.  He stood up and went to kiss me but the table was too big between us, so we settled for a very firm North American hand shake.

‘I wanted to get that table’ he said, indicating a place on the other side of the restaurant, ‘but they’ve said it’s reserved. No one is sitting there now. If no one sits there all night, I’m going to take issue.’

‘You should,’ I said, sitting down and putting the starched white napkin in my lap. ‘Take issue, take umbrage. Take as much offense as you can get and hold onto all evening. That’ll be fun. For both of us.’

He smiled. (He’s North American, he lives in New York. They are down with the insults.)

After asking him if he wanted to hear a geneticist’s joke (“Why are tertiary structures selfish? Because the amino acids are all wrapped up in themselves.”) and seeing him duck his head to laugh I realised we were going to have a nice time.

Because even by this point  - and we’re talking three? four minutes in? - I was pretty sure that he didn’t find me actively repulsive and wasn’t quietly texting his axe-wielding ex-girlfriend to say All Is Forgiven Please Call. There were tell-tale signs.

Tell-tale signs I confirmed on Google the moment I got home (‘Body Language To Tell if A Man Likes You’), having caught myself in mid-meal stroking my own ear lobes.

Yes, dear reader. I was looking at him and unconsciously having foreplay with myself.  This was just after dinner. We were onto pudding that he had craftily arranged for me to have by promising to have some himself and then not having any, which was just as well because I really wanted all of it, and I found myself leaning on the table, listening to him and stroking my ear lobes.

‘Holy frajole,’ I thought to myself. ‘This is body language. I am expressing a great deal here without verbalised emoticons or genetic jokes and I Had No Idea.’

He kept ducking his head, adorably, to laugh when I was hilarious – almost as though he didn’t want to be seen to be vulnerable in the face of my comic genius – and when I spoke of something I knew no one on earth had ever ventured to discuss (‘Dude, a fight between a cave man and an astronaut would definitely go to the astronaut!’) he raised his eyebrows and soaked me in.

“A slightly surprised, quizzical expression means he finds you fascinating,” the web site confirmed. I get that a lot. I’m going with fascinating and not abnormal.

He is an epicure and managed to convince me, as no man has in almost ten years, to have a drink after dinner.

‘I don’t drink when I’m with other people,’ I confessed.

Up with the eyebrows. There I was, being fascinating again.

‘You drink – alone?’ Ah. Maybe I was just sociopathic.

‘Well, no – yes, I guess, but only to sleep. If I am going to have a drink, it’s not wine. That brings me out in hives. You don’t want to see that. It’s not a good look.’

‘You don’t know that. I might find your urticarial disorder compelling.’

Of course. PhD. Geneticist.

‘Welts?’ I clarified.

He shrugged in a ‘seen-a-million-of-em’ kind of way and showed me the menu.

‘Risk this.’

He pointed to a Scotch with a French-sounding name that cost more than my week’s grocery budget. He must have seen me blanch because he took the menu away and said one of the most alluring things I’ve ever heard from a man I’ve only known for 87 minutes. He looked at me across the table cluttered with glass and silverware, every surface reflecting gold in the dim light, leaned forward slightly and asked  

‘Do you trust me?’

**

Two and a half hours later he leaned back in his chair and said ‘This is what a dinner should be. Relaxed, good food, good conversation.’

‘And a great deal of jewellery-fiddling’ I thought to myself. Apparently women have a collection of almost thirty gestures indicating physical interest (men have 10), but  it is a sure-fire, tell-tale sign that she likes you if she plays with what she’s wearing.

I couldn’t keep my hands off the choker around my neck, even when I knew I was doing it. As though I was imagining his former-professional-athlete’s hands on the skin at my throat.

We left the restaurant and emerged into the warm, cobalt-blue night.

Now that we were walking together I could see he was tall – taller even than I’d thought at dinner, although lusciously, he had perfect posture. A guy who sits up straight rocks my world (my dad was in the military)(which means I also respond well to a fly-past) and it can be evidence of interest. When a man likes you, he stands taller, extends his chest. Even in three-inch heels my head was well below his shoulder.

‘Wow, he must really like me,’ I thought, a little excited, feeling I was in with a chance (forgetting, conveniently, that he’s 6’2”: no matter how much he likes you, he can’t actually gain height during the evening).

We strolled easily together and every now and then I glanced at him and was able, for the first time, to really absorb and apprehend what he was wearing.

It was a grey tailored suit. Or I assume it was tailored as I'd never seen anything like it in the window of a shop. The jacket had seemed nice enough while he was sitting down but now that he was walking I could see the effect of the whole and as we strode down the pavement towards my bicycle I underwent a most perplexing and disorienting experience.

I was becoming aroused.

And it was the suit.

It owed a great deal to the ‘mod’ retro look, now popular but without seeming trendy or flash. It was fitted and he filled it out. The trousers were narrow and his shoes tapered – but not annoyingly so. The jacket was almost tight. The cut was deeply pleasing, as though the tailor had just done away with everything that didn’t fit and was left with this perfection of a garment on what, by the time I was unlocking my bicycle and trying to speak coherently, was beginning to look like the perfection of a man.

I fumbled with the key and prayed not to drop it or accidentally re-lock my bike to my leg. For the first time that evening I felt nervous, self-conscious. Here was a new and surprising truth I had to admit to myself:  I was sexually attracted to his clothes.

(Describing the experience to Our Publicist a week later I said ‘I – I was moved. I felt this rush – this thrill – right in my thorax.’

‘I don’t think it was your thorax darling,’ he said.)

He watched me liberate my bike then bent down to help with the cable. It was the closest I’d been to his silk-blend slim-fit sleeves. I needed a distraction and how, before I lunged for the shirt-collar or tried to steal his socks (also stylish). 

‘Aren’t these shoes great? Do you like the sound?’ I clopped eagerly across the street, slapping my wedge heels on the pavement. ‘I’m recreating 19^th century London. I’m a minute I’ll rear up and try to pound you into the cobblestones. How authentic.’

He was a very good sport and said yes, he liked that horse-hoof sound, gosh - wasn’t I entertaining? But as I walked him to his hotel, now, perhaps, getting carried away -  clicking my tongue, chomping my teeth – I tried to head butt him into traffic at one point, just for verisimilitude - I panicked. What information was I communicating? Does the extensive research into female mating rituals include ‘Animal mimicry?’

We stood for a moment under a lamp standard, the handsome facade of his hotel silhouetted against the twilight of a late spring sky and after very swift kisses, one to each cheek, he said ‘I’ll call you when I’m back in London.’

That was a month ago and he hasn’t rung. I half-suspect he won’t and again, I would understand.  It’s possible he clocked the ear-rubbing and the necklace-fondling but a woman overwhelmed by the sensuous appeal of a perfect lapel evinces behaviour no website is going to describe.

I’m telling myself it’s just as well. (‘Come on. What guy isn’t charmed by a horse impersonator?’ Chris, my producer has asked.) He lives in New York, we are worlds apart and - let’s face it – it’s hard to progress in a romantic relationship if you’re begging the guy to keep his clothes on.

Dreams and Joss

I’ve been struggling a bit recently. I’ve been losing faith. Things seem to be taking too long: romantically, professionally. Financially. Not in a wandering-in-the-wilderness way, I’m not in the boggy slime of despair, I see possibility, still. It’s all just - qualified. So, for instance, I love someone who loves me, but we never seem to love each other at the same time. My work is being considered at the highest levels of commissioning in the Queendom, but no word yet. And I have money coming in but I can’t buy the yacht.

True, a month ago I had the best birthday ever in my whole life, I found out a talented actor of fame and renown is attached to one of my scripts and in January- remember team? - I flew back to London from Canada first class.

Still, I showed up at the MYPC office yesterday, struggling.  Christine, my producer, fed me tea and lunch and shared my chocolate and listened. She heard how discouraged I felt, how I was losing confidence. She was sympathetic and she didn't give advice (best producer, best friend, best choice).

The next day I found an email from her entitled ‘For moments of doubt’. I opened it and read:

Print it out, pin it on your wall.  It's all we need to remember:

And I cried.

Because this is a photo of Joss Whedon. Do you know who Joss Whedon is? He directed Avengers Assemble  (third biggest grossing movie of all time, over $1bn worldwide) and his adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing opens in UK cinemas on 14^th June. He created, wrote and directed Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse  and the galactically brilliant model for all superior web-series to come, Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. 

So he’s a talented writer, director and series-launcher. But the world is full of them. You throw a dart the width of a laser-beam in Soho and you hit 20 talented writer/director/series-launchers. Joss is more than that.

He’s a visionary who bets on love. And he wins. 

He hasn’t always. He has had series cancelled (Angel, Firefly), his original film script for Buffy was so extensively re-written that he disowned the movie and was kept in the dark about the producers’ plans for his non-realised version of Wonder Woman. He said in an interview with Maxim magazine:

I wrote a script. I rewrote the story. And by the time I’d written the second script, they asked me…not to. [Laughs] They didn’t tell me to leave, but they showed me the door and how pretty it was.

His experience in mainstream cinema was chequered, his desires for his stories on television felt constrained by studio decisions. He was and, in the UK still is, a cult figure who has to be introduced. But he has to be introduced. And I’m introducing you to him now.

Because Joss never gives up. He has kept his eye, his heart, his cosmic-sized energy on the stories he wants to tell. He is in love with feeling. He revels in the human struggle to be whole, to be known. He sets things on space ships and in mutant worlds of super heroes and vampires but he cares most about how a teenage girl feels the night after she makes love for the very first time and the guy never calls back.

If Jane Austen finds the extraordinary in the ordinary, Joss finds the ordinary in the supernatural, and they meet in the same still point of the turning world: where the human being gropes towards her unseen greatness. Felt, but hidden, the heroine battles monsters, machines, cold-hearted bureaucrats and malevolent institutions, all to discover there is something no one can hurt and that she need not defend: the bigger, stronger, better self who calls to her on the other side of the pain.

Joss knows you don’t give up on that self. What would be the point? It’s all there is.

I subscribe to a series of inspiring on-line quotes that arrive in my in-tray every morning. I like them. They cheer me, focus me and remind me what I’m doing. After I received Christine’s JossPoster, I opened the Quote for Today:

When a child has a dream and a parent says, "It's not financially feasible; you can't make a living at that; don't do it," we say to the child, run away from home... You must follow your dream. You will never be joyful if you don't. Your dream may change, but you've got to stay after your dreams. You have to.

**

  

About ten months ago I dreamt I had left my bag on the top floor of the London Film School. I was in a bathroom in the basement washing my hands when I realised the bag was missing (though luckily, not my valuables), and I knew, annoyingly, I would have to ascend flights of stairs to get it back. When I glanced in the mirror I saw to my amazement that I looked like -Joss.

Now, you might think it isn’t cool for a woman to look like the guy in the photo above: hirsutely-challenged and growing a beard, but I was thrilled. ‘I look like Joss’ I said to myself in the dream. ‘I love this, I love looking like this.’

As I stared at my Joss-Face I thought of all the work I wanted to produce and the people I wanted to produce it with, all the characters I love and the reality I wanted them to have; I thought of my desire to feel the joy of telling the story of a heroine who doesn’t give up, who only knows herself because she has breathed through the pain, no matter what monsters or bureaucrats or fears arise. I thought all of this as I looked, fixedly, pointedly at my JossSelf in the mirror. I felt better. 

And, because of this dream, ten months ago, I realise I am now able to answer Christine's deathless question 'What would Joss do?' for, as I felt better, my Joss-reflection smiled.

Then winked.

 ********

Favourite Joss moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98HJzNC3I3s 

  

Daily Quote from A. Hicks workshop San Diego, CA on February 7. 2004