Didn’t It Rain

The weather forecast for our area continues to promise temperatures above the average for autumn with the chance of an odd shower, and the skies are still emptying their bladders on our roof for hours at a time. It’s been raining on and off all day, and is still raining hard now. Appropriate, then, that I’ve spent the afternoon writing the latest in the Scriptly challenge series; this time, a script based on Hugh Laurie’s version of Didn’t It Rain. Trying to find some way of setting a script to Morecambe & Wise’s ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ in the thin hope that I can write us some good weather.

Today’s Scriptly brief has asked for something very twisty and original, and I admit to brain-fade. Maybe because I wrote a couple of scripts in ragged poetry, then a long and dark version of a prose story I wrote earlier this year into one script, and launched straight into a screenplay that was essentially set to music. Right now, I’m not capable of surreal and twisty. I might write them something obvious and simple – maybe a short script for very small children about a dog called Spot who has a big red ball to play with, and hope that none of their parents are veterinary surgeons with dirty minds.

In other worries, our escape artist tortie cat can tell the time. We have a curfew catflap that locks at a given time and unlocks at a given time. We like to shut them in at dusk and let them out around dawn to give the local wildlife a fighting chance, but Genie seems to know. She runs downstairs five minutes before the flap unlocks and is outside as soon as it does; she demands food fifteen minutes before the flap locks for the evening, won’t wait for any delaying tactics and is outside ten minutes before the flap locks shut for the night. So we shifted the time back by half an hour. Abracadabra – Genie wanted her food fifteen minutes before the new time. Shifted the lock time back by an hour… you guessed it. She scooted outside with ten minutes to spare and sauntered back soaking wet and skittery at half past ten. Full moon soon, and I think the little hunter is under its spell already.

Time I returned to the Scriptly struggle – ten down, four to go.