By the time you read this, I will be gone.

By the time it's August... I will be back.

Such is the nature of holidays.

I'm off to walk a tiny bit of France. Wish me luck!

Maryland took a while as well.

Number of hours it took me to remember all fifty states of the USA:
4, over 4 days.

Number of hours it took me to remember forty five of the states of the USA:
Half an.

Those last bastard five, in the order eventually remembered:
Wyoming. Missouri. Nebraska. Minnesota. New Mexico.

State I don't know if I'd ever remembered if I hadn't, by complete coincidence, picked up an old Garrison Keiller book to read on the train, and found it mentioned on almost every page, in a coincidence which felt uncomfortably as if God had been peering over my shoulder with increasing frustration for the past three days, and was now unable to control himself from shouting out the answer:
Minnesota.

Four places which, to my shame, I seriously considered as possible states:
Wicheta. Omaha. Nantucket. Alberta.

Place which I actually did think was a state, and the non-statehood of which meant that when I finally checked my completed list, I discovered to my anguish I had in fact only suceeded in remembered 49 of the states, a significantly less impressive achievement (and let's not forget, that makes it significantly less impressive than 'really not very impressive at all'):
(District of) Columbia.

State I'd left out:
Delaware. Bastard Delaware.

Amount of use any of this was in its intended task of helping me get to sleep on any of the four nights:
Zero.

A Found Play

You know people sometimes describe an unintentially poetic list, spam email, or Donald Rumsfeld quotation as a Found Poem? Well, I've just found a play. Which is handy, because writing my own is turning out to be a bit of a bugger. But this one is brilliant: it's pacy; exciting; brilliantly evokes character; and has a great twist at the end. It's a list of questions on a website search form, along with the first options from the drop down menus, and you need to imagine it as a conversation between a patient French estate agent, and a billionaire client who's very enthusiastic, but has an extremely short attention span. Here it is, in full.


MAKE A SELECTION OF THE HOUSES IN FRANCE

A new play "by" John Finnemore

-You wish to rent a house in France or buy one?
-I want to buy a house in France.
-In which part of France?
-Everywhere in France
-In which French Region?
-Every region of France
-What do you want to pay if you want to buy a house in France?
-Any price
-The house must be suitable for how many persons?
-Never mind


Curtain.


Interested theatre companies, please contact my agent.