Born To Be

A baby girl we look forward to getting to know was born today. Not so very far from us. Her sister was staying with us last night while her parents remained in an induced, expectant state at the nearby hospital, one of the busiest in the land, with one of the most diverse and expanding populations, too. Our guest is two years older than our 8-year-old daughter, but they laughed in equal measure. I could hear them quite possibly far too long into the night, as they giggled and whispered and swapped stories like people with baskets of fruit, but it seemed churlish to ask them to be quiet. The excitement was a life-force, lucky, and our guest's mother was about to deliver. I had spent the latter part of the day with our son, a new camera, and a 150-page manual. It is the new camera I will be taking to war zone and I have never experienced apprehension so stilled by so few years. The companionship. The attention to detail. Our son was a shining revelation to me. Anything from attaching the supplied microphone and the lens hood with lens cover, to locating a scene on a tape with the remote commander, became like skating painlessly across what had until then felt like a vast and unfeeling lake. At some stage in the night I heard our guest talk in her sleep, something about flight. In the morning I could hear our guest declare that the baby had been born. At first I thought it was a reference to our daughter's Tamagotchi, but then came round. The baby, according to the text parked with pride in her phone, was born at 1:30am. It is a girl. The proud and beautiful father picked up our guest shortly before the school round. He looked well. Everyone was well. And the artist had looked after everyone with consummate love. Well done the mother in the hospital.

Scene from a marriage

INT. LIVING ROOM/STUDIO. DAY.

SUNLIGHT pours through two half-opened window blinds, casting shadows across two works of art - detailed, worldly, expansive - on a long white wall. A female ARTIST, attractive, dark hair, sits anxiously on a bright red sofa. The ARTIST'S HUSBAND sits typing by a laptop on a nearby round red table. The phone rings.
ARTIST(answering): Hello? Oh hello. Hi. I missed your call. How was your holiday?

A MONTAGE of small talk, the words REVERBERATE and ECHO, the images begin to BLUR and WHITE-OUT, the ARTIST taps her fingers impatiently.

ARTIST(cont.): Good. Great. (a laugh) Oh. (a long pause) Right. I see. (a sigh) No, I know. Yes. Pardon? No. I see. Never mind. That's just the way it is. I completely understand.

The ARTIST stares defiantly, admiringly, without vanity, at her work on the wall, and shakes her head.

CUT TO:

INT. LIVING ROOM/STUDIO. DAY.

The ARTIST'S HUSBAND opens the blinds completely and leans back on his chair. It SQUEAKS.

ARTIST'S HUSBAND: She was the first private gallerist to see the work. She loved it. She said so. She wanted to show the work. It's not her gallery. It's her father's.

The ARTIST smiles bravely and picks up the phone and dials a number.

ARTIST(into phone): Yes, hello. I'd like to order another board. (another smile) Yes. It's me. Oh, one hundred and twenty-two centimetres by eighty-five? No. No, it's for a new piece...

The ARTIST looks at her husband. The CAMERA crosses their faces, passes slowly over the work, encircles the room, moves into the light and out the window. We travel through the window and through the foliage of a line of trees, and across the road, across open land, above a park, where we meet a balloon and float, float HIGH above the city skyline and river.

Freeze

The artist's parents - a good trip - have left and the sister is now to stay one night. (It is like one of those holiday photographs sprung to life again in sudden adulthood.) The central heating in the meantime has shut down and I am sat at home with the two children now wrapped up in a kind of Dickensian spirit to counter the cold. The fact the artist is out with her sister is a good thing. Both are working mothers and deserve their space. The fact some of us have colds already is not a good thing. However, the children enjoy it when there is just me. Not as much, but enjoy all the same. I tend to spoil them. We bond. A shameless bond. I draw the line only with sweets and encourage creativity. My idea of what creative is however bears its own reflection and no one else's. It stretches for example from refusing to let the 5-year-old play killing games instead of chasing games on the computer, to allowing the 8-year-old to copy my signature as if researching some kind of genetic sub-text. Our optimism gets the better of us - I suppose because we are those kinds of people - and we keep trying the central heating over and over again. This includes turning on the so-called hot tap in the bathroom sink and parking a protruding finger beneath the flow and closing one's eyes in hope. Only it seems to get colder and colder. It also includes that classic switch-it-all-off and switch-it-all-on-again malarkey. It's enough to freeze your words off. There were no plumbers available, you see. Not unless one was prepared to pay the earth. (It is the coldest night of the year.) No, we will simply have to wait until the morning. (Keep the faith.) I came back from town a few hours ago and am still wandering the flat with a scarf round my neck. Occasionally I look up at some of the artist's work and feel a kind of warmth. (Hang on a minute.) I rub the little people's backs. (I don't believe it: it's come on again.) We're chilling.