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New play arriving slowly ... perhaps 82 pages ... write one and a half pages ... write it out four times ...drain it down to ten lines ... leafing through Denton Welch's JOURNALS; it's 1942, he is dying from a spinal injury, riding a bike across the Home counties, feverishly trying to sell his short stories, munching strawberry tarts, observing naked sailors in long grass after swimming, constant alertness for nosey neighbours in village. He hears Noel Coward meeting an actress -''Saw your show last week, Mr Coward, never laughed once''. NC replies ''that's interesting. I saw your shoe last night and I never stopped laughing''. Something elusive in this pastness. Where is the social knife in between the dainties?

 
J D Salinger died last month. A friend who I had not met for some time came up to me in the street. He said - did I want to hear the funniest joke of all time? Naturally I did. Cheer me up friend I said. 'Well' he began, ' three men walked into a bar. A Scotsman who wears a kilt. An Irishman with a green tam. And a Jew wearing his koppel. The bar-man studies the three carefully. Leans forward and asks them - so ... what's the joke?!' My friend in the street insisted that was the funniest joke of all time because it meant that every which way you look at things they are a joke. I hesitated. I wasn't even sure of my own sense of humour. So I grinned ruefully and asked him if he'd ever read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE?

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