SO IT'S ONLY BEEN TWENTY YEARS

July 2009.
Working from home – the new financial year has started and there is a really bobbins job that I have been putting off for about a week – updating all the links on the excel files with the new dates. One of these easy, but painfully mundane six hour jobs jobs that you will do almost anything to avoid. I have blocked out calendar and am just going to keep my head down and get it done. For the sake of full disclosure, I should probably add that I went to the pub quiz the night before and had at least one and probably two pints more than I should have, and am consequently feeling a bit duntish- duntish being defined in The Meaning of Liff as somewhat incapitated by a severe hangover. It’s about ten o’clock when I get an email from Arif Hussein again. Could he phone me at any time that is convenient? I mail him back and say now is a good a time as any. Five minutes later the phone rings. We’re having a general chit chat about the competition, script writing in general, how long I’ve been doing it, etc and I say that at this point in (what we shall euphemistically call) my career, I would probably give a script away just to get my name on a screen. He starts laughing and says that you should never say that to a producer and what he has been leading up to is that I have won.
"I’m sorry?"
"You’ve won."
"Won?"
"The competition."
"Which competition?" (Did I mention the hangover?)
"The screenwriting competition – you’ve won it."
"The whole thing? There were all these entries and I’m the last one left?"
"Yes."
I’m feeling like Tom Berenger in Major League. Bren, is that you? I’m hungover, my knees are killing me and if you were going to pull this shit, you could at least have said you were from the Yankees.
Arif at this point is probably feeling like he is talking to the village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter, so I takea big deep breath, and try to pull it together.
"Sorry, one last time, the BFSC competition, I have won it, and Kaos Films now intend to produce the script The Legend of New York Pizza."
"Yes."
Karen gives me a free pass to have a sneaky smoke on a Wednesday night, when I am at the pub quiz. I have one or two left in the packet. I light one. This moment has been a long time coming. Almost two decades. Over half my lifetime.
So much so, that my response of “that’s really good news – thank you very much” does not quite seem to cover it.
He says that the official announcement is coming out tomorrow, but he wanted to let me know in advance. He says, he really likes the script, and is looking forward to working on it, it needs a little bit of a tweak, but nothing too major and he is looking forward to working with me. He also says he will put me in touch with Kaos’ head of development, a lady called Jessica Loveland. I ask if I can tell friends and family, and he says yes, but please don’t post it on the Internet before the official word has gone out. Not a problem. He hangs up.
I phone Karen first.
She can’t believe it.
It’s basically a repeat of the last phone call with me playing Arif and Karen playing me.
Then I phone home. Parents are delighted. I phone my sister. She asks if my niece Molly can have a walk on part. I say there are no parts for a ten year old girl. She asks if I can write one in. So my first development request comes from my own sister. Peter phones back an hour later. He’s over the moon, and needless to say he has a few words about my mockery of his sense of optimism. I eat my slice of humble pie. From now on Peter is going to be like Remi the rat in that Pixar movie, giving all of my scripts the sniff test. Yeah, that one’s good. This one’s bad. This one has no character arc or sense of dramatic irony. We hang up, as something in work has just kicked off and I need to get it sorted urgently. (if anyone cares I didn’t get those files updated for another three weeks – I am an Olympic level procrastinator)

It takes me most of the day to sort out the work issue so I don’t really get a chance to process what has just happened. At about 5.30 I log off. Karen is on her way home. I grab a beer from the fridge and the other ciggie I had left over. I go and sit at the back steps looking out over Wiltshire fields.

I’m thinking about everything.

I think about the other finalists and how gutted they will feel tomorrow morning.

I think about the first time I ever sat down to attempt to write a screenplay – in my second year in college.

I think about Joseph Conrad saying that art is long and life is short and fame is very far away.

I think about the time I saw some young Romanian girl having won an Olympic Gold for gymnastics saying "it's the achievement of my life's ambition" and thinking 'probably good to get that out of the way before you turn fifteen.'

I think about the time years ago that we were broke and Karen took a second job but wouldn’t let me get one, because it would eat into my writing time.

And then I burst into tears like a six year old who has just fallen over in gravel.