A Shakespearian Supper.

T dropped into the house for a week’s stay, though perhaps it’s more precise to say T bent into the house.

T is tall, the house is not.

Long, rather than high.

A house you walk into and out and in and out, up and down - rather than through.

T has folded himself into one of the upper corners.

He is writing a film.

Or a proposal for a film.

Or a submission for a competition for a treatment for a film.

Something for which he needs a quiet corner.

Though L is with him for a couple of days first.

Folded together.

Though she is learning lines for a play.

She mumbles to herself constantly, it disturbs T from his celluloid scenes and she worries that it is disturbing me.

Ha! 

I am lying on the floor with my feet up on a chair watching my tortoise.

I am exhausted.

I find the tortoise an excellent antidote to all that has exhausted me so far.

Life perhaps, certainly a part of it.

The tortoise does not mind that the house is low and long.

It suits him.

Her.

I know not which.

I know not which?

I’m talking like a Shakespearean film, a consequence of L’s mumblings and T’s flickering. 

So, I invite K out to the cinema which isn’t.

We follow the sides of the house until we find a car and drive to the town that isn’t, where the cinema that isn’t - is.

The person who sits behind us complains that the film is long.

At the end.

Not as long as my house I think.

When we return home T and L are asleep but the house rejoices in the smells of someone other’s cooking.