Int: The Kitchen (evening)
“Urgh,” said Claire. “I thought being off school on my own would be fun, but it wasn’t fun at all. It was awful!” She stamped her feet so hard to emphasise her point the water in the cat’s bowl rippled ominously. “Mum made Anna look after me because she was too tired and so I had to sit up there in Anna’s stupid room watching all these stupid films she watches at her stupid college for stupid students like stupid her! I’d have had more fun at school!”
“Anna’s not a student at college,” Ethel said. “She’s a postgrad at university.”
“I don’t know what any of that even means, Ethel,” said Claire. “You don’t even know what any of that even means. No one knows what any of that even means!”
“I know what it means,” said Tina.
“Yeah, well you would,” Claire said furiously, contemptuously, and also slightly contradictorally.
“I can’t believe you tricked Mum into letting you have the day off school, spent it watching films with Anna, and you’re still somehow angry about everything,” Tina said.
“I can,” Ethel said.
“You can’t,” said Claire, more out of habit than anything else. “And you’d be furious too if you’d had to watch that weird awful stupid nonsense with Anna. I mean, those films were so weird. So weird.”
“How weird?” asked Ethel. “Weird how?” asked Tina.
“There’s nothing wrong with being weird,” said Daniel, bouncing his hard boiled egg against the floor, up onto the wall, and back into his hand.
“There is,” Claire said. “This film was so weird it was made LAST CENTURY!”
“That’s not weird, Claire,” Tina said. “It’s just old.”
“It’s pretty weird if you think about it,” said Claire. “We weren’t even alive then! And Mum would only have been our age!”
“That’s still not weird,” Tina said.
“Nanny would have been Mum’s age,” Claire said.
“Claire, we know how time works,” Tina said. “Even Daniel does.”
“Yeah, so?” Claire said. “And it was in GERMAN!”
“That’s not weird, either, Claire,” Ethel said.
“It is!”
“It’s just… not,” Ethel said, shaking her head.
“And then it was just the same film over and over again!” Claire shouted. “Time kept repeating and this weird old german woman in this weird old german film just kept having to save herself over and over again! Why would you even watch that? What’s the point? Why didn’t she just do it once instead of over and over again?”
“Because – ”
“AND we didn’t even have any popcorn,” said Claire, finally getting to the heart of the problem. “Or ice cream. Or a chocolate bar. Or biscuits. I had to have carrots for lunch. And an apple!”
“I had yoghurt for lunch,” said Daniel. “And two oranges!”
“Shut up, Daniel,” Claire said. “And I bet they were satsumas. No way could you eat two oranges.”
“I could,” said Daniel.
“He did,” Tina confirmed. “One of them was yours.”
“So?!” Claire said. “What’s that got to do with films?”
“Maybe it’s symbolic,” Tina suggested.
“Maybe you’re symbolic,” Claire snorted.
“If anyone’s symbolic it’s you,” Ethel snapped.
“You don’t even know what symbolic means!” Claire shouted. “No one does. Especially not Daniel!”
She grabbed his stupid hard boiled egg and threw it into the bin so hard it bounced straight back out of the bin and into Daniel’s hand like magic. So then Claire kicked the bin over instead because that’s what she should have done in the first place.
“What’s any of this got to do with Daniel?” Tina asked.
“EVERYTHING!” Claire absolutely screamed as loudly and as wildly as she could directly into the camera. “EVERYTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!”
CUT
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Notes:
1. Written on May 13th, 2024
2. This one was originally just going to be called This Film Is Old
3. But then I forgot and called it something else instead.
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