interlude

Coffee with the Melia moghul.
(Irish theatre producer Paddy Melia.)
Around us the Riverbank cafe clatters with life.
It's been more than a year since we met to discuss my idea to stage the play Charley's Aunt as a teenage sex comedy retitled Victorian Scandals.
More than a year since he went off and produced the show himself without another word to me.
There seem to be no hard feelings.
I haven't shot him yet anyway.

More to make conversation than anything else, I begin to muse aloud on my unrequited dreams of being a famous actor.
"Paddy," sez I, "do you think I'll ever get cast in a professional theatre production again?"
"James," sez he with infinite kindness. "It's highly unlikely."