My dear friend, I hope this email finds you slightly less grumpy at technology than I am. I spent most of this week in a battle with capitalism and built-in obsolescence. It all started when I turned on my computer to discover that it had decided to run at a speed I’ve not seen since 1988 when a person had to load the computer’s operating system and then the application and then the files disk by disk. Searching for the antidote to this glacial issue, I discovered that the operating systems on the brand of computers that I use is never updated past seven years. Looking into the details of my computer I discovered that it is ‘late 2017’ so cannot have its software further updated. I tried all of the tricks and none of them worked, until I did the one final, desperate thing. I seem to have tricked it into running at a speed I find acceptable (slightly faster than I can think), but I’m grumpy at the thought that I might soon have to buy a new computer which won’t really do anything that this computer doesn’t do as far as my needs are concerned. Anyhoo, that’s a boring way to begin, isn’t it, because we already knew that capitalism sucks and who needs other people’s confirmations of this when they are flooded with their own examples every day.

An exciting thing! Last night, my publisher gave me my advance copy of my book! Pearls: Memoir Strands. I stayed up way too late into the night reading it. I mean, I already know what happens but couldn’t stop reading; if that doesn’t tell you how compelling it is then I don’t know what will. (You can even pre-order by following that link which, as I think I’ve mentioned, is a safer bet than buying tickets to any of my shows in advance, because this book is already written and only needs editing, whereas tickets to shows go on sale long before they’re finished).

Talking of things that aren’t finished: I didn’t write last week—or at least, I did write, but I didn’t finish writing to the point that my thoughts were in sensible order. In other words: I wanted to send what I hadn’t written; so I didn’t send what I had written.

I was going to say ‘I’m sorry I didn’t write last week,’ but I looked at that particular sentence after I’d written it and I thought the ‘sorry’ implied a sense of mutual obligation that we haven’t established. I’ve decided that I’ll write to you each week, but that’s my own obligation for myself, isn’t it? There’s no obligation on you to anticipate its arrival.

I still haven’t finished what I started writing last week, but I don’t have time to finish it this week, and I didn’t want to miss another week, so I’m sending you this strange little hodge-podge of thoughts instead. I’ve learned that the secret to achieving goals like ‘write to your friend every week’ is that when you inevitably stumble and miss a week instead of stopping the goal you must simply reset it.

It’s not that I don’t have time today to finish the little letter that I want to finish, more that I can’t afford to use the brainspace. I’m part of a terrifying event over the weekend: the 24-Hour Theatre Project. We are divided into teams (one writer, one director, and two or more actors) and across twenty-four hours we come up with a ten-minute piece staged for loving friends and family and members of the public. We meet at 6.30pm this evening, teams are selected, themes and other elements of the story are distributed; the writers go away and write, submitting their scripts by no later than 5am. The director and actors get out of bed, arrive at the theatre sometime early in the morning, try to make sense of the writer’s script and get it ready to be staged at 7pm that evening.

I’m one of the writers in case you’re wondering. (You’re probably not, knowing that I’m neither a director nor a writer).

Anyway, I hope you’ll understand that I can’t afford to use any extra brain today by trying to finish a piece of writing that I couldn’t resolve over the course of a week. Apart from anything else, I haven’t stayed up past 10pm for about a year.

Today, my plans are simple: wash my sheets and pillowcases so that when I get into bed tonight to rest, I will feel like I’m in control of life: write to you; shop for snacks; use index cards to write some of the major tips and tricks for revving up writing when you can’t think of what else to do and lining them up on my dining room table for ease of access; my resting meditation that I usually do on the afternoons of performances; go for a walk.

I’ve already got my washing on, and while I was preparing it for the washing machine I thought, ‘I know! To stop the pillowcases ending up inside the quilt cover and creating a tangled mess for myself when I get the washing out of the machine ready for the clothesline I will do up the buttons of the quilt cover so that the pillowcases can’t crawl in.’ Absolute genius! Of course as soon as I thought of it, I thought to myself, ‘I bet everyone else already knows to do this.’

I do hope that’s not the full extent of my genius ideas for today, because if I’m going to get a ten-minute script written overnight I am going to need a lot of sparks of genius. I’m generally a very, very, very and extremely slow writer; so I am banking on the adrenaline and the deadline to do their work. Also, I’m hoping the actors in my team like a bit of improv?

Something I think about a lot when I’m thinking about how to get things written is the fabulous exhibition I saw at the V&A many years ago: The House of Annie Lennox. I think it was Christmas 2011. We were living in Abu Dhabi and decided to do a bit of a northern hemisphere family Christmas trip. The boys were youngish, we only had a few days in London, and I had decided that I would sacrifice a visit to the V&A in the interests of family harmony. But then we were in the Science Museum, and the boys were going one more round on the three-d movie thing or something similar. I was scrolling social media or maybe even looking through blogs (kind of bored I’m assuming) when I saw one of my friends from back in Australia say that she wished she could get to the V&A to see The House of Annie Lennox.

My dear friend, did I spend my early twenties dying my hair orange because I thought Annie Lennox was just an okay singer? No, I spent my early twenties dying my hair orange because I frigging adored the woman. There was no way I was going to be so close—the entrances to the Science Museum and the V&A are only metres from each other—and not see that.

I texted Adrian (I think he was in the 3D thing too or wherever it was that they were): I’ll be half an hour. I ran across the road to the V&A and because it was a few days before Christmas, it wasn’t at all crowded and for a lot of the time, I was the only person in the exhibition space. The other people who came and went during that time were people who I didn’t know but recognised.

There were costumes and ephemera like posters, but the highlight for me was the little desk (with drawers that you could open as if you really were at her desk) with notebooks and scraps of paper with lyrics and music and little notes-to-self. I didn’t take many photos, but I absolutely love this one, because it reminds me that even Annie Lennox has to go right back to the beginning when she’s trying to find a word:

I love this photo too, because Thorn in my Side is one of my favourite songs, and this reminds me that behind every piece of finished writing is not only a messy beginning but even more importantly an imperfect middle:

I rarely listen to The Eurythmics music anymore. I guess it’s such a part of me that I don’t need any external reminder of it at all.

I’m sorry, but I do need to rush off now. The washing machine sang its triumphant tune a few minutes ago, and I’d better get the washing straight onto the line if the sheets and pillowcases are going to dry in time. And then I need to get onto the next thing on my list.

I know that I haven’t really told you anything that justifies your use of brainspace in getting from the beginning of this letter and down to here. But thank you for helping me to take my mind off the adrenaline that’s already started its work by passing the time in such a lovely way, sharing these precious photos of a precious and unexpected time.

Over the next week while I’m recovering from tonight I’ll try to finish writing something of slightly more substance to send you next Friday.

Until then, I will think of you often and with love

Your friend, Tracy xx

And PS my apologies for repetitive words, for typos for half-finished thoughts—there are probably even more than usual because I don’t have time to give this more than cursory proofread.