Sarah's writing journal

Spent hours last night on the internet trying to research into Sarah Sophia Banks to see if she'd be an interesting subject for the monologue I'm writing to be put on in Brighton before Christmas. She was the sister of Joseph Banks, the plant collector, and lived with him and his wife. It seemed a pretty claustrophobic relationship. Apparently once when someone remarked that it was a nice day, she replied: 'I know nothing at all about it. You must speak to my brother Sir Joseph Banks, the noted naturalist upon that subject when you are at dinner.' I LOVE that, - a bit like that joke about the woman who cries out 'My son - the Doctor - is drowning' - but am not sure whether it justifies a whole monologue. When we had our meeting, we were advised to pick a character 'in extremis'. More and more this makes sense - there needs to be a reason for a character to be telling their story.

Writing with a friend this morning, we picked on the subject - things that revolt us. We tried to really write into the subject, using all the senses to really make it disgusting, but we were sharing a table with a couple of middle aged women busily enjoying their lunch so it felt too mean to read our stuff out!