Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in aethe_writing's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
2:58 pm	bee story There was once a very small country, very far away. It was so small that it was caught in a fold between two much larger countries, and nobody took much notice of it apart from the people who lived there. This was a pity, because it was a beautiful country, full of friendly animals, happy children and brightly-coloured flowers growing wild in all the streets. It was ruled by King Balthasar, who had been king for many years, as long as most people could remember. King Balthasar didn't mind being a king but he would have preferred to be a farmer. Rather than drive around in a splendid carriage full of gold and jewels, King Balthasar drove a scarlet tractor through the streets of his kingdom. Instead of the usual dogs and horses kings keep, he kept a herd of black and white cows, and was famously late for his own coronation because he had been milking that morning. The people of that country were used to seeing their king with smudges of mud on his face, and straw in his long white beard; so used to it, in fact, that they didn't even laugh any more. His love of farming was even reflected in his court. King Balthasar's Grand Vizier had been a shepherd and his chamberlain mucked out the pigs before he made his fortune as Patrick Percy, Purveyor of Finest Cured Meat. The king loved honey, too, and every autumn the kingdom's beekeepers paraded through the wild streets to the palace to present to their sovereign the finest of the honey they had produced. Everything was happy in the land King Balthasar ruled. The rivers groaned with fish; the pigs grew fat; the corn was plum and ripe; the honey was a taste of heaven and the cows gave the most delicious creamy milk. Even the trees grew specially close to the ramshackle, tumbledown palace with its smartly painted barn, because they loved the king and wanted to shield him from the rain and the wind. Yes, it was a happy land but things often don't stay that way. And one day, the kind king fell asleep among his black and white cows and never woke up. Who would rule the country now? King Balthasar had been so busy with his farming that he had never got round to having children or getting married. "There's plenty of time for that," he used to say, and laugh. But now there wasn't anyone to rule the little land. Mr Percy, butcher and chamberlain to the king, wrote to every distant relative of King Balthasar to offer them the chance to rule. Rather than pick one, in that country, everybody would arrive and build their own palace. The best palace would house the person who had built it as the new king or queen. Mr Percy and the Vizier watched, and the whole country watched with them, as King Balthasar's relatives came in droves to try their luck. Royal families are usually all related to each other, and everybody wanted to be a ruler. Pale penniless younger sons left after the first splinter; complaining ladies ripped their dresses or broke fingernails; and one very old prince got hit on the head by a falling rafter, and was disqualified on safety grounds. In fact only one palace was ever finished. As the vizier and chamberlain approached to judge it (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2005
3:15 pm	Emily knows Zoe is in the habit of skiving off school (bullying?).  She talks to her, Zoe promises she won't do it again and they part ways for the day.  Emily arrives at the cafe to find Mrs Menzies on strike for better pay - her solution to the cafe's financial worries.  Meanwhile Zoe has gone off to drink 20:20 and watch the film crew with Heather and Minx.  Feeling guilty about lying to her mum, Zoe tries to make amends by persuading the film crew to go to the cafe instead of the Grand Hotel for lunch.  They go - but want to treat the girls, and Emily sees Zoe.  Persuaded by Emily's cooking and her 'local colour', Ty offers her the guest slot on If You Think I'm Eating That, an execrable show where Anne Robinson-types slag off the food as it's cooked, accompanied by a horrible little posh child called Giles.  Somehow she manages to impress everyone, and Ty offers her her own series.  Peter insists on being present and helping to negotiate, nearly losing Emily the deal, while Ian is chatting up the runners and researchers outside...with very little success and a lot of active discouragement.  Archie should be going into hibernation, but Emily, scared of being without him, wants to dose him up with coffee.  As day one of filming dawns, she's taken to meet co-star Jack...but what's he snorting off the table as she walks in?   SCENE 1 An average family kitchen.  PETER is reading the paper and grunting; EMILY is bustling, waiting on IAN hand and foot.  IAN himself is slumped at the table.  ZOE is throwing things haphazardly into a bag. ZOE (to IAN):  Don't you have any classes in sixth form? IAN: You'll never find out if you keep skipping school. ZOE: Sod off.  I don't skip school.  (Pause)  Any more. EMILY: Oh Zoe!  You're not skipping school! ZOE:  Once or twice. IAN:  Once or twice a week more like. EMILY:  Why, love? ZOE (fidgeting, embarrassed): Because. EMILY:  Are you getting bullied? ZOE:  No!  It's just the other kids.  And the teachers. EMILY: What about them? ZOE:  They're wankers, Mum.  Everytime I go there I feel like someone's on my back.  If it's not the teachers it's the kids.     (Comment on this)
Friday, October 14th, 2005
12:22 pm	EPISODE 5: The runaway success of the reality show has brought offers flooding in for Emily, and Peter and Jennifer are pressuring her to agree to them.  Even though Emily hated reality TV, there seems nothing else coming in.  In despair she goes out for Zoe's birthday with Zoe and Lukey, and ends up getting a tattoo.  Peter at first kicks off but Jennifer persuades him there's an image in it.  And it's true; ratings shoot up again.  Emily's furious with Peter's lack of understanding...and could he be moving closer to Jennifer? After the massive pay rise Ty gives Emily persuades her to stay on the show, offers for further reality TV shows, club openings, and other duties of the Z-list celebrity are flooding in.  Peter and Jennifer think it's a great idea, but Emily despairs.  Meanwhile Zoe's turning sixteen, and Emily takes her and Lukey shopping for the day.  While Zoe gets her tongue pierced, Emily is captured by the thought of a tattoo...and gets one.  Peter kicks off but Jennifer's sure there's an image in it.  And she's right - the papers are delighted.  Emily's furious with Peter's lack of understanding and wonders if he could be up to something with Jennifer.  But there's bad news - Mrs Menzies is in trouble... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 5th, 2005
4:43 pm	EPISODE 2: Emily has become an unlikely hit.  Tarty old schoolfriends come back into her life, but what are they really out for?  Can Emily become a keen gardener just to please pseudo-feminist PR person Jennifer?  Meanwhile her tyrannical husband and son are getting worse, but at least she can afford to hire a cleaner.  Will Peter let her keep him though? (Comment on this)
3:49 pm	episode 1 synopsis EPISODE 1: The family are in debt; the cafe is only just keeping afloat and Archie has come down with a mystery illness. On top of it all Zoe is skiving off school and Mrs Menzies has gone on strike....which means Emily has to do all the work in the cafe. (Well, it's got to stay open.) It turns out Zoe's skiving to watch the film crew working on location outside the village...who come and eat in the cafe. Producer Ty, impressed with Emily's cooking, offers her a guest appearance on TV. If this comes off, she'll get her own show. Somehow, she's a hit, but with pushy husband Peter desperate to get her the best deal, and sleazy son Ian trying it on with the runners, Emily's afraid she'll get lost in the mix. As filming time approaches, will Emily's time as a TV chef be over before it's even begun? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
4:29 pm	Prawn Star series arc 6 episodes: 1. Emily is discovered and offered her own show. 2. Emily starts TV. Tarty old friends come back into her life. 3. Emily refuses to let Peter sack Lukey the cleaner. Mrs Menzies becomes deranged without Emily and takes up semaphore in order to send rude messages to the dirty old man who lives next to the lighthouse. Emily's teenaged son tries to hit on all the TV girls. 4. Emily does a disastrous reality TV show, pushed into it by her agent and her family. Only her daughter tells her not to do it. 5. Emily gets a tattoo. 6. Zoe is pregnant. Emily quits TV. (Comment on this)
8:08 am	Crowded cafe. Visible through a doorway are MRS MENZIES, filing her nails, sat on the sideboard, while Emily, flustered and beetroot-coloured, cooks. Customers are loud and grumbling. OVERBEARING POSH WOMAN: Jean, is that food coming? Only I've got to be in Dundee this afternoon for a tweed shipment coming in. MRS MENZIES: It's on its way, Mrs McLeod. (To Emily) Emily, is that hers? EMILY: No, not - MRS MENZIES: Well as I was saying, I wasn't having that. So I sent her packing, I did. I told her what for. Avon? I said. You can stick it up your arse. Then she showed me the prices and I was hooked. It's like Netto but for makeup. EMILY: Hmmm. (Not really listening, she bustles past and out through the doorway.) EMILY: Who's got crabs? Deathly silence falls on the room. I've got an order for baby crabs. (Pause) Done with chives. MRS MENZIES: Emily? Emily! EMILY: What? MRS MENZIES: No crabs with chives, I said she'd caught crabs from Clive. Mrs McLeod gets up and huffs out. I'm really not sure about this. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 3rd, 2005
4:17 pm	HOW SHOULD IT BEGIN? With Ty and Emily's meeting in the cafe, underlining Emily's talent and crappy life. HOW SHOULD IT END? With Emily at the start of a renewal, a new life. Not necessarily divorced from Peter, but where she wants to be. (Perhaps one of Ian's friends tries it on with her, and she rebuffs him, teaching Peter that he should value her.) (Comment on this)
11:21 am	Prawn Star Emily has a tortoise called Archie that goes everywhere with her. She is forty-two but looks older (a bit like Delia). She is married to a sarcastic social embarrassment called Peter who does not appreciate her, and has two children: Ian, aged 15, like his dad but younger and sleazier, and Zoe, aged 13, a mini-mosher who hates her dad and brother but proves surprisingly supportive to her mum. She is very easily dominated by stronger personalities such as her glamorous but slapper-ish boss Mrs Menzies and her battleaxe mother Maggie. Her old school friends Linda and Elaine are also much tougher than Emily, and only come back into her life once she is famous. As part of her image, Emily's PR woman Jennifer, a pseudo-feminist, tells her she should be into gardening, but Emily can't keep plants alive however hard she tries, and feels guilty about this. They have a drunken, teenaged gay guy, Lukey, to clean their house. Emily is secretly fond of Lukey and insisting on keeping him on as their cleaner is her first major independent action. After this, she often sits and has a glass of wine and a gossip with Lukey when he comes round. In Emily's beleaguered, apologetic life, she seems to have been swept along by the tide, bossed into marriage, bossed into children, bossed by her children, bossed at her job. No one seems to have much respect for her. The liberating forces in her life are Lukey the cleaner and her daughter Zoe. With them by her side, Emily learns to assert herself. She gets a tattoo, dresses differently, takes an evening class and forces her lazy son to get a job, as well as starting to spend the money she has earned doing what she wants to. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
10:30 am	Prawn Star Emily, a quiet Scottish fisherman's wife, runs a cafe on the sea front in a small village, eking out the demand for fry-ups by cooking exquisite fish dishes every so often. Discovered by an aggressively trendy ball-busting TV producer filming in the area, she takes up the offer of a TV show and becomes an unlikely hit. Emily's husband, colleagues and friends are desperate to trade on her fame, pushing her further and further into a lifestyle she begins to wonder if she wants. Seeing herself made fun of on a disastrous chat show (reality show?), Emily decides enough is enough. Supported only by her mouthy 13-year-old mini-mosher daughter, the fisherman's wife-turned-prawn star starts to assert herself...and the world is surprised by the real Emily. DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Emily Grey Peter Grey - pushy husband Zoe Grey - mouthy child Maggie Bell - Emily's slapper mother Ty Stephenson - ballbusting producer Johnny Brookes - sleazy cameraman Mrs Menzies - the cafe boss Jack McGuire - Emily's Ainsley-like co-star (Comment on this)