Side effect: Amphibrachitis

After various interferences from my real life, I’m almost ready to send out the script for The Mourning Primrose.

The sailors’ song has been the bottleneck. The original lyrics were too difficult to fit to a shanty tune. Rewrite attempts were only partially successful, so music man Matthew suggested that the best way to solve all our problems was to use the limerick form: an easy beat to set to music and well suited to bawdy lyrics. I was in full agreement and said yarr, bring out the cat o' nine tails, I’d whip them into shape in the next couple of days, no problem.

Limericks are deceptively difficult to write, aren’t they? After various frustrating attempts to morph the existing words into the new form – and an afternoon lost due to an unfortunate incident involving my suede jacket and the cats – I decided to scrap my old ideas and start from scratch.

It was still tough going, but I managed to complete two of the three versus before it was time to take my first malaria tablet. Then I got a bit distracted, but at least I was practising:

A lady who’s practically a Finn
was forced to ingest some mefloquin.
She didn’t go crazy
just felt a bit hazy
and Larium ain’t yet done her in.