THE READER

Today is the first read-through of Fiona Looney’s new play, October, which runs at Dublin’s Olympia theatre from February. There isn’t an actor on the planet who doesn’t dread this event. Basically it is the day when you know you’ll be rumbled, the day everyone realises that a terrible mistake has been made and someone else should have been cast.

Spare a thought for any author who attends such a thing and who must sit through the possibility of their script being mangled in the process. It is a wonder to me that more of them don’t whimper aloud.

Looney is jolly and brave, and jolly brave. To be fair, she has a cracking cast in Lorcan Cranitch, Victoria Smurfit, Ailish Symons and George McMahon. (We’ll just have to gloss over the fact that I’m in it, too, till I get it right).

I’ve been a judge for the latest Costa Book Awards (the novel section), and the category winners are announced on Monday afternoon. Sebastian Barry wins Best Novel. I now go on to be a judge of Costa’s Book of the Year, so more reading to be done. I read around 70 novels first time out, so doing five more feels like a dawdle.

A SMALL WORLD

On Tuesday I come out without my mobile phone, which is interesting (and also stupid and wildly inconvenient). I am not that technical so another thing I am trying to set up is proving a challenge — I am learning Russian (as is The Husband, though he’s more advanced than me) and I do my lessons with a teacher in Edinburgh via Skype. That was fine last year when I could traipse across town and use Himself’s office, but now I must get it in the house and it’s getting me down that I am such a Luddite.

I also do a daily blog (www.paulinemclynn.com) and this can cause heartache when I feel I have nothing to say. However, the biggest responses I get are when I talk about life’s tiniest details (such as the disastrous, self-applied false tan during what we laughingly called “the aummer”, when the world rallied to help).

Poor Vic Smurfit has a spill off her bike on the way into work, Luas tracks proving treacherous for her tyres. I joke that I’m sure there were types taking photos on their mobile phones.

Later that day a newspaper rings — our producer is wondering if she’s okay and whether the show will be affected. So be careful what you wish for, or joke about, and remember that Dublin is a small place, however fab. She’s fine, thanks for asking, but a bit rattled.

I suppose it also means that people hear that the show is being prepared for a February run.

SERIAL AUTHOR

Thursday is the official publication day of my latest novel Missing You Already. I am horribly proud of this book and think it is the best thing I have written to date. Like October, it looks at families and the duty of care that comes with them.

It also asks who we are if we no longer have a history or memories (one of the main characters has Alzheimer’s). It features several love stories because, of course, that is what we all hope for in our lives, isn’t it? To love and be loved.

I sneak into a bookshop at lunchtime to have a look at it, pretending I’m hunting down something else. I feel like a parent admiring offspring and, like all mothers, I have forgotten the painful bits and am already thinking of “going again”.

By the end of the first week of reading October, I haven’t been fired, which I regard as a total success. Mind you, I am wrecked, as we are on the floor now, moving about, and part of the action takes place on a bouncy castle — which won’t arrive until next week — so we’re pretending to bounce, but on a wooden floor. The office workers across the road are mesmerised.

I can feel every ache of the week’s exercise but I am delighted it’ll help shift the Christmas pounds (there are still many hanging about on the tummy, thighs and bum).

Back at home I face packing my life into boxes, because the builders return on Monday. But that’s a whole other story.

Pauline McLynn is an actress and author

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