RETURN OF THE LACEMAKER

I recall a period in my teens where it seems to me that every Friday or Saturday night there was a Foreign Movie on BBC2. (Probably it was just the occasional short season but hey, this is my memory and you can butt out with your specifics). My parents liked that kind of stuff and I would watch all I could, my mind and eyes opening with the new worlds and the new styles of cinema I saw.

One film that left a deep mark on my 16 year-old soul (not counting any re-incarnations, you understand) was The Lacemaker, a French story of the love affair between Pomme, a very quiet 19 year-old girl, and an intellectual but loving student. On one level it's very simple: they meet, they live together, there are problems, they split up. But behind the simplicity is a finely observed study of the quest for love and acceptance that is ultimately profoundly haunting: above all, because the girl, in her own quiet way, cannot recover from the loss. Indeed, so profound was its effect that I sat down and wrote a song about the story (which, thankfully no other living soul has ever heard).

I've often wanted to see it again, but it never crossed my path until tonight. Thanks to the French Embassy I had a free ticket to see the movie at the Filmoteca Nacional (National Film Theatre) with the star herself in attendance: the amazing Isabelle Huppert. She discreetly managed to get almost to the front of the cinema before we noticed and started applauding. She climbed onto the stage looking very good for 52, but so tiny and slight that a cough might floor her. She proceeded to talk so excitedly that the translator had to eventually grab her arm to get her to allow him to do his job.

And then the curtains opened and a freckly 30 years younger version appeared. I'd dragged a couple of friends along and began to doubt whether that was wise. The 70s styles were hilarious and I wondered if the whole thing was just the dated reminiscence of an adolescent. But then it began to weave its spell on me again. I could see just how powerfully it would have affected the teenage virgin me whose hormones and emotions had no idea what to do with themselves. And it was having the same effect again on me and my companions.

Now, considering that my business is drama, I have a shocking inability to remember the details of movies. Most of those times when people ask "Don't you remember that wonderful bit where..." I can usually simplify the conversation with a direct and sadly honest "No". So I was amazed to find that the final ten minutes of the film were etched upon my mind as if I had just seen them the day before. Isabelle Huppert deserved all the awards she won, just for her final long look at the camera.

Like all good art it makes you reflect on yourself and your own life. I saw myself as that 16 year-old again. I thought about my son who is now that age and yet has already lived emotional experiences beyond those in the film. And I thought about A, also in Paris, and her very clear love for me, not unlike that of Pomme in the film. She enjoys being with me as I am, rather than with the expectation that I must be or become something else. And here I am, turning my back on that. Mind you, A could easily give that skinny French lad a run for his money in the intellectual stakes. But I felt her fragility as I watched the story and I find myself thinking again that perhaps staying away is kinder than later breaking such a young heart (even if the body is older).

Leaving the cinema, I began to hear my Lacemaker song in my head. The melody was crystal clear, but the lyrics were hazy. However, the last line came through to me: "Her silence soft like holes in the lace". Sometimes it's the space between the threads/ the busyness/ the noise/ the words that creates the beauty. And I realised my soul was quite old enough back then to understand what it needed to learn.

CREAKING AT THE SEAMS

I already know what my first act will be tomorrow. I will rise from my (barely) double bed at 7.30, pick up a small plastic container, take it to the bathroom opposite and, as requested, fill it with only the finest, freshest, dew-picked, top o' the mornin' urine. A brief washavedress later I shall stumble downhill to the insalubrious Centro de Salud where I shall doubtless be evil-eyed by unnaturaturally diminutive elderly Spanish ladies who are well prepared for queue-jumping 'guiris' (foreigners) like me. Then perhaps a bleary-eyed nurse who neither knows nor cares why I am there will make vague, stabbing attempts to encounter a vein whilst regaling her compatriots with her weekend escapades, punctuated by cries of "Joderrrrr tia!". I shall attempt to interject in reasonably fluent Spanish that this is one bodily fluid best extracted from me in a reclining position. After all, nobody really wants a repeat of those embarrassing incidents where a surprised medic is propping up my unconscious frame, syringe dangling from my arm, whilst calling for help. Hopefully she will hear my pleas.

Why so much interest in the liquids sloshing around my insides? Same reason a nurse in radiography chose to gesticulate bizarrely at me last week as if I was deaf, stupid and understood no Spanish, whilst pressing my hands down on the X-ray plate. They think I might have arthritis. I think I might have arthritis. It's no big deal right now. I can dance for hours, walk for hours around town and make love for hours with no perceivable ill effects. But if I push the boat out - like going for one of those long mountain walks I love - I am crippled with joint pains out of all proportion to my years.

That's 42 years right now (this being the first time we've met, you wouldn't know that). It's a point in life where everything still seems open to me. I feel smarter about life than in the past and still have the energy to enjoy it to its fullest. But the ghost of this news has been like a rifle shot to remind me This Is Not A Rehearsal. Nothing is to be taken for granted.

To have arthritis would be, well, crap to put it plainly. I'm in good shape, look after myself, relatively young, eat well and have no history of it in the family. However, if it did prove to be true I could hardly claim to be the one with the real problems among my family and friends. And they deserve an introduction:

SOME SALIENT FACTS
So, you know I am a 42 year-old English writer (and director) living in Madrid after the swift ending of a promising relationship (just one year) with a Spanish woman. What else would you like to know?

I live smack in the middle of the historical centre of Madrid, with the Rastro market below my window. No, I don't own any property either here or un the UK - I share with two very simpatico Spaniards.

Yes, I was married for 12 years and have a tall, handsome, laid-back, intelligent son of 16 years to show for it (I'm not boasting - that's pure envy). He used to live half-and-half between his mother and myself when I was in the UK, but now he is mainly with her. Currently neck-deep in GCSEs.

My 85 year-old father lives alone near London after the death of my mother nearly 3 years ago. He's in good form for his age, but lacks company and stimulation. He's increasingly living in a blurry land of sleeping and waking, made worse I think by the advent of 24 TV news (his addiction). At least the lunchtime, afternoon and evening bulletins demarcated the day more clearly.

My brother is also without his wife since her death from cancer at 45 last year. She was one of my oldest friends. He is not alone and is weighed down with the care of his two sons - 15 and 11. We are close. I miss his company and feel the pull of both him and my father. These forces may well eventually pull me home. I am also aware of my brother's envy of my perceived freedom from responsibility.

My love life, you ask? I do so hate to be a cliche, but I have to admit that my last relationship appears to have robbed me of any enthusiasm to fall in love again or involve myself too closely with anyone, even now that more than a year has passed. Still this will almost inevitably change eventually, given my enthusiasm for the opposite sex. The last year has, indeed, been the busiest for dating, wonderful random encounters and explosive sex of my whole life. I would thoroughly recommend having your 20's in your late 30's-40's. You know yourself much better (hopefully) and can enjoy it with less stress. (After all, people are becoming parents later and later - how about a campaign for the reverse?) Hence right now there is:

A - a French woman of 29 in Paris who believes I am the right man for her. For her life, that is. We have spent a few wonderful weekends together, but the burden of her romantic idealism is heavy and I'm unsure how/whether to proceed.

E - a mid 30's Spanish woman who is equally wary of deep involvement but has seen me as perhaps the first man with whom she could have friendship and sex, without too much more. We talk and meet every few weeks and enjoy an intense chemistry which she finds a refreshing antidote to the usual routine of work responsibilities and single parenthood.

C - a mid-30's English woman, who lives in Madrid but travels the world a lot for her job. We meet sporadically for what can only be described as mad, intense S&M-style sex. That, and a bloody good English-style laugh.

So, I'm clearly hoping that the results of tomorrow's test are not going to impede this complex lifestyle, which I currently feel remarkably relaxed about. Because despite the many difficulties just described, I find much in life to make me happy.

Just off to drink more water.