A New Skillset (should that have a hyphen, is it even a word?)

Forward progress towards a legible script, as opposed to the ill-assorted proto-scenes, has necessarily been arrested by the looming (two days and counting) necessity to present to my peer group on the project so far. This presentation will be the subject of our interim assessments.

same as it ever was

In fact preparing the presentation has been a useful cause of a wholesale review of my efforts thus far. The jury's verdict is 'same as it ever was' (David Byrne circa 1980 - Google is witholding the correct date from me, must be something I typed) because I have conducted myself just as I did through my business career, that is to say diligently but haphazardly. I am put in mind of the Irish rugby player who described the team's position after a bad defeat as being 'hopeless but not serious.'  My clients became used to my methods imitating a high-wire act without a safety net. I never fell off, but there is of course always a tomorrow. Or to be quite precise, in this case there is a day after tomorrow.

Standing up and delivering the presentation will make me mildly but usefully nervous. Previous life has equipped me for that part of the ordeal. What I am hugely uneasy about is the validity of my intellectual positions. 'Hyper-sensitive' would probably be the apt expression. If someone takes umbrage at my views, will I hit him (not her, the code of the Woosters forbids hitting women) or, more likely, will I succumb to a mortified sulk? This is too, too nerve making as Agatha Runcible might put it.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

However (touch wood - quite genuinely I have just touched the desk, absurd isn't it) I yesterday mastered my Powerpoint phobia. It is a tool I have experience of using but generally as the smug end-user. I have been used to having people who magically cause to come out of computers that which I desire. This used to be my precious secretary Sue (same one for twenty years bless her - people get less for murder) and these days it is my daughters who come to my aid. Well, with the glorious heedlessness of youth Rachel is working hard at university in London and has assignments of her own, while Helen has buggered off to Adelaide. So yesterday I taxed my wife's patience by plundering her knowledge of the software and eventually negotiated my own unorthodox way round the task my mind had set. We have a presentation. No bells. No whistles but hopefully a useful addendum to what I will say. I've obeyed the first rule of technology (ie what can break will) and structured the talking so that it will work on its own if necessary. Which is not to say I won't be mightily cheesed off if the screen goes blank on me.  

What will I say? I'm not going to put the whole text up here I don't think although I may investigate learning how to insert a link to it and/or the Powerpoint. It will go a bit like this

• a brief critical history of Waugh and of VB in particular
• personal comments on the importance (but not paramountcy) of his catholicism
• why a stage adaptation? (Answer, why not?)
• dramatising the undramatisable, reference to Antony and Cleopatra and to King Lear, both of which I have seen in the past two weeks and about which I will write separately
• players; props; costume; scenery
• three act structure
• the Roberts method: coffee, bananas, large paper

And if things have gone passably well I have a very weak joke to finish with. What can possibly go wrong?