Minute by minute we make the world. We make our own world

Ah, October. The heat has been taken out of the air, leaves are falling constantly, and as 2020 decides that it’ll go out with as much craziness as it can possibly muster (the murder bees are back, as well as everything else), it’s time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Play For Today! Come on! You! Over there! Celebrate!!

I’m pretty sure that the first Potter play I ever saw was Karaoke, so after he had died. I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing that my first real memory of him is the MacTaggart lecture from 1993, a veritable fire-and-brimstone sermon that, like the old sermons of Scargill, all came true, and the “croak-voiced Daleks” won the day.

A lot of his work has faded away with time, to the point where for a lot of people he’s just “that guy who wrote the shows with people lip-syncing to old songs”.

Obviously, my condition is nowhere near as bad as Potter’s was; until he got an experimental treatment in the late 70s (which I wonder if it was a precursor to Humira), he was essentially bed-ridden and his skin 100% covered with psoriatic plaques. But there are days like Saturday, where the pain of moving was a problem and my skin crackles and burns in the newly-crisp air. I think of Potter a lot on days like that¹.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I intend on going through all of Potter’s existent plays on here in 2021. So consider yourself warned. If you’re really good (or bad…), I’ll go through the novels too.

But in October, I’ll likely be dipping into the more hauntological side of PFT. We’re talking Panda’s Fen, A Photograph, and Robin Redbreast. Such fun!