The Sound of Luck

This isn’t the place to unroll a chain of thank yous to the many who enabled me to submit a script and short film about Lala for the Medicine Unboxed Prize last week. But they’d go to a cracking team (including filmmaker Jamie Harding, pictured), a host of angelic babysitters, the Medicine Unboxed community which continues to amaze with its capacity for wonder...

And the buzz of voices, still muttering. Voices saying, ‘Oh, great, well you should talk to...’ and, ‘My story’s not very special...’ and, ‘Mummy? How do babies think without words?’ and voices just about keeping memory afloat – dipping and sinking... sinking... um... lost. But bobbing up, there! – and voices that can’t be kept quiet because there’s too much to notice and name, sing, ask about, all new. Flowering under my feet, mad rushed week upon week, life plucked and handed me lovely, perfect material.

All summer I had the radio on, too. Or Spotify, fuelling and pacing the work. I’ve just turned everything off, and the silence won’t shut up.