Script rites

I've just finished a fiction thing, for instance, which, in my mind, centres round Orson Welles (below) playing a rather unpleasant court reporter. Clearly this isn't in the realm of the do-able now - but fiction, for me, is making anything possible. Imagining Orson doing stuff I invented for him just kept me rolling along for paragraph after paragraph.

I imagine similar fun must have buoyed up the writer(s) of the recent and highly popular Lost in Austen, just playing around with those famous characters.

Anyway, I thought I might pass on my thoughts for blog readers (all three of you) to turn into a time-wasting game - when your office computers have crashed after the latest upgrade, for instance. Who would you choose to take leading roles in a film you were involved with? This is fantasy, of course, so it could be Brad Pitt or Clark Gable, Angelina Jolie or Greta Garbo.

I will end up writing something with Tilda Swinton (top) in mind. Terrific and dangerous performer and still, happily, available. Other choices could be Juliette Binoche or Kristin Scott Thomas.

All women, you will note, with a certain grown-up sex appeal. Which brings me to marmalade.

Spain came up during a conversation the other evening, and I jumped in with one of the many useless facts I carry around in my ragbag of a brain, namely, that no marmalade is made in Seville and the whole of the area's orange crop is exported to make marmalade.

I happened also to mention that I had developed a pregnancy-like craving for the pink grapefruit marmalade sold by Aldi. It's currently such a craving that I am actually beginning to look pregnant.

Anyway a lady of my acquaintance expressed bemusement about anyone liking marmalade. She simply didn't see it, she said. What was the attraction? Grasping to find an answer, I slipped into a negative definition, for reasons I can't explain.

Think of sex as an analogy, I said. The big attraction of marmalade is that it isn't a missionary position food. She saw what I was driving at, but went on to ask, rather mischievously I thought, what was missionary position food. Mother's Pride medium sliced white bread, I replied. I could have said blancmange, I suppose. Or pot noodles.

Any thoughts?