ABSTRACT
Act2. Adilapidated room above anabandoned abattoirin the East End of London.
SHERBET. Who wants to know my wish? [CAPTAIN. Me, please. SHERBET. Babe? FOXTROT. What?] Do you want to know my wish? [FOXTROT. All right. SHERBET. All right what? FOXTROT. All right Babe.] I wish to grow old gracefully. Now I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've seen enough people not doing it gracefully to know what I'm talking about. The beauty salon where I work is full of them. Men and women, all with the
same look in their eyes. Make me young, says the look. But you know something? There's nothing we can do. Nature has rules and regulations and most of them are either cruel or very cruel. You know, I can usually tell a person's age as easy as that! One look is all it takes . There's this one woman who comes in - I feel sorry for her in a way - and she's got this photograph of what she looked like when she was nineteen. She must be fifty if she's a day now. Anyway, she comes in and she shows me this photograph and - fucking hell! - was she beautiful! 'This was me', she says. It's as if that photograph captured her at the happiest moment of her life. Perhaps it's like that. Perhaps we reach our peak when we're nineteen and, for one glorious summer, we're in control of our lives, and we look wonderful and everything is perfect. And then it's never the same again. And we spend the rest of our lives merely surviving one empty summer after another.
