Calendar Boys

As I mentioned before, I'm reading at an event in the Dylan Thomas Festival in Laugharne tomorrow and just in case I don't live to perform, I thought I'd give you a little excerpt from my monologue. I am cheating a bit in that it is one I made earlier. I had good intentions of writing a new one but life and the in-laws got in the way.

My plan is, one day, to write a series of monologues featuring different members of the same family who all live in a Welsh valley somewhere not far from here. Last year I performed the daughter's monologue; this time it's mam's turn to have her say.

The clubhouse at the local rugby club is falling down and the members need to do some fundraising. The son of the family, Barry, tells his mam about the problems and she comes up with an idea.

"It was all our Barry's fault, it was. Him and his big mouth. He could have kept me out of it. You know me, I don't like to be in the limelight. And, it's not as if it was my fault. Yes, I had the idea but it wasn't really mine. It was watching that VD that did it. That one with Helen Wossername, you know, the one who played a policewoman on the telly.
...
That's when I remembered the VD. I said, hey, you know what you should do - make a calendar. Gwyn looked up from the telly again, what pretty pictures of all the local slag heaps and pit faces. Don't be daft, I said, I mean the boys. That don't sound very exciting, Barry said. It would be, I said, if they posed in the nude. With artistically arranged balls. Well that made them sit up."