World Book Week: 'Int Coffee Shop Day'

 As part of World Book Week, author Andy Briggs ran a script-writing workshop for PGS pupils. Here is the opening of Daisy Watson-Rumbold's script:  

Int Coffee Shop Day

Two friends, Edinburgh University students Alice, 20, and Margot, 19, are sitting at the window of a coffee shop. Commenting on an older couple walking through the street hand in hand, and begin questioning one another’s place in the city. 

(image: Nina Hill)

Alice: Why do people do that to themselves?

Margot: What?

Alice nods her head in the couple’s direction.

Alice: Follow that narrative. Look at them, they’re walking down the street as if they’ve never disliked one another’s company when really they’ve just done what they thought they should’ve.

Margot: They seem happy enough. 

Alice: Do they?

Margot: Oh come on. You’re telling me that no one part of you sees that and respects it. 

Alice: It’s… no. I just wish that we could see the lives beyond those people. We always assume that there must be some Edenic existence or secret to this happily ever after.

Margot: Or maybe people want something to believe in, a routine they can compare their life track to. I mean, why did you come here? Surely not for the coffee or to watch people pass you by.

Alice: To study. For history. 

Pauses to think and look around outside.

Maybe the buildings too, it was a choice between here or London - here was more um you know, old-timey. 

Margot: Old-timey? 

Alice: Old-timey. All the grandeur was impressive. It felt academic. 

Margot: It is pretty. Do you think they’re here because of that?

Referencing back to the couple

Alice: Who knows, maybe they live down the street. Maybe they grew up here. I don’t know. 

Margot: Or maybe they just met. Maybe this is their first holiday. Maybe this is their last-ditch attempt to saviour some unity in their marriage - if they’re even married. I wonder what they’d think of you.

Alice: What? 

Margot: You. Well, you think you’re perfectly justified calling the buildings pretty and sitting in the coffee shop as a history student, under the impression you look like just that. What if they think you take up space they once filled?

Alice: But I am perfectly justified to be here. I worked hard to get here, harder than most.

Margot: Maybe they did too. You assumed not, without even giving them a second glance.