[Silence.]
STUART: I hate travelling backwards.
KATE: What?
STUART: On trains. I hate travelling backwards.
KATE: Why?
STUART: Can't see where you're going.
KATE: See where you've been.
STUART: Feels cowardly. Like retreating. Like you don't want to look into the future.
[Pause.]
KATE: You know, the Chinese idea of time is all the other way round.
STUART: What?
KATE: We picture the future as ahead of us and the past behind us. They have a totally different perception of it. They kind of visualise the future as being behind you. Where you can't see it.
STUART: Like in “Back To The Future”!
[Beat.]
You're quite a brainbox, aren't you? Underneath that shallow bimbo exterior.
KATE: Fuck off.
STUART: Joke.
KATE: 07393 451730.
STUART: I can't believe you did that.
(He is trying to remember a mobile phone number and it isn’t that one)
[Beat.]
No, come on, what do you do? Are you a particle physicist or something?
KATE: No, even more elevated than that, I'm afraid. I'm a librarian.
STUART: No way. Really?
KATE: Why does that surprise you?
STUART: Aren't librarians supposed to be really uptight and miserable and stuff?
KATE: Yeah, we are, strictly. But I'm very bad at my job.
STUART: I'm sure you're excellent. I hate libraries. They make me nervous.
KATE: Too quiet?
STUART: No. ...No! Just, you know, a place for everything and everything in its place and. Freaks me out.
KATE: Well we did experiment for a while with just putting all the books in a big fuck-off pile and a sign saying: DIVE IN.
STUART: See, I'd like that.
KATE: But the organisational system in a library, it's so exciting. Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound it, but everything's got a number. You know, the Dewey Decimal Classification System. And it's totally comprehensive. Everything fits in there somewhere. The numbers connect every imaginable book which means they connect every imaginable reader. Nothing and no one gets left out. I think that’s wonderful.
STUART: So absolutely everything's got a number.
KATE: Test me.
[Beat.]
STUART: Tibetan nose-flutes.
KATE: er… 951.5
STUART: What, really?
KATE: Yeah.
STUART: You didn't just make that up?
KATE: No. I worked it out. Try another.
STUART: All right. The history and philosophy of cattle insemination.
KATE: Tricky. Probably 573.6
STUART: How to be a successful stand-up comedian.
KATE: 792.23
STUART: What I ought to tell my girlfriend when I see her.
[Beat.]
KATE: 302.25
[She giggles.]
Sorry. Librarian joke.
STUART: That's incredible.
KATE: Another one?
STUART: No. Too many numbers flying around.
KATE: 07390 - ?
STUART: 4... 51... 730...?
KATE: 514730.
STUART: Shit. 07390 514730. Thank you. You're a lifesaver. Well, you're a librarian. Why are you a librarian?
KATE: I didn't particularly want to be. It's not like my vocation. I was always going to be something much more high-powered, but I had a breakdown sort of thing.
STUART: Right.
KATE: Hospitals and psychiatrists and all sorts. At the end of which it turns out I have a bipolar condition, you know... Manic depression, basically.
STUART: Right.
KATE: Which is a drag. I mean, I control it with lithium and so on, but in career terms... I mean, what you see in the world - this is sort of what attracted me to being a librarian -
STUART: So you saw a sign that said 'You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps...'
KATE: That's an exceptionally stupid thing to say.
STUART: I know. I just thought of it. When I think of things I say them, just in case they're funny. I’m sorry. Go on - what you see in the world -
KATE: Connections. Connections everywhere. When you're in a manic phase, it's like... it's like when you see those diagrams of the constellations in the night sky and all the patterns are drawn out with lines, all these stars with a kind of a join-the-dots thing going on. The whole universe feels like that. And you understand everything, all in one go. Patterns, everywhere. Links.
And then in a depressive phase it's the same, really, the same connections, but suddenly it feels like everything's such an awful burden, you know? These tiny trivial things all link up and assume monumental significance, and suddenly you can't get out of bed.
STUART: But you're on, what did you say? Lithium?
KATE: Yeah.
STUART: And what does that for you?
KATE: Well... Do you remember the first time you ever heard music in stereo? You're roughly my age, aren't you? You probably had a little crappy portable tape recorder and an earpiece, yeah? Not even headphones, just an earpiece. And then the first time somebody put some proper headphones on you and you heard music in stereo...
STUART: Yeah. Yeah! Vangelis! 'Chariots of Fire'.
KATE: Yes, Carpenters for me. 'Goodbye to Love'. I'd never heard anything so beautiful, and this sound, this amazing, thrilling sound. And - that's being manic. That's what it feels like in a manic episode. And then on lithium... It's like the whole world stops being in stereo and starts being a little crappy portable tape recorder and an earpiece. You have to try and remember that it's still the same beautiful music, you just can't hear it with the same - you know... Fidelity.
[Silence.]
STUART: Would it help to know that modern science has conclusively proved that the Carpenters are shit?
KATE: Shut up.
STUART: No, it's true, they carried out spectral analysis of the Carpenters...
KATE: Shut up.
STUART: ...But I will admit I like the song about the aliens.
KATE: What song?
STUART: The one they did about the aliens. You know.
[Beat.]
Yes you do.
[Beat.]
Yes you do.
Scene ends.
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