I went ( and Lily met me there ) to see the reorganised Death of a Salesman last night. On the way back I wrote down the ‘lessons’ highlighted in the play. I copy and paste below –

Your employer doesn’t care
Your family let you down
You let your family down
You all do things which disappoint each other
Your expectations aren’t met
Your expectations are unrealistic
Your friends don’t live up to your expectations of them
You fail your friends
You are much more important in your imagination than you are in reality
Popularity counts for nothing ultimately
Money talks
Financial success wins the day
Former glories mean nothing years later
People have short memories
One good turn may deserve another, but most definitely doesn’t guarantee one.
Promise is nothing without results

Those are in no particular order, just the order I wrote them in my phone. As I finished that list, I heard a fella behind me saying exactly the same to his mate. He’d taken a photo over my shoulder of what I’d quickly typed onto my screen.

It’s the saddest, most sobering play. For me, the themes above are not just fiction. I’ve lived through all of them, already, though the last 6 years have contained all of them, pretty much.

That’s sad for me, but of course I do see that these things happen to everyone, not just a fictional salesman and a good looking Welshman in a wheelchair.

No one is immune, my dear readers……