"What if Terry is my imaginary friend?''

My plan was that by the end of tumbling this morning I would do a handspring. I did a lot of drills, but no cigar on the actual handspring on the floor. Still, I feel like it’s a doable, close-by goal. Kate came again with more questions for us, what do each of our characters need to overcome? How can we show the journey? She did a fun warm up with charades she’d written on little slips of paper in an envelope. We got silly and competitive and pretended to gloat and sulk and bribe her. I had to do a happy penguin eating a meat pie and watching the football which seriously lowered my score. Otherwise I was the winner for sure. Kate smiled at us while stowing her score pad saying, “now this is so serious that I’m going to take it away and add up the scores and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
She gave us instructions on slips of paper and asked us to read them as our characters and then follow them. ‘you must save Pink Lightning (todays name for Christy) but be wary of Terry’ Terry of course is saving me and being wary of Pink Lightning and it’s the same game as heros and villains except Terry’s version of saving is to crash-tackle the victim in order to carry them away from danger – so Luke and I have these hilarious running wrestles and meantime Pink Lightning is having a fine old time just toodling around the set and occasionally joining in a game with me.
The next exercise is just ‘the baddies are coming, watch out!’ Christy, with those ridiculous goggles on her face again, is rambling around trying to make booby traps with kitchen implements, while Terry and desperately try to get her up off the floor and onto the bunkbed into relative safety. Christy is still a little injured from the bike accident so we don’t actually lift her – which I think makes the scene more funny, because she just hangs around in danger and we are unable to save her.

After Kate leaves we pack up the set and as we stand there by the bunk bed Christy says, ‘What if Terry is my imaginary friend?’
It sticks straight away. If Terry is her imaginary friend, then he is a part of her. It explains all his absurd qualities. A thirty five year old paper boy who wears a suit and only eats cornflakes. He is often frightened and overwhelmed – maybe he is her fear. Instead of the imaginary friend who is your naughtiness and bravery, the imaginary friend as the fear is kind of nice. But then what about Natalie/Mr Dog? Is she imaginary? Is she a girl who wants to be a dog or is she a dog that Christy’s character pretends is a girl? And if she is a girl, can she see the imaginary friend? What if we went for most of the show with me not seeing Luke?
We stand talking by the half packed up set for about an hour. Excited, exploring ideas, retelling other stories we know that are similar. Christy texts Kate.