Lines, lines and more damn lines

This is the time during every production that makes me wonder why I put myself through this; learning my lines.
I'm not very good at it and like anything I'm not brilliant at and forced to do this tends to bring out the worst in me and I start to sulk like a teenager being made to clean their bedroom rather than being allowed out to go and drink White Lightning down the park with their mates.
I may not have as many as some, John for example, but they are still sitting there like a mountain that has to be climbed before the fun of paragliding off the other side. So if you see a tragic figure in a beard hunched over a black ring binder, mumbling to himself, in the Winter Gardens of a lunchtime over the next few weeks, have pity.