The Jan Diaries - June 23rd

A ran into a little roadblock when considering the characters of Angell and Mrs Warwick Snr; because neither of these characters interact with Jan in the play, I was unsure as to how best proceed with them. For a start, what would Jan even call the latter? Just Mrs Warwick? Step-mother? Richard's mum? Perhaps even her unknown first name? (Though I have little problem with fabricating one, as I already made up a middle name for Jan. I toyed with the idea of making Jan short for Jansen, as well, but I thought just Jan worked better.) I have decided, for now, to just refer to her as Mrs Warwick (Snr.). I may decide to change this at some point in the future, but will mention it if so.
Oh, and Angell is male in this one. Like the original script, and unlike our performance of it.

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The diaries of Jan Albert Warwick;
On the date of June the Twenty-Third.

Angell (Richard's butler/servant/lapdog) managed to actually address me today without calling me "Young Master Jan". Now he's removed the "young" off it. I'm nineteen now, I won't be called young. Nineteen. I'm sure Richard must have put him up to it. He wouldn't think of it himself.
And he didn't pass me the salt at dinner today. Laura had to ask for me. And he seemed somewhat reluctant when he did. I don't think Angell understands that he serves the family, not just the adults of the family, and certainly not just Richard. I'm sure Richard has a leash and bowl somewhere with Angell's name on it. It's ridiculous.

Mrs Warwick (Snr.) just sat on the front porch most of today. She does that sometimes. Whenever I ask her why, it's always a different answer. Well, at least she's inventive, I'll give her that. Sometimes it's "to hear the birds better," or, "to feel the winter wind on my face," or, "the flowers are just blooming. Aren't they beautiful, Jan?" Today, she was watching the leaves. She's done that before, but usually in Autumn, when they've fallen down on to the ground and are dancing in the wind like fire. That's what she called it, anyway. "Fire dancing, Jan," she'd say. "And the more that are dancing, the bigger the fire." They don't all fall to the ground, of course; we have some evergreens too. It creates an interesting contrast in the winter months when you have some trees green, some yellow and some bare. But today she was just watching them still on the trees. It was a bit windy, so they were still dancing, in a way. But a different sort of dance, I guess. More organised, since the tree kept all the leaves on it together. More of a sway than a wild flit here and there.
I'm not much of a dnacer, though Laura tries to get me to, sometimes. When it's a bit later, and she's had some drink, and she puts the records on the gramophone. But I don't like it that much. It's not that fun, to me. But she seems to like it. And Richard doesn't like it either. She can't really dance with Benny or Angell. That would be a bit strange. Julian comes over and dances with her sometimes, and she likes that. They have fun. I like it when they have fun, and they're both smiling like that. That's the good smile.

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