Things to Do Indoors

A wry, spirited look at being glad and young, this foray back into Eighties London explores relations between sisters, mothers, friends and lovers from the vantage point of a girl caught unexpectedly in the middle. Sisterly sharing is taken beyond the pale when twenty-something Chrissie finds a postcard from her boyfriend to her sister signed, Kisses, Nick. Within moments she severs her two central relationships and looks boldly forward to the haphazard pleasures of an independent life. Her lyrical journey, from love-lorn waitress to self-contained mother, takes us through the pubs, parks, parties, patisseries, peeling houseboats and rackety flats of west London to the shores of Lisbon, Ireland and Brighton. But Chrissie’s attempts to escape the emotional convolutions of London only ever seem to lead to encounters that intensify rather than dispel her growing sense of how knotty life can be. Graceful, sensitive, gently humorous, Things to do Indoors captures intimately the bizarre complexity of life for those who yearn to become independent, but can’t stop looking for love.