100 Views of Mt. Fuji

3 May. A distressing call today from Dr C., the oncologist who looked after my friend Anne during her last illness. He talks about hospital services being deliberately run down and the difficulties of ward care due to shortage of staff but it’s only gradually I realise that what he wants is for me to try and write a play about it. I explain what a slow worker I am and how long the trek from conception to execution but it still sounds like an excuse. He’s shy or I make him so and he plainly has difficulty in articulating his worries, but what comes over is his concern and indeed his despair. It’s alarming that doctors should be driven to such desperate measures and leaves me feeling both disturbed and inadequate and wishing I could just say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ and forget everything else.

— Alan Bennett, Diary, London Review of Books (Vol. 34 No. 1 · 5 January 2012)