"Peter, you've got to snap out of this." It was Charlie. Peter was still lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. 

"It was a bad review, Peter," he went on. "Everyone gets them."

Peter's eyes drew a focus. "This was different, Charlie," he said. "I really, really felt that 'Hungry hungry Slavs' was going to be my breakthrough. I know that some of the others were . . . a little premature, say, perhaps a little before their time . . . "

Charlie's thought of the Gay Gandhi lawsuit, rumbling on into its second year. It had been sheer bad luck that Peter had opened the play on the 15th August, India's Independence Day, and doubly unfortunate that officials from the London embassy had happened to be passing by the theatre and had spotted the billboards.

". . . But this one," sighed Peter, "this one I thought would be different."

"Tough break, old man," said Charlie, leaning forward to pat Peter's arm. "Come on, get your shoes on. Let's go for a pint."

And so they did. They headed to the nearby "Republican Oak" pub (previously the "Royal Oak" until new, and presumably anti-monarchic, management took over). It was increasingly fashionable at the time for London pubs, in an effort to be different, to offer customers a Thai food menu. Pub-goers otherwise staunchly occidental in their world view, and leery of Johnny Foreigners, could be found contentedly masticating on a hoisin duck spring roll in between mouthfuls of London Pride. 

The Republican Oak, in an effort to be different, offered customers a Chinese food menu; never mind that every building on the street, except the police station and the pub itself, was a Chinese takeaway. Commercial nous was never the manager's strong point.

And nor was catering, really. Eventually Peter's and Charlie's orders made it to their table, but via a mix-up with a lone diner on the other side of the pub, which saw the young woman receiving Peter's main course. A new one had to be cooked for Peter with much delay and fanfare.

Charlie washed down his chicken chow mein with a mouthful of dark and heavy ale. It was a uniquely disgusting combination, he reflected, as the two cultures waged chemical warfare on his palate.

"Here, look", he said, pointing at Peter's side-plate. "You haven't touched your cookie."

It was a cashew-shaped fortune cookie accompanying the bill, which the waiter had brought (unbidden) with the final course. Placing down his own ale, Peter took the cookie, broke in half, and pulled loose the tiny sheet of printed paper inside. He read it aloud.

FIND INSPIRATION IN THE WORK OF OTHERS

The words had an instantaneous and profound impact on him. It was as if some hermit-sage from the high Himalayas had reached out of his food and slapped him across the face. It was suddenly clear what he had to do.

"I shouldn't be a writer," he announced, to Charlie's relief. "No. My gifts never lay in the writing sphere. I see that now. I'm meant to use my directorial talents to enhance the work of others."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pub, a promising teenage song-writer was dining alone. She cracked open her fortune cookie and read quietly:

GIVE UP; YOU'RE SHIT

Devastating, right down to the precise and pointed semicolon.