Some 'resting' actors write books, some make snow globes; others train their memories. I joined the Ancestry website... Thus does Francis Taylor explain how he came to know former coal-miner Harold, a distant and virtually absent relative. Beyond a career that began as the lead horse in the play Equus and ended after he was attacked by a pig while making a TV documentary, Francis begins constructing a notated drama of his own into which the animal kingdom strays as if auditioning for parts. But Harold is not a well man. As soon as Harold and his disturbed partner, Julie, begin visiting Harold, they learn that his cancer may be terminal and that a friend, the formidable Ethel Chrimes, is persuading him to try an unconventional remedy. Francis, in attempting to re-construct a past that includes Harold, finds the present fragmenting as his loyalties become divided, Julie's instability worsens, and Harold further declines. And then there's the incident at Bug World, a Forest of Dean Tourist attraction...