A year is enough breathing space between posts, surely.
So we’re a year older, a little bit wiser, a little bit grayer and perhaps a little more interesting.
I’ve decided to revitalise this webpage because I’ve got a few writing projects on the go and I’d like to whip up some interest over the coming months.
That’s all for the time being.
Love to you all.
There’s an almost perfect corrolation between your age and where you choose to sit on a bus. If you carry a student bus pass then you get the back seat. By the time you collect your OAP pass you’ve gradually worked your way to those easy access seats right by the luggage rack and the door. I sit somewhere in the middle, obviously.
It bugs me when people complain about the snow.
People complain when it’s raining, that you’ll get cancer when the sun shines and public transport will grind to a halt when snow falls on the roads.
Snow is fun. Like leaves in autumn.
Just take the day off work and have a snowball fight. That’s much more productive than sitting in an office stapling paper.
I haven’t written here in a while. Sorry. Real life. You know.
I imagine it’s ironic that since working at Waterstone’s I’ve written less.
So i went to London yesterday. It was such a wonderful day for all the unexpected reasons. It was a day of human generosity and chance encounters. Clearly the reason for my being in London, namely to earn a decent living on the stage, was destined to be secondary to these moments. Christmas at Waterstone’s appears to still be a reality and the phone hasn’t rung. But the day wasn’t a failure. It was filled with awesomness
This is a yarn about the good things people do.
When you meet someone for the first time, you have no idea how they will impact your life. Like my friend Matt’s new flatmate. When they walked into Waterstone’s and i took five minutes to chat to them i never thought this man would save my neck thirteen days later.
So i get the call for this audition, i find out i have to sing two songs that show my upper range. Oh my god! Now, i love musical theatre but I’m no natural. Six days to find, learn and perfect two songs? With my portfolio in an attic, in Devon? With no pianist? Where’s Anneka and her jeep? Three days later I’ve got one song and I’ve learnt the lyrics but little else. I’m panicking so i call the one person who can help, Matt. He has a voice beyond amazing and sheet music organised in plastic covers. He is good. But it gets better. As i head to his new flat, what do i discover but the one thing i thought I’d never find. His new flatmate, someone i exchanged pleasantries with in a bookstore turns out to only flipping play the ol’ Johanna. We became friend’s around his girlfriend’s piano as i crammed thirds, fifths, beats and lyrics into my brain.
Songs safely in head and sheet music photocopied and crisp, I was off to London. When an old woman had caught the wrong train and the guard was demanding she pay an extra £115 for her mistake, she burst into tears.
She was on her way to London to see her son for the first time in a year. He was being flown home from Afghanistan. She couldn’t afford the extra cash. The guard wasn’t one for sympathy and demanded she pay now or suffer a greater fine for not coughing up.
And then, out of the blue, a tall man with long, curly blond hair stood up. When he asked the guard to give her a break, he refused to let up. So what does our hero do? He speaks to the carriage. He walks up the aisle and retells this event and then holds out a paper bag. “Let’s all pitch in and help this lady pay for her ticket.” I’ve never seen people put their hands in their pockets so quickly. People were throwing pounds and pounds to help this old woman out of the trouble being forced upon her by a man keen to stick to the rules. The guard was not impressed and shouted “What you are doing is illegal! If you don’t stop you’re going to be arrested.” . People fought back. “It’s our choice”, ” This is charity”. It was amazing. The armed police that met the blond man at Euston makes me think his story doesn’t end here. But you can’t expect much understanding from people who feel the need to wear bullet proof vests.
Don’t you love it when you walk up to a cross roads in sunny Southwark and standing on the other side is a boy from Jersey you last saw in August, when you were drinking together at six thirty in the morning with mutual friends around a wooden table in a kitchen of an apartment in Edinburgh? As far as chance encounters go, this one has to be pretty high on “chance”. Not only that but it turned out my audition was in the same building he was rehearsing in! A show i now feel the need to see even more. This guy, also called Johnny, is a great actor and was in an amazing show at this summer’s Fringe. A three hander at midnight with free wine, nudity and philosophy. Fresh air from Shakespeare I tell you!
I enter the station, my songs sung and feeling content, and i cross the hall towards Burger king, supporting cheap meat and cattle grazing in deforested areas of the Amazon rain forest, when a voice comes running up to me from behind. “Excuse me, excuse me!” i turn around and a teenage schoolgirl is holding my train ticket. “You dropped this by the door”
“Wow…thanks”
When i checked my wallet for cash as i entered the station it must have fallen out. Lucky. I wouldn’t have wanted to fork out £115 for the full fare now would I?
People are amazing. While the government is trying to make us paranoid about every person you cross paths with, it’s clear the world is actually full of people who care about each other and want to do the right thing. People who don’t wear bullet proof vests but people you meet, drink with and bump into in other countries.
Life’s good. Be your good.
At the risk of sounding like spam mail pushing breast enlargement pills onto innocent web surfers, I just found this amazing site Improveverywhere and you should all check it out!
This is a fun and kind of subversive organisation that creates large scale street art like this:
and this:
Like they say. We cause scenes.
British version now please.
So i went in to Manchester this morning to go job hunting. I had been wondering down Market Street looking at the shop windows, seeing if any of them were seeking to hire people to put behind counters and say things like ” Would you like cash back?” when i suddenly realised that I’d been so engrossed in my own little world that i had foolishly wandered deep into a swarm of NSPCC charity workers. I froze. Eyes wide open in fear. There must have been nine or ten of them and they had me totally surrounded. There was no way out. Had they noticed me yet? I didn’t have to wait long before i had my answer.
It was a girl. Once upon a time she would have been just like us. An ordinary human being with a family and dreams. Perhaps she had aspired to become a doctor or an artist. But she had had her life ruthlessly taken away from her when she innocently fell into their trap: A simple newspaper advert sirening her in with the promise of ten pounds fifty an hour plus commission. But instead she had been horrifically upgraded. Her entire personality extracted and replaced with an irreversible concoction of sugar and hyperactivity. It was too late for her.
I saw her hand twitch. The first impulse of the over enthusiastic wave about to head in my direction. The shiny glint in her eye told me everything i needed to know. I had mere seconds to escape before i was trapped.
Without thinking my hand reached for the nearest scally and i swiftly pulled out a concealed samurai sword from his Diadora jacket. The Daily Mail was clearly right after all. I faced the girl and in a split second i had flung the sword into her head and right out the other side. She ran manically around repeating those pre-programmed lines over and over again “HIYA THERE DUDE DO YOU HAVE A SECOND” “HIYA THERE DUDE DO YOU HAVE SECOND” “HIYA THERE DUDE DO YOU HAVE A SECOND” as her charity worker circuitry overloaded and shutdown.
But i had disturbed the others. I took the samurai sword from her head like a knife out of butter and ran for my life, taking a couple more out with an impressive mid-air-sword-wielding-360-degree-revolving-somersault. As i pounded down the street and the fading sound of the dying charity workers was replaced by the whistling of razor sharp clipboards sailing past my ears from the remaining NSPCC pursuers, i turned into a side street and stood there was my neighbour, called Peter, with a flux capacitor. He told me he’d built a time machine like one in a film I’d seen. So i got in and he took me to the year three thousand. Not much had changed but they lived underwater and your great, great, great granddaughter was pretty fine. Pretty fine.
But the relief lasted mere seconds. A solitary charity worker, young with blond dreadlocks, had clung to the spoiler and come with us. He climbed onto the roof and using his enhanced charity strength, smashed his fist through the roof and ripped off my arm. As i screamed in sheer unimaginable pain Peter blasted the dread-locked man into atoms with a ray-gun he had taken from the glove box.
I was bleeding all over the car interior so Peter said we had to go to a hospital run by cat nuns on a planet called New Earth. But i never made it in time and as the day turned into night Peter vowed to avenge my death by slaying every last charity worker walking the face of every planet throughout time.
I died and woke up in heaven. Heath Ledger was there and i told him he was very good in The Dark Knight and he said “Thanks”. He was now working on a romantic comedy starring alongside Judy Garland and it was due to be released throughout the afterlife in the next couple of months. I said “I’ll look forward to it” and he said “It wasn’t my time to die yet and i must return to Earth to fulfill my purpose”. I asked him what my purpose was and he said it was my destiny to lead humanity into a new era of peace and prosperity with a revolutionary performance of King Lear.
He clicked his fingers and instantly i was standing at the train platform in Manchester as my train was pulling into the station. My arm had reappeared which was handy and so i headed to the safety of home to begin my work as the saviour of mankind.
How was your day?
If so then you should get some darkness in your life and watch Paranoid Park written and directed by Gus Van Sant! It is based on the presumably equally dark BOOK by Blake Nelson. Think “Brick” meets “Rumble Fish” without the bikes. Or something.
Trailer goodness!
Why do i like this?
I’m a pretty big sucker for Gritty-Melo-Dramatic-Indie-Teen-Films and it definitely appeals to the hoody wearing, skateboarding, floppy haired teenager lurking inside all of us! Unfortunately I fell off a skateboard the first time i put my foot on one back at the tender age of four and low the seeds of fear were sown. But i did get the hoody! It was red and i loved it!
Buy it HERE. The film that is, not my hoody.
TODAY I’M LOVING:
TODAY I’M LOATHING:
If this was your new ipod you’d be trying not to scratch the fetching chrome casing. Perhaps you might buy it a handy ipod sock to keep it safe from harm.
If this was your new car you’d be taking long sniffs of that new car smell. Perhaps you might buy it a pine tree air freshener to make the magic last.
This is my new blog.
If this were a book, the corners would be dog eared and the front cover missing. If the pages were to fall out perhaps i might reattach them with a long piece of sellotape.
I’m rubbish at keeping things neat and i doubt this will be any different. I’m hoping it will fill up with a whole load of random nonsense about my life, my thoughts and my plans. And you never know, i might just keep one or two of you entertained when you’re supposed to finishing that essay!
First things though. Kudos to me for coming up with my URL. Sometimes my brilliance at word based puns just knocks me for six.
You should all buy the new Conner Oberst album.Click here for Conner goodness
Here’s a video i linked to on my Facebook page and I’m also linking here. I’m good like that:
I have a new love. Photography. Tomorrow i’m off out for some serious shooting time in Manchester with my longtime friend the all singing, all dancing and general all round good egg, Matthew. He’ll then be off to work and I’ll be off to look for work.
On a more enjoyable note, Edinburgh is just a week away!!! More and more people are coming up on the bank holiday and if that includes you, let me know! It’s going to be a weekend of performing arts, drinking and all round comedic merriment right up in one of the most beautiful cities in the U.K!
GOOD THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY
BAD THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAD
If this was your latest blog subscription you’d probably visit it every day to check for updates. Perhaps you might add a comment to make it even more exciting with your own interesting point of view..?
Love you all! x
P.S If anyone’s seen the lid of my USB stick lying around on my desk somewhere give me a shout.
P.P.S This is more fun than Facebook
