Friends

I was talking to a friend the other day about mental health. He's someone who is quite sensitive, too, and it was refreshing to have a conversation about it. Surprising, also, that he's had such similar experiences to me. The world can make you feel alone when you're not - not really. I suppose I'm writing this now so maybe other people think, "Yeah, that happens to me, too!"

One of the things we talked about was people who say they're there for you and aren't. I don't mean to make any of this sound easy, because at the minute it isn't. It will get easier, but it depends on how people in wider society act, how normal things become. It's getting better, and I know I need to work on things as well as others.

We've had people saying to us, "Here if you want to talk," like that's it, job done. I've been in relationships where it's been such a passive 'believe I care for you because I'm telling you I am'. For so many people, maybe men especially (because of the traditional roles and stigmas), it takes a huge deal to open a door and let someone in. I've done this before, tried to talk about what's on my mind, have told people how depressed I am. I wasn't asking them to fix everything for me, but when that person you've opened the door door interrupts you time after time, doesn't acknowledge what you've said, or even asks why you're not doing anything about it, the door you've opened for them closes a little bit more each time.

Then they say it again. "I'm here for you." Where? Where are you? Outside. You have the address, but not the key. I was letting you in, and you didn't step inside. That's fine. I've dealt with that from many people. It still hurts, but life is suffering. The question is now, how to deal with it again?

I'm glad at least I can sometimes get to talk to this friend of mine, but I wish I had someone there regularly, someone who said they cared and showed it. Anyway, I'm sounding maudlin now... I also want to help myself to trust more, to be more emotionally available, and hopefully in the future have more tools to be able to use in relationships - platonic or romantic - where this happens.

I hope if you're reading this that you're well. Please take care.

Local Theatre Review: Steptoe and Son at the West End Playhouse

Down below is my review of Matt Panesh and David Findlay's production of Steptoe and Son. It's on tonight and tomorrow, so if you are (or will be) in Morecambe, I recommend you go watch it :)

https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/arts-and-culture/theatre-and-stage/review-steptoe-and-son-at-morecambes-west-end-playhouse-is-nostalgia-for-new-audiences-3575212#

New S

Hello you! How you doing?

Kostumes for Komedy

Eeh, it's been a long time, hasn't it? I know I've always been good at being bad at keeping this blog up to date, but wow, it really has been ages... Just lately, though, I've had so much news I've been physically shaking - so I need to let you know what's going on POST HASTE.

In terms of shameless pluggery - I just received my copy of The Literary Lancashire Award's 2021 Anthology, in which my short story 'You Just Need to Be in the Right Time at the Right Place' appears. It's a great collection of some of Lancashire's freshest voices, and you can buy copies by clicking on this whole paragraph. That's right, anywhere on this paragraph. The initial "In", the final word "have", or anywhere in between. If you get a copy, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

One of the big lovely things happening in Morecambe at the mo is The Nib Crib flourishing, and all their events are being enjoyed. A group of friends and I are the collective force behind this lovely community group - The Nib Crib - that is centred mainly around the 'written' arts. Our current events (which are always subject to change, as we like to listen to the people that come along), are Get Your Words Out (for performance of a variety of work), Play Reading, Book Club, Debate Club, and others. We've even had some generative days, by which I mean writing sessions and workshops (one of which I helped to run, and that was a lovely experience). We don't charge folks for enjoying themselves in our place, but we do encourage donations, as we are fully self-funded. Details of Nib Crib activities can be found here. We also appeared in a nice article not so long back - you can read that here.

This leads on to other performance news in the area. First off is a new open mic night in Lancaster, held at The George and Dragon on the Quay (St George's Quay, in fact. Funny, that...), from 2000-2300hrs every Thursday. I've been a few times now with my poetry and short stories - always had a warm welcome, a receptive audience, and just a bloody good time all round!

Next though, a real exciting thing. My good friend Jim and myself performed a comedy sketch at The West End Playhouse's 'First Friday Cabaret' last week. Jim is the main creative force, but I had a lot of fun assisting with the script, and it was tremendous to perform it. I don't mean 'tremendous great woohoo', because I never really remember much of my performances. I'm normally really focussed on trying to breathe and remember my words, or whatever, so am not really enjoying the present moment all that much. It was, however, tremendous in the sense of what we achieved, the enjoyment of the audience, and generally I'm just appreciating that we have options (within the artistic community in Morecambe, and maybe further), and that is quite exciting, if I may say. In short, our sketch was based on cheese puns. It was a bit like the version of Monty Python that you'd find in a festive cracker... I liked that we weren't after laughs, we were after groans, and that appealed to me as someone who doesn't like to give the audience what they want (or what they think they want, at least).

While I'm here, big up to all the rest of the performers, including other Nib Crib stalwarts and friends :) Great job, everyone (Y)

Perhaps more importantly, Jim has just started a blog, The Writes of Passage and has put up one of my favourite pieces of his: 'Young 'un'. Please go give it a read - you'll be glad you did. He's got an amazing diversity of talents that extend well beyond writing, but within the written world, he is adept at making people laugh, as well as seriously tugging at heart strings. I always love to hear his latest work and let it affect me.

Anyways, that's not the total of my news, but you've only got so much will to live, I'm sure, and I wouldn't want to be accused of taking the last of it from you. At least some of my shaking's stopped, and I even think some of that nasty tumescence has abated, so winner winner!

I hope you're all keeping well out there - as well as you can, at least - and, hey, peace, love, and light to you xox

The End of Badminton?

Really real, and on set.

I'm very conflicted about what to say here. I'm not an industry insider per se, but I have information from the inside of the industry. I can certainly say that I'm a big fan of the show, but does that give me the right to speculate on an online forum where my words could be interpreted correctly, or worse?

I think it's fair to say that I can say that I can say that Badminton's shooting schedule has been shot by Covid. I think we could all've figured that out when the last episode (of a supposedly six-part pilot series) was published in June 2020. I suppose it's a little ironic, since it was born out of lockdown, but is that reason to want it gone? Clearly the community has been going full Kubler Ross over the lack of announcements. To say speculation has been rife would be accurate. To say that is has been rifle would probably be an autocorrect error.

I just don't know how we can move forward from here. I hope I won't put myself in the frame here by telling you that a friend of mine, who has access to the lot they film Badminton on, recently let me loose on set one night, with one of the old dummy racquets and a rubber shuttlecock. I mean, honestly, it felt awesome to be able to hit the shuttle against the wall, like the protagonist does in the series. It was also pretty bittersweet, when one considers that the buzz wasn't there: the chatter of the radio, the tweeting of the birds, the alphaity of nobheads using the garage over the road... It was like a ghost town, but it wasn't a town. Maybe it was a town, but located in my heart, and the population was one - me. And maybe I don't like my own company...

Anyway, I suppose I wanted to use the meagre platform I have to just say, hey, can't we just appreciate what a great show this, I dunno, is? Was? Will be? It certainly could be... I mean, if it's just a money thing, can't they realise the demand over here?

I did hear on a message board the our glorious creator is trying to move on to other things. Again, I know that's speculation, so take it with a melon-baller of salt, but I really think that artists should start what they finish, you know. Where do they get off, tantalising us poor public people? Haven't you ever thought?

Well, my sponsor reminds me to be grateful for what we have, and I must say that I am. Four great episodes so far.

 

Check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxdRkKm7E7mua-G7mPXTpreVatbYLpxsG

Hiya

It's been three months since I've blogged :/ I was hoping to keep a semi-regular commentary of lockdown life going, but haven't. I haven't really felt moved to review anything, as I am sometimes wont to do, or really 'get funny' with anything. I don't know why, really. I don't know why I blog, or what this blog means to me... Anyway, I won't go into a big conceptual analysis of 'blogging and me', I just wanted to say that I still have a soft spot for Blogtastic, and I do feel a duty to what my stats assure me is one very regular viewer. So, here's to you BlogBot303 - I hope you enjoy reading this, and thank you, because really, everything I do is for you.

Would you believe me if I told you that I'd had my foot bitten off while swimming in Morecambe bay? Well, don't. That would be a lie if I said that. But I didn't. I think it was a clumsy attempt at humour and/or hooking you (no fishing pun intended), dear reader, into wanting to read my post. Glad I tried that... Here's the rest of it;

What has been going on? Well, as a furloughed person trying to put plenty of life in my days, I feel like lots is going on. Then I put it into words, and think, no, I got nuthin' goin' on haha. I have regular tasks (properly regular, like, daily) - such as Duolingoing, going outside for walks, plucking my eyebrows - and have kept them up for months now, which is good. I still don't have a proper spiny routine, which is a constant issue with me. Sleeping so poorly doesn't help (it doesn't help anything, actually, and I read Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, just to really rub my own face in my dangerously unhealthy failures as a basic operating human...), but so does not have regular things outside of myself. My dream is to have a proper regular job, where I know when I'll be off, and to be able to volunteer somewhere, and obviously write, and keep my OnlyFans updated. Y'know, just the little things. Shouldn't be too hard to do in a Tory 'run' country that would rather I worked myself into an early grave for little recompense, rather than 'live to work', but if I died now that'd be just as good (to them). Erm, where was I... Probably a good time to mention Can't Get You Out of My Head. My neighbour actually recommended it to me, and I'm so glad he did. It's a six-part documentary that I ain't all the way thru yet, but it's basically a history of the socio-political developments largely of the mid to late twentieth century - but it touches on things from further back etc - from a more emotional viewpoint, i.e. the human motivations behind movements, rather than just facts and impressions of characters. I found it depressing in parts, because of the harsh truths of it, but therefore liberating to be able to put fingers on certain things. And I don't swallow it all, by any means, but thanks to the visual style of it, I'm even enjoying the parts I don't necessarily agree with. Anyways, do check it out, it's great.

Also, I turned thirty recently, and feel like I'm on another level a bit, able to see things stretching out a little bit. Probably that's just a coincidence. Who knows. Thorny personal issues at home remain largely the same. Hope and cynicism have new weapons and battle vigourously in my mind, but, so as long as hope it still standing, then I'll carry on trying. Oh yeah, my birthday was nice. Always is, as I'm blessed with some lovely family members and friends who got in touch, met for coffee, did some useful things around the house that made me feel purposeful... Yeah, 'low key', I always call it, or 'chilled', but that's how I like it :) I don't normally like a birthday fuss, but I am looking forward to throwing a bit of a shindig when people can attend, so check your post for your invite (especially you, BlogBot303 - it wouldn't be the same without you! Though when I try and email you, it says 'delivery failure' over and over...).

I have been doing some good reading (indeed, I have been enjoying the 2020 Literary Lancashire Anthology, available for purchase here. What a talented bunch of people I ended up amongst :) ), have been on and off with the wrting (submitted to this year's LLA, and still want to be more active reaching out to non-competition publications. Even thought of an old idea that If a Leaf Falls Press might like. Check out their catalogue, I regularly get and enjoy their titles) - tho quite 'on' at the mo which is always good, doing too much gaming, some selling of games (go to my 'shop' haha, grab a bargain :P )... I think the most exciting thing has been seeing a local college's MA interim show - click on this to go there :) - in which a friend of mine appears. I love seeing the diversity of styles, ideas, and ways of probing concepts and reality, truly a feat of mental and existential prowess that I struggle to put into words, regarding how powerful, provocative, and touching it is. How lucky I feel to witness these great creative muscles being flexed puts me in mind of how lucky I've been in the past to spend time with great writers and people, sharing in their journey, and their processes. Oof, I'm welling up a bit :/ See, I have a birthday, and then that's me for the rest of the month, thinking 'where did it all go wrong' haha, listening to music from my formative years and wondering what having my time again would be like :'D :'( What a mopey sod I can be!

So, in summary, I still can't help rambling. But no, I could be a lot worse, and I will never forget that I am lucky, especially as we are over a year in lockdowns, and so many people have not survived this disease, and the government's cracked priorities.

Come on, let's end on a happy note. How's about a book recommendation? Yes, I recommend Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood. There you go. I saw a production of it recently, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed it.

And how are you doing? What's your news?

Peace, love, and light to y'all :)

The Gentlemen (2019) WITH SPOILERS FROM THE START

I can't believe The Gentlemen came out in the UK a year ago today. It seems like a couple of years ago at least, but then, of course, 2020 has redefined 'relative concept' when it comes to time... I've only just got to watching it this week, despite being excited for it when it was coming out.

Though I was looking forward to it, I ended up feeling disappointed in the end at how 'on rails' it is, how procedural (like watching a feature-length Poirot, if Poirot said 'cunt' every fifteen minutes and loved to wave a gun around like Scarface). And that's a good point to discuss; am I tired of procedurality generally, because of detective stories and the like, or did this film feel unconvincing in and of itself? I think it's a bit of both. Certainly the reporter (Fletcher, played by Hugh Grant) here is interesting. He seems to know it all, but the way it is revealed at the end that he was being watched all the time was very 'told not shown' (well, it was both, because it used one of those narrated montages, where we are shown and told, but my point being that it's clunky and on the nose either way), blunt and uninspired. Yeah, a let down really, and not even particularly shocking... And then the loose ends that are tied up in the final moments feel like a very quick tick tick tick on a clipboard - very charmless, perfunctory, and menial, really.

I wasn't overly impressed by the meta-ness of it, either. Fletcher's shtick is revealing the information he knows via a film script that he has written about real events. The idea is that it not only serves the audience as a device for telling the story, but also helps the character, as it's piece of evidence he can use to threaten his contemporaries, and 'shop then in' should he not get the money he wants. I think I'm just bein a stick in the mud, but it felt lazy to me - although some people say that about the narration in American Beauty, y'know, it's all opinions, man. I have to admit it gave good opportunities for comedy (i.e. when Fletcher has to lip-read and translate a tense tête-à-tête between the Machiavellian crime lord Matthew, and ruthlessly ambitious gangster Dry Eye, which involves insertions of ridiculous words into the conversation). Also it highlights a lot of Fletcher's character - someone who thinks they are in control of proceedings, whereas proceedings are really controlling him - so it certainly has some merit.

Another big plot point is Michael (essentially the focal character of the whole film, as the owner of the criminal empire that everyone covets and vies for) being killed within the first five minutes of the film. I was like 'okay, that's been done before, but I'm still intrigued enough to find out the story behind the murder'. Later on, however, we find out that he wasn't really killed; his assassin was shot nearby, and it's the intruder's blood that we see splatter onto Michael, which I mistakenly took for his own, based on the initial camera shot. That was a pretty good twist, and I say this in mind with the characters and how I rooted for them/didn't root for them. I was rooting for Michael. It was good to see him back in the land of the living, as it were, and I don't remember feeling so effortlessly convinced by characters for a long time.

With respect to the characters as a whole, the setups and payoffs were all pretty much spot on. They're all criminals of some nature or other, from drug use to murder to international substance dealing. Apart from a couple of goons, however, the deaths only happen to the insatiably greedy, or one maguffin character (who we don't warm to anyway because of his wise-cracks in a tense situation (not that that means I'm 'happy' he died. His death was an accident, tho, so in terms of 'pay-off' the usual emotional transaction is satisfied. Only 'bad' people should be killed in these stories, unless we are dealing with anti-heroes or whatever...)). Then there are some people who have wrought havoc, and we could wish them comeuppance (i.e. the Toddlers, a group of tracksuit-clad gangsters with a penchant for multimedia stardom), but they are acting in mistaken knowledge that they are helping their friends/ colleagues, so instead they are tied up at the end (metaphorically speaking!) in non-violent ways, which again satisfies the usual 'western' ideas of narrative storytelling. The main 'villain' of the piece, Fletcher, who is a blackmailer, does not quite get away with his greed. He is not an evil person, tho. He is creepy, sure, and disrespectful, but clever, panacheful, and 'a real character', and we can't help but have an admiration for him. In that sense, it is entirely fitting that his 'comeuppance' is left open. Ray (who is Michael's bodyguard/fixer/etc) tracks him down and has him locked in the passenger's seat of a taxi - and that's when the credits roll. We can imagine what we like to happen to him, but not putting a death/torture scene in for his character feels appropriate, because, as I say, he's not 'bad' enough to warrant that. My thinking is that his behaviour would probably warrant a faked death, i.e. Ray would go back to Michael and say 'he's gone', and what he actually did was to give him a small amount of money, tell him to get out the country, and never be heard from again. In fact, when he is proprosing his true-to-life screenplay to one party, Fletcher does talk about leaving an open ending to mamintain the possibility of a sequel (ever the avarist!). In this sense, maybe my guess could be right, because Fletcher could easily come back into the picture later on, and would have leverage on Ray because he went against his boss' wishes, and therefore could enact narrative chaos again. Anyways, that's all speculation, and my main point is just that the tone of the film never slides into grauitous violence, there are reasons for the conflicts, and that just feels satisfying overall.

So some of the film I wasn't impressed with structurally, and as subject matter, we know it's nothing fresh from Ritchie. In that sense I wanted to give it three stars (out of five). However, it was a decent two hours' worth of entertainment, very little flab in the action/dialogue, and I appreciated a good few characterful touches to stop exposition fatigue. I felt so intrigued by the plot, so on-side with the characters, that it wouldn't feel right to score it so averagely. Can I beg you for a half? Three and a half stars, if I may be so weasley as to resort to that, seems about right to me :) It's for sure one you should watch if you're a fan of the genre, or just fancy some entertainment that's not suitable for kids.

Thanks for reading, and I genuinely hope that 2021 is a better year for everyone. Let's help get Covid on the run, use our deepened appreciation of life to help those less fortunate than ourselves, and break some of the cycles that lead to people becoming like characters in a Guy Ritchie film in real life

M

A Year's Worth

A year ago today, England FC played Kosovo in a Euro Qualifier match, beating them 5-3. And I stopped drinking alcohol. For me, that was a big deal. The drinking thing, that is, not the chaotic and, frankly, unconvincing England display. It was a big deal because alcohol has been a big part of my life, from my work (as a bar person), to how I socialise and spend my leisure time, to being a brewer's son etc etc. However, due to using it as a coping mechanism during a shitty few years in my personal life, it started to become too big a part of my life, and, having tried reducing my intake and struggling, I decided to haul on the anchors completely and stop, for as long as I could. For a year? Forever? I wasn't sure, but I was going to try it and see what happened.

The first two weeks were pretty interesting. After my second day, I'd already been the most sober I'd been in about six months, because, even though I wasn't necessarily drinking lots every day, I was drinking a little bit almost daily. After a week or two, I had this very strange feeling of complete sobriety. I noted at the time that it should be the other way around; I should feel weird/different because I'm drunk, not because I'm sober. It underlined what a friend had been saying to me, that we often use alcohol as armour, to help protect us from our nerves or awkwardness, for example, but there comes a point [when we abuse it] that all that supposed confidence and protection becomes toxic, and our dependency on it increases so that what we can do without it decreases. I still don't know exactly what point I got to, i.e. whether I'd have classed myself as an alcoholic. For me, that would be the point at which I can't hold down a job, or my relationships suffered. But my relationship with myself was certainly suffering, and my bodily health too, so I can't pretend it wasn't affecting me, and was merely 'hard socialising'.

I normally get asked one of two questions when the subject comes up. The least-frequently asked is "Why?" often followed by a slightly awkward, "Was it your decision, or... [the ellipsis meaning 'are you an alcoholic, and/or has a doctor intervened']?" Most people don't have more than two seconds to wait for you to speak before they interrupt me (but you, dear readers, shall feel the full brunt of my ramble!), so I hodge-podged it slightly, giving people various flavours of the following reasons; I have an alcoholic in my close family. This has stimulated me to stop in two ways - firstly that I speak to a lot of service users/providers for people with substance misuse issues, and their knowledge and wisdom made me re-examine my own relationship with booze. Secondly, when this family member was to come out of rehab, they had to come back to an alcohol-free abode, and I found it easy to quit while they were away, so that when they returned, I would a) not have any alcohol in the house, and b) not be tempted to bring any back while they were here. Other reasons include various 'normal' considerations. I have been suffering health-wise for a few years with various mental and physical complaints, and drinking helps none of them (even though I have used it 'to help me sleep', and de-stress, it adversely affects the quality of one's sleep, which then affects how you deal with stress etc). I was hoping to lose weight, too. Stop spending so much money... Y'know, fairly normal stuff. And there were also considerations such as the challenge of it, do I still have willpower, etc. Which I do.

The thing people most often ask is, "Do you feel better for it?" It's asked in various ways, often in a leading way, assuming that I'm absolutely going to say yes, and wax lyrical about a million and one ways I feel great now I'm no longer poisioning myself. Actually, although I wish I could say a resounding 'yes', it's an absolute 'no with a but'. I don't feel much better, if at all. My aches and pains are no longer being numbed, and neither are my moods. I was actually a bit scared at one point, because all my mental issues (of depression etc) loomed larger at me when I was sober, with an edge and strength that hadn't been there for a long time, and I thought about drinking again to make me feel better in the moment.

To balance this, tho, my mental clarity has increased. My speed of analysis, recall, ability to separate emotions and assumptions from 'truth' and whatnot is quicker, so I feel perhaps a little better able to deal with what comes. And this sort of brings me on to what I've learned as a whole - that alcohol isn't the big issue for me. It's events and environments make me want to self-medicate, and I could take all the coping mechanisms out of my life, only to find a new one (human nature?). At the minute, I'm really battling with eating. I've always liked (a lot of) food, but really, I think not long after my mum passed away, and I went back into bar work after an all-too-brief absence, I started really eating, lots of takeaways late at night and stuff like that. Trying to fill a hole, as it were, though the 'problem hole' is not literal, it's emotional and mental. Anyway, my weight is up and down, my inflammation problems, depression, sleep, they're all still bad, still causing me problems, and that's because there are other habits that have, if anything, only increased in severity since I stopped drinking. You can see, then, that 'do I feel better for not drinking' is not a straightforward question to answer. There have been benefits, but my problems are still very much here, and won't go anywhere unless I tackle them at root.

So not drinking has been a fun 'experiment', but even though I've known for ages that I'm obviously not addressing things 'properly', it's only in this past month that I've started thinking that I really need to change things again. This time I need to try and build health into my life (who knows, maybe even get some targeted help for my depression...), with sleep, anxiety management, more of the five paths, etc etc - something that goes beyond merely forgoing things that are not helping.

Anyway, this isn't how I planned this post to go on. I don't know... It feels a bit bland, and not very educational or inspiring... Nothing ever works out how you think, tho. I wonder what a year's worth of alcohol consumption would look like, how big a barrel it would fill? Maybe I'll get the boffins on it, get a figure to you all by next week.

I hope things are well in your world. Well, they're probably not great at the moment, they're tough all round, but I hope at least that you're finding joy in the little things wherever you can. That's as positive as I can be!

Goodbye!