It’s strange how things often change entirely from what you originally intended. ‘Gray’ came from just that. An idea born from the desperate realisation that my steampunk-themed play, ‘Steam Beast’ is too far-fetched for my budget. This still being my imaginary budget that will somehow pay for equipment and venue hire in one of Bath’s busiest times of the year for creative people - The Bath Fringe.
An Odd Day
I tried. I really tried to be productive, but yesterday just knocked the wind out of me. My work is more physically labouring than I ever prepare for, but yesterday I was given an energy drink; a deadly concoction that I should have known better to take.
So my grimaced determination to start on my ‘..Dorian Gray’ adaptation ended up in several games of League of Legends, a couple of bouts of Minecraft (my castle on our group server is looking rather fabulous though) and youtube trawling. Whilst on the subject though, I have to applaud The Black Mirror - no tv series this side of the pond has kept me as riveted as these three brilliantly realised productions. I hope Charlie Brooker and his team of wizards make more of these seminal creations, two of which are easily the greatest examples of science fiction, the most recent of which incorporates a first for said genre; The Domestic, well-acted and beautifully depicted in all it’s emotional ugliness, whilst seamlessly incorporating a fictional technology.
Perhaps now my mood can be better understood. Lately I seem to be incapable of caring towards my own ends, despite the desire to.
It’s the notion of having something worth losing that seems to scare me of late. But, ‘Gray’ can wait til tomorrow. After a few free drinks to many, I doubt I’ll be writing an award-winning play for the Bath Fringe tonight..
Maybe tomorrow..
An In-silent Night/Morning
Oh how my poor little blog has suffered - their poor master too busy (or too lazy) a fool to find the time to write anything.
But that changes today! For so many genuinely interesting things have happened between now and the last post that an update just had to occur!
Well it didn’t. Have to occur that is. I could simply have chosen not to update anyone anywhere about anything, and kept all this wonderful news to myself. Some/most/all of you may agree that it should have stayed that way. Well.. Tough!
* * *
My steampunk play I discussed in my last post has a name! And perhaps more importantly a choice of venues for showcasing it in (gasp!). After much consideration “Steam Beast”, will be premiering May or June 2012 as part of Bath’s ever-growing Fringe Festival.
Although I had decided on a name all the way back in my last post, I seemed to get caught up in my own nonsense and babble surrounding the play’s origins. This has expanded partially since last time, though after my lengthy prattling last time I’ll keep it to the point.
The importance of keeping fairy tales relevant and modern, so as to keep and add to their longevity, was a deeply interesting article to me and the play’s future . It was because of the loss of a great deal of folk tales from Germany’s history, that compelled Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm to transcribe their infamous book of fairy tales.
However it’s worth bearing in mind that the Grimm fairy tales well exceed 200 in number; a literal handful of them existing in any part of modern culture. Even fewer folk tales turned fairy exist at all in other parts of Europe - England in particular - their heritage in many cases lost to time for now. This is not something to lay at the door of the hardworking historian, but is due to an acute affliction of that common condition of ‘change’.
My next big bit of news is that my son turns three today! Hooray! Plus in the new year I should be spending more time with him too, which will be nice.
Currently, however I find myself on a bus headed towards his school to see my Son’s first nativity choir carol service, and met an old friend: the Rush Hour. How silly to think that moving from South London would be an escape from the terrors of poor future-proof road design.
However, I made it on-time. Early even as I seemed to be the first to arrive out of the parents who were not already helping set up the service. However early I was, and however best I ensured a seat was available for Stephen’s Mum, Jodi it came to little in the end. Though great it was to see him, my three year old boy was not in the best of moods - not wanting to even join his preschool peers, let alone wear the angel costume Jodi spent until the early hours perfecting for him. Not that he probably realises that at his age, though I’m sure today’s events will be recounted to him when he’s older - I doubt his Mum will ever let him forget.
Despite how flat it may have fell, today’s been a great day. And with multiple University deadlines encroaching, I’m betting will be the highlight of my week.
G0DL355
A Bolivian Steamboat
My next theatrical production had modest beginnings, and while still in the planning stages, I see no harm in talking openly about them here for two main reasons. One, so anyone who would like to do a similar production, or would care to attempt to steal my idea in any way, can meet me in court over the matter; and two, so I can refer back to these initial ideas myself, later in the productions’ life. So from the beginning. The concept for ‘Steam Beast’, started in Thanet over the summer period this year. I was only visiting Thanet for a handful of days, to celebrate my friend and housemate Sam’s graduation into his second decade of existence. Or in other words, his twentieth birthday. Amongst the fantastic presents given away by other friends, and the piece of cyber-punk jewellery hastily made by myself, an ornamental steampunk pistol was produced out of equally-glorious packaging. The pistol itself is a thing of geekdom beauty - resembling to group agreement the steampunk equivalent to the laser-pistol used by Malcolm Reynolds in the Firefly TV series. Now you have an accurate image of what this pistol reminds you of, you may now forget it, as the pistol itself features no more in this story. What does, however was a leaflet distributed by the manufacturer of the steampunk pistol. Upon this leaflet, was what I can only think to describe as a steampunk Blunderbuss. What looks to be an enormous life-sized trumpeted monstrosity, with valves, pumps and gears all beautifully arranged on it. Another housemate, and dear friend 1 Alistair, pointed it out to me whilst Sam was admiring his pistol in the flesh. “That looks like the kind of weapon Gaston would have in the steampunk version of Beauty and the Beast you were talking about.” Said the man gloriously dressed in his full Victorian vampire dressage: the epitome of a row of tents… (ie, Camp). I will admit to the eagle-eyed among you, that I had spoken previously to close friends of my ideas surrounding a steampunk iteration of the classic fairytale ‘Beauty & the Beast’. However I often voice aloud ideas - it stops them nagging at me to make them into reality. Upon Alistair’s statement, we both looked at one another, smiling a knowing smile. We may not have been on the same metaphor of a page, but we were definitely within the same, poorly-written sci-fi novel. So to speak. Myself and Alistair travelled back from Thanet and talked animatedly for minutes about the concept before sleeping off the drink from the previous night. But the idea never truly left me. That a prop existed in the ether that seemed perfectly geared towards this pre-production during it’s ‘Alpha’ phase, has perpetuated my desire to write and direct it. The initial point of development for myself, was to set the tone. Though Disney’s work is seen by many as the definitive interpretation, I wanted my own production of ‘Beatuty…’ as far removed as possible. So I altered the main story, and in keeping with the steampunk ideology, removed any magical element to the piece, and replaced it with clockwork and steam-powered machines. But who would make them? For what purpose? So the town of ‘Cogge’ was born - out of a necessity for continuity. I envisioned the town like a small country village, yet twinned with new steampunk mechanisms built by the town’s founding patron, Savio. In the world of the play, Savio is the mastermind: the wise, all-knowing old man. He brings Cogge back from the brink of collapse with his inventions and contraptions, putting the town in the favours of the surrounding kings. My intentions with Savio are that he represents the eternal father figure: just as he adopts Belle as his daughter, he does the same with the waning hamlet of Cogge. To the townspeople he becomes the very meaning of patron to Cogge. This process, as well as the overall style of the staged era, is intended to emulate the constant changes technology brings to us; not that all of us asked for it. I wanted to experiment with what drives industry, apart from capital gains. Can one man’s vision for a brighter, better future work, or will it ultimately end in ruin? So I put pen to paper, and intend to discover….
Working in Circles
I’m still bad at this. However this time I have a genuine reason for the enormous gap between posts: there really hasn’t been much to talk about - well, little I feel an existential audience would find particularly interesting. In fact, I think the only reason I’m writing up this latest post is just for something to focus on that isn’t a highly-competitive online game full of egotistical children. Yes. I’m talking about League of Legends. Even if that wasn’t what you’re thinking, it was what I was thinking. Ha.
So - my reason for the long time between posts? Lots and lots of hours at my two jobs: and, a trial shift upcoming for a third job - it’s going to be a busy bank holiday, that’s for sure… And what isn’t for sure yet is quite how tired I’m likely to be after it. I’ll likely finish a Saturday shift at one job around 0300hrs on the Sunday morning, only to start my second job at 1100hrs, finishing at 1800hrs. I’ll then have a two hours to get home, eat, and change for another six hour night shift. Come Monday morning, I believe I’ll be dead. Or somewhere very close to it. And, why? Why do I put myself through all of this? Simple. For that desirable item that everybody wants and nobody seems to have enough of: money.
Not only that, though, but I need to do this to myself to simply carry on living in Bath. I restart my University course come the end of September, and I need all the hours I can possibly, physically work. Namely, I desire a gaming graphics card for my desktop computer, but mostly I need a monetary injection to help me repay my girlfriend, who so-far has helped pay for all our set-price utilities every month. It’s for a five-bedroom house, which hasn’t been exactly cheap…
“But why work so many jobs to achieve this?” I hear reasonable people say to themselves internally whilst reading this1! (1 I know nobody reads this - © G0DL355 2011) The truth is, I should have tried harder to get a full-time job for the Summer holiday. Okay, that and maybe just a tiny bit it’s the continued downward economic trend, and record-breaking rates of unemployment that seem to be plaugeing the country/the world.
Or maybe, I could have just tried harder, earlier in the year, instead of committing to what will be the hardest 48 hours of my entire life.
Peace, and all that.
All’s Well That Ends…
So, it turns out that I have not been the fool of a horrible ebay item scandle, as was the main topic of my last post. It seems to have been your ordinary, every-day paypal account-identification fail. Joy. Ish.
The money for the item got put into my bank account after giving the buyer my bank details: hardly the ‘secure’ payment system ebay seem to charge an awful lot for. And, believe it or not - I was still charged for it by ebay! If it had actually been a real fraudulent purchase, I would be down an incredibly expensive item, and £20+ on sellers fees for the whole process!
Thankfully it wasn’t, but the fact I was still charged for the whole business by a large corporation who honestly wouldn’t have missed my desperately-needed £20 faced with their billions in surging profits. That’s conjecture now however, and had I not been paid for the transaction, I would perhaps have fought against ebay far more aggressively. But no matter. All’s well…
I also have some good news, for once. As you may have guessed from the fact I’ve begun to write more frequently again, it seems my Writer’s Block was thankfully short-lived, in the long-run. Currently, I’m working on a radio script for the BBC Writersroom ‘#Hackgate’ Competition, here if you want more specifics on it. The competition isn’t for anything more than to be reputed in the eyes of the BBC - and reputation is everything: especially when you can get it for free.
However if my play is not chosen for the shortlist, I’ll post it here anyway, and try and get it recorded and posted on youtube before the end of August, if not before the beginning.
“An Act of Theft…”
Yes… I’ll get back to that title, and it’s relevance, later.
It’s been a good long while since my last post. Simply, because very little has occurred in my life to warrant it’s online documenting and publishing. I have been employed in the employment of finding employment. Between a worrying number of ‘personally signed’ automated rejection letters, or: “Sorry, but the position’s been filled,” phone calls, I have found new part-time employment in a pub, bringing my number of employers to 1.5.
Why 1.5? Well. Let me keep it simple. I don’t know if I’m still working for my possibly-previous-possibly-not employers. Apologies if my ambiguity is confusing, but understand if I don’t want my innermost exact details plastered all over the internet. Willingly, at any rate…
So I have little to no money at thos moment in time. A hardly surprising fact, I’m sure, yet one I feel needed clarifying.
To attempt to blindly make ends meet, I do as several million others find themselves doing on a national scale: I sell junk I don’t want on ebay. I have become quite proficient in it as well, utilising my relatively advanced knowledge of HTML 4 to at least make my listings look uniform, if a little stark.
This success in managing to sell virtually any item through the website warranted my boasting of my skills. This attracted the attentions of friends who needed items selling, and being the thoughtful chap I am, I agreed to do my best to sell them.
A friend’s laptop had a reserve of £200 on it - knowing it would not sell for nearly that much, I told my friend did he want me to lower the price, to at least guarantee a +£100 sale. He said no. That loss cost me money, but it being near to his birthday, I decided to let it pass. And let it pass again when I relisted it, and once again the laptop failed to reach it’s reserve…
But the biggest loss of all these friendly ebay-favours, came with the selling of another friends’ tablet pc. The tablet in question, I learned later, was in high demand, as there was a shortage of the devices, and prices from many resellers had skyrocketed.
There was therefore a lot of interest for the device - more so than any item I had sold previously on the website. It was with some amazement that I found a paypal payment for nigh-on £300 waiting to clear in my paypal account. The buyer said he’d made a mistake, and would like to have the item posted to a different address - to the extreme of having the payment halted until such a time. I saw no err in this - many people before this had done the very human thing of specifying the wrong address to have an item posted. I waited til the buyer’s payment was being processed, and made the usual arrangements to post the item - sending it via recorded delivery, to ensure it arrived.
I saw that it had arrived, but also that it was being held by paypal. Because no specific reason was given for the holding of the funds, I surmised it was a simple matter, and would clear at a later date. With confidence, I posted the item to the seller’s personally required address.
It came as quite a shock when I received an email from paypal stating - you guessed it - £298 had been reversed entirely. And what’s more, I had to pay the servicing fees on it as well!
So we come to the title of this post, and the mood in which I now write this - reflective of the weather I currently sit sheltered against, waiting for a train to a destination I have never been before: Margate, via Ramsgate.
At the time I wrote this next piece, I was still in a slight state of shock and disbelief of the circumstances. Indeed, the only thing that had calmed me in the slightest was calling my lovely housemate, Alistair, who would be the full recipient of the transaction’s money.
“It’s only money, after all.” Were the kind words which greeted me at the other end of the phone: a testament the great and fair discipline of mind Alistair holds unto others and himself. Though a man of God, or at least a believer of His exalted existence, his temperament is more a testament to the evidential infinite capabilities of human-kindness, than any atheist I have yet had the pleasure to meet.
It was with a stern, confused and angry for the loss of the finances to such a dear friend, that I worded such a rash and cool letter with my demand for payment from the seller in question:
“If this request for payment from Transaction #1K008350R36691349 is not met or responded to within a period of 30 days, I will treat this matter as an act of theft, and will seek my right to reclaim all costs pertaining to this transaction through a court of law. I hope we can come to an agreement.”
I regret the wording of this now, but with a ridiculous limitation of 300 characters, I could think of little other sentiments that accurately portrayed my Armada of frustration which I carried at that moment. I should have waited longer, before penning such an important document, but it should succeed in grabbing said buyer’s intention.
I hope. Now I have recounted most of my current anguish, I hope to now celebrate Sam’s birthday with all the enthusiasm it deserves. Even if all I could afford as a birthday present was an impromptu home-made necklace and a carton of ‘add hot water’ porridge.
Either way. Margate awaits.
I Pledge…
So I’m a little bored with the way life is going for me at the moment. A little frustrated with my own lack of motivation towards commitments. Except for my girlfriend, Helen. She’s the one, lovely thing I seem to be capable of sticking to consistently. Thankfully.
But I’m still upset that I’ll be 23 in December, and still have so little to be proud of. Professionally, anyway. Stephen, my gorgeous two year old son is enough of an accomplishment on a personal basis for myself to last a lifetime: and he’s still so young - I have all of that beautiful carnage of being a parent, proper to look forward to.
In regards to my work, however - particularly work I wish to accomplish professionally, I’m lagging behind my own desires of a career. For a writer, I write very little, and read even less - at least in comparison to my peers. As a playwright, the only two works I have actively and solely dedicated my time to, have both been directed, produced and performed. The first, “The Fragrant Meadow” was my first ever attempt at writing a play at all. It came about from a sweeping interest in lavender farming, more on a visual and olfactory (smelly) level, as well as my own naive philosophy on love and relationships. “…Meadow” was written towards my BTEC college course. My play, as well as eleven others of my peers were performed over a two week period in a theatre local to the college, The Warehouse Theatre. Well received by those who saw it, I worked again with the same director, William Ingham on a concept he had for a show he wanted to take to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for the summer of our college graduation year in 2007. “Writers Block” premiered where and when we wanted to; bumbling the script, direction and rehearsals together in a hideously short time. Too short. The play was critically received, but not in a positive light in the least. The play was even listed in the “Worst of the Festival” section of that year, in The Scotsman, the official newspaper for The Ed Fringe, which had also featured our flagging one-star review. One minor success and one utter failure - swings and roundabouts, as they say…
So here I am now, writing again. Doing what it is I do best, despite what I do best having a 45-50% success rate at it’s peak (and depending on your perspective of the world ‘success’. Personally I’ve had enough of stumbling randomly and ‘getting by’: I truly want to live my life to it’s full, and not just what I want in the immediate present. I want - nay - need to actively plan for my own future. Not just for myself, as my own future is now inextricably tied to my Son’s future: my successes will go to help him and his lifestyle and upbringing just as much as my failings will too.
Now, I come to the point of this blog post: the pledge itself. Over the summer, I want a job. Forget that - I’m getting a job: simply to earn as much money as I possibly can, but in a way that means I can still see Stephen regularly. That is non-negotiable: I can’t go without seeing my son - I’ve missed too much time with him as it is.
But more of that another time. Maybe. The other thing I pledge to do is actively work towards my own creative efforts. Today, I saw an old friend from college, and the reality of the industry I hope to be working in hit me squarely in the face. There just isn’t any work available. It’s very much one thing knowing this and the other experiencing it. Even second-hand it’s still a daunting prospect. It’s perpetuated my own need to start working on my own projects.
First, will be a parody music video for the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)”. I say that more for copyright reasons, as I would like to see the project as more of a pastiche. Annie Lennox deserves more than a ‘parody’
Laters,
G0DL355
My First Post (on Posts)
It brings a smile to my face to know that a good majority of people who start a new blog, feel they have to immediately post something. I have to admit I have succumb (if that’s the right word?) to such a sentiment, but only to start my writing efforts afresh.
So here I am. Writing about myself. As is expected of these things. I could introvert expectations and start writing about someone I don’t even know, with little facts or figures, but then biographers and journalists would be out of careers. Bless them.
About me. Well, I’m human. I think. It’s debatable. I’m definitely a man though. Well… Not a ‘manly’ man, and not girly man either. I have a girlfriend, and prefer the company of woman to men. In that I prefer most women’s company. Not that I’d do anything with them. I have a girlfriend. Unless she would be the one I’d be spending my time wi- *sigh* never mind…
Firstly, I am a writer, predominantly of scripts (and now blogs!). And a father. Wait - scratch that. First and foremost I am a father of a two year old boy called Stephen. He’s my world, and I’m currently at University to study for the future that he deserves. Myself and the mother are separated, and have been since before Stephen was born. I visit as regularly as I can, which is usually once a week on average.
And, I write. About people, meeting in places and interacting with one another: directly or indirectly. Yes, you haven’t likely guessed it - I’m a scriptwriter!! But more than that. Obviously. No one person is just there career, or they’re a very boring person indeed. Unless their career is intensely interesting. Then they wouldn’t be boring at all. Obviously.
Like some students in the area, I have a part-time job. Mine is currently as a glass-washer for The Slug & Lettuce in Bath. Also like most students, I don’t like my current job. The hours sometimes interfere with visits to Stephen as well. A typical Saturday involves a 7am start to get to my son in time, then a 2 hour rush back to work, almost always starting immediately upon my return. I’m typically out of work around 2am, and home by 3am-ish. A very long day. Not that I want pity - I like working long hours, especially as I get to spend time with Stephen as part of such a day: like most, I just wish I earned more for my hour whilst at work…
Today has been a lazy-ish day. The rest of my day will be occupied with completing an application form for The National Theatre in London, which I hope to work in over summer break. Two years previous have shown me that working whilst at Uni is not something I do well. Especially as I was committed to five modules this year, instead of the typical four. Damn failing a first-year module and having to retake it…
I’ve had enough, and I genuinely have more important things I should be getting on with. I’m sure I’ll have something more interesting to write about soon - I just need to find it.
