Hack!

Today I attended the interview for my journalism course which was an experience to say the least. Firstly it must be said how stupid I am. Not only did I not know who Andrew Motion was (Poet Laureate, fact fans) but I also couldn't remember, or just straight didn't know, the two official languages of Belgium, what AM means after a politician's name or who wrote Pride and Prejudice ... okay perhaps I did know that last one.

It's J.K. Rowling, right?

Anyway, after a two hour aptitude test (which I forgot to bring a pen for) I finally got around to speaking with the head lecturer chap. And he really liked me. He said he was glad that I had applied because when he talked to me at the open evening, he thought I was the kind of guy he'd really want on the course. Ah, the old troubadour charm - not only does it get me drinks and cancelled parking tickets, it also helps me better myself academically.

Anyway, I'm really happy- it seems whatever I do in September, it's going to be really enjoyable. Huzzah!

Ps- Red got her marks back for her essay - 85% and a shot at a distinction for her MA. God that girl's good.

Fork in the Road

I guess few people understand at the time that they are making life-changing decisions. It's a gift, I suppose, when you absolutely, categorically know that what you decided will change the entire course of your existence. Nevertheless, here I am, two roads stretching away from me in opposite directions. Both with rich rewards on the horizon, littered with obstacles and pitted with potholes. Which one will I choose? No one knows.

Least of all me.

Taking it up a Notch

I'll be honest. I've never had to work that hard to be the best thing in a show. I'm not a great cook, I can't kick a football to save my life but stick me on a stage and for some reason I tend to own it. This aptitude is of course balanced out by my numerous and colossal ineptitudes in every other fields of human endeavor. Nevertheless, when it comes to stage craft, I got serious game.

Which was why, on the whole, it was such a surprise that I got blown off the stage by a bunch of middle aged men this evening. I've obviously been on the subs bench too long. My triumphant return to the world of theatre has hit a snag. Namely, the rest of my cast is brilliant, breath-taking, magnificent. Dammit!

So I make a resolution right here and right now, I'm taking this to the next level, I'm going to go out there guns blazing. From now on this warrior poet takes no prisoners. Armed only with a salvo of perfectly crafted bon mots I aim to shang-hai this little play of ours out from under the middle-aged spreads and balding pates. Just you see if I don't.

In other news - I managed to tip a bowl of dirty toilet water over Father Troubadour while attempting to clear up after a kitchen ceiling leakage. He was, it is fair to say, entirely unamused by the incident.

In Praise of my Mum

I’m standing with my mum on an empty London street and the air is alive around us. Snowflakes dance and spin and sparkle like constellations, falling stars from the slate grey sky. It is beautiful and unreal. Next to me my mother grips my arm and squints at the blank windows that rise up either side of us. She hasn’t been here for over twenty years. But this used to be her world.

It is as if we are tuning in an old television set, glimpsing a signal amidst the white noise and static. Through the snowstorm I begin to assemble a picture of her past, of the girl she was and the woman she became. We walk the streets of her youth, pressing our faces up against windows, slipping between parked cars and vivid memories. She shows me where she got her first job, where she worked when she found she was pregnant, the last door she walked through before leaving this life behind forever. How she carried me with her as she exchanged this world for another. She holds on to my arm a little tighter and we both smile. I try to imagine what it must be like to be a mother, shielding another person with your skin, protecting them with your flesh and nourishing them with your blood.

Earlier, sitting in our front room, I ask her whether she has any regrets about giving up her career to have children. She looks me straight in the eye and tells me she wouldn’t swap the time she had with me and my sister for anything. She tells me that there were days where she spent whole afternoons just sitting here holding us in her arms. I want to cry at that moment because I understand just how much we mean to each other.

My family life is scarily calm. It is worryingly free from argument and hostility. The rare exception being me and my mum. We yell and scream, we tear strips off each other, we hang up phones and slam doors. My dad and my sister look on bemused because it just doesn’t occur to them to act like that. But it is part of who we are that we feel things deeply and completely. We recognise these qualities in each other and I think it rubs us both up the wrong way sometimes. She doesn’t want me squandering my potential and I’m forever trying to gain her approval for my actions but can tell instantly when I don’t have it. We can’t stay mad at each other for more than ten minutes though. If I phone her back after an argument, the receiver doesn’t even get a chance to ring before she picks it up again.

I read a lot about my generation, about how we don’t have values or role models to aspire to. I can’t find any correlation to that in my own life because I am surrounded by people who engage and inspire me. I look at my mum and I see all the qualities I hope to one day possess, images of her like a string of paper figures decorating my life.

My mum speaking to hundreds of people about her faith and her hunger for justice.
My mum sewing me another super hero costume … and one for my teddy bear.
My mum sitting with her family and just quietly glowing with happiness.
My mum’s look of resignation as another treasured possession shatters on the floor.
My mum holding my dad’s hand for no other reason than that they belong together.
My mum cooking for the twenty teenagers that just turned up on her doorstep.

My mum standing on a street corner with snow in her hair, telling me stories about a time before I was born when pound notes floated down from the sky - making me feel so lucky to have her and so blessed to be able to share in the story of her life.

Agitation

The only thing constant in this life is change. Go on, thrash me with a wet kipper for my twee homilies. Man, things are changing fast. It's enough to give a chap whiplash. I went to see my great aunt today and she is dying. She is literally collapsing in on herself and there's this burning, wonderful spirit at the centre of this dried up shadow puppet of a body. It breaks my heart. Friday, my cat broke her leg and had to be put down and when I visited her she looked so normal and serene and she purred fit to burst when I scratched her behind the ears. Then we closed the cage door and we signed a form and we charged her death to a credit card. She was lying on a blanket that was the cover for our back room sofa, a little piece of home for comfort as the needle bore down on her. We didn't return for the blanket.

This evening was better, I sat up with Alex watching stupid kung fu and eating chocolate biscuits. We always laugh so hard I end up crying, tears literally pouring down my face. We were doing exactly the same thing five years ago and it feels like a part of my identity, choking on my Mars Bar as another Chinese dude pinwheels through the air on wires. Later we burned ourselves a Mix CD and hit the streets, windows down, playing KUNG FU FIGHTING at full volume. Everything's changing, get a job, get a home, get a future. Define yourself by your occupation, beliefs, interests and shoe size. Conform, act out, make something new or bathe your eyeballs in unmitigated dross. It really doesn't matter with Carl Douglas blasting in your ears, fuelled by a sugar rush of nostalgia. If all goes well the essential topography of my life will have changed completely by next month. If not, I'll still be here - tapping S.O.S in Morse code on the keyboard.