SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Every day tales of a winging-it creative

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I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.

  • JOANNE THE CARER WALKING THE STREETS TO HELP THOSE IN NEED

    There is a lady who walks the streets of my local area called Joanne.

    Joanne is a carer who works for a nearby caring agency and I first became aware of her when she used to call to my house to visit my father when I was juggling caring for him and working full-time.

    Joanne used to get sandwiches I’d left in the fridge, put them on a plate and give them to him and although she wasn’t allowed to administer his medication she used to encourage him to take them if he’d forgotten or simply hadn’t paid them attention. She also made him a cup of tea.

    In the afternoon she would call back, tidy up the plate and make him another drink. Each visit was 15 minutes long but would break up my father’s day when he only had the television for company and with his mobility problems not able to get out on his own.

    The patience and compassion of a carer (photo from Borough Care, North-West England)

    For me at that time Joanne was a godsend. I knew that far beyond giving him sandwiches and a drink she would make the agency aware if he seemed unwell or had fallen; which thankfully throughout the course of her visits he never did.

    But Joanne doesn’t drive. Now, as of then, she walks between her house visits for miles each day, wind, rain, snow or sunshine. A slightly-built  woman in her 60’s, who I haven’t seen wear a heavy winter coat, I can only imagine her brisk pace keeps her suitably warm. Ten years after she used to visit my Dad she is still doing the same, walking from house to house, providing low level but absolutely essential care.

    When my father’s care needs became more intense, other carers replaced Joanne who came in pairs and drove. She actually only called for a few months, but I remember her because of my astonishment at how she did her job without the capacity to drive. Goodness knows how many steps she does daily but then I don’t expect she would know herself.

    Several of the carers who replaced Joanne became friends during that time, I would get to hear all the ins and outs of their families trials and tribulations, about the pressures of the job and the workload they were struggling with. And we had some big laughs. Some of them had considerable personalities and their characters would fill up the room when they came.

    When my Dad needed the type of help I couldn’t give I used to reassure him ‘the carers will be here soon’, and I would regularly be filled with relief when I heard them come through the door, knowing with their skills and dedication they would be able to give him some comfort, especially when he was suffering with bed sores.

    After my Dad passed away in June 2018 the carers obviously stopped coming. They were suddenly, instantly, sucked away like they had been scooped up in a big human vacuum. The quietness in the house that replaced them, and him, was a large, smothering presence. I can sometimes feel it even now.

    My firm belief, and I was gladly able to tell the carers when they were kind enough to attend my Dad’s funeral, that without them the fabric of essential parts of society would crumble. We don’t need the self-serving politicians or the sporting highly paid sports stars or television and internet sensations.

    We do however, need the Joanne’s of this world. Flawed, ordinary, and magnificent angels who for low wages and far too little respect, administer help to those in need. And in that I include loved ones thrust into a caring role they often feel inadequate to deal with. For them, every Joanne is a superstar.           

  • LOWER ATTENTION SPAN AND THE CONTINUING RISE OF BRAIN-ROT

    I read somewhere recently that said attention span on social media is now down to a shocking 47 seconds per article or post. Ten years ago is was around two and a half minutes.

    And apparently, the average time spent reading blogs is 16 seconds. Which suggests that most people have given up on this blog already!

    This state of affairs now has an official title: Brain Rot. Basically put, brain rot is excessive consumption of  short videos that are the lifeblood of platforms like TikTok in particular, but also Facebook, Instagram and the myriad of other platforms vying for our attention. In addition of course so many of us are on several WhatsApp groups pinging away regularly whilst we try to deal with texts and the continual array of pop-ups.

    On average a worker can check emails up to 77 times a day. Just imagine twenty years ago popping to check if the postman had been, 77 times daily. Mad, right?

    It’s not all about FOMO either. It’s the dopamine rush when we get a message or approval from someone, anyone. About, anything. But mentally, it can be exhausting as well as unnecessary.

    According to Dr Vigneshwar Paleri, a clinical psychologist writing on Yahoo, our brains are knackered (non-clinical term) by the effort of trying to manage all manner of online attention seeking missiles being hurled in our direction. Our brains simply weren’t wired for it all. Feel free to read Dr Paleri’s full article here. If you can spare the time.

    DON’T JUST BLAME IT ON YOUTH

    Young people are apparently buying burner phones so they can’t get distracted by social media. This is an encouraging sign, but in reality what percentage are actually doing this?

    But it isn’t just young people who are incumbent in this trend of low attention span. I used to work with two women in their fifties who on their break time would sit and scroll endlessly through their phones, like programmed robots. And what used to get their attention most of all? Short videos on TikTok and Facebook.

    Of course all of this isn’t good for truth and authenticity, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announcing last week the ending of its fact-checking programme in the US. This is likely to mean more people with attention span deficits seeing a fleeting headline and presuming it to be truthful.

    How many of them are likely to stop, seek out a fact-checking website and explore further? But I don’t imagine Mr Z is too concerned with such trivialities.

    HITTING THE LOW NOTES

    I have noticed it myself with my song-writing. When I first started to post my songs on Facebook nine years ago, average engagement percentage was high. When I started my dedicated song-writing page I had a handful of followers . Now, despite having 180 followers I’ll be lucky if I get a dozen plays from it for a new song release.

    And checking through other songwriters and artists FB pages, including those with much higher follower numbers than me, this seems to be pretty much the norm. This from people who have made the decision to follow a page for updates on an artists music.

    In the end it is probably because we are asking people to put aside around four minutes to listen to a song. In these days of constant distraction and busy lives, four minutes can seem like a long commitment.

    SO WHAT HOPE FOR THE BLOG?

    Well there are people way more qualified than myself to answer this, but the fact is there are still over four million million blogs posted each day, so somebody is reading them. And of course the average reading time of 16 seconds is probably skewed by the subscribers to blogs who don’t bother reading them and instead just open and click ‘like’.

    So if you have got this far reading this blog thank-you and well done, you are obviously someone who likes to buck the latest trend. For now at least.  

  • Taking Bicycle Security To New Heights #WordlessWednesday #Photography

    Photograph by Paul Ariss

  • FROM FORGOTTEN BLOG POST TO THE THEATRE STAGE

    On December 14th 2020 I posted a blog – only my seventh blog at the time – ruminating that Jesus seems to have less and less exposure at Christmas.

    It was in large part inspired by a bulletin I wrote for a charity one mid-summer informing  all their shops that Christmas cards were being distributed to them in August. I joked in the bulletin how Santa was still probably still hanging around the bars of Magaluf.

    This line was removed from the bulletin by the Communications team on the grounds that it may offend people of a ‘religious nature’.

    I was staggered. Was it possible that the communications team who made the decision to cut the line had blurred the lines of reality between a fictional character called Santa Claus and the actual, real character of Jesus Christ?

    The blog has received a couple of likes but inspired not a single comment.  However, that doesn’t mean I see it as a failure.

    Based largely on the blog I recently decided to write a ten-minute comedy play centred around a marketing team commissioned with the task of reminding the general public that Christmas is actually about Jesus Christ, not Santa. The complication for the marketing company is that they also represent said Father Christmas.

    The play, ‘Party Time for Jesus’, has been selected by the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool along with six other short plays to form part of their Stocking Fillers season, and will run almost every day from the 5th to the 29th December.

    Each of the plays will have Christmas as it’s core theme and will have a maximum of four characters. The cast is exciting and talented, (from left, Elliot Kingsley, Joe McGann, Tasha Dowd and Lynne Francis), a mix of young talent who have already starred in some big theatre productions , and established actors. One of these is Joe McGann, part of the McGann acting dynasty of brothers who have significant credits in British theatre, television and film.

    Currently we are most of the way through rehearsals which are going well, confidence is high they will be well received. Ticket sales are also going well.

    So there you go  – if you write a blog that not many people read, just make it into a stage play!

  • Businessman With A Van Tells It Like It Is #WordlessWednesday # Photography

  • HOW NOT TO CRUMBLE IN THE FACE OF DELIBERATE KINDNESS

    Have you ever received a kindness from someone that quite frankly you could do without?

    The kind of lovely act that makes you want to ask them if they had lost their mind?

    A few days ago I gave a neighbour a large bag of baking apples from my tree, which she was delighted about. I explained to her that my freezer was currently packed full of stewed apples and joked to her-  and this is the crucial part – that there is only so much apple crumble one man can eat. She laughed.

    My offer of the apples wasn’t a completely charitable act; I was looking to ease part of my problem with my apple abundance that has plagued me for the last two months, during which time I have had to clear rotting apples that have fallen from the tree on a daily basis, either rotting or half-eaten by birds. But there’s many more that are healthy and untouched and I will access during the winter periodically to make pie or, yes, crumble.

    I also gave a bag to another neighbour and another to a friend. Job done, spread the love Paul.

    But then, yesterday, that neighbour, the very same neighbour I had said to that there is only so much apple crumble one man can eat knocked on my door and I opened it to – can you guess? Yes, she’d made me an apple crumble.

    A crumble made of course with my own apples that I had given to her because, as indicated, I had already eaten more than enough crumble.

    The offending crumble

    I took the dish from her and said, in my best incredulous sit-com voice “a crumble. You’ve actually made me a crumble.”

    At this point a look, only a trace of a look, crossed her face that wondered if I was being sarcastic. To rescue the situation from teetering into an ‘incident’, I thanked her profusely and began chatting to her young granddaughter who had come along to witness my joy.

    I thanked her again, complimented her on the density of her crumble topping and said I looked forward to it. I then closed the door and stood in shock. How could she not get that I had already had more than enough apple crumble?

    I did very briefly consider throwing it away but that is a waste of food and a betrayal to my own apples and just as importantly, the neighbour may ask me a question regarding taste and texture. What if then, to pardon a deliberate pun, I crumbled?

    So, I’ll do the common sense thing and leave the country, assume a different identity and take up residence where apple crumbles are illegal.

    Okay, I’m being ungrateful. I’ll eat it of course and most likely enjoy it and make sure I give my thanks and say how delicious it is. However, should that inspire them to make me another, I will take out my axe and swing it viciously.

    That’s right, that damn tree will be coming down.    

  • Apples or Autumn: It’s That A-Word Time of Year #WordlessWednesday#Photography

  • When The Best You Can Do Is Just Stand There and Listen #Wordless Wednesday #Photography

  • FRIENDSHIPS THAT MAY NOT REMAIN BUT LEAVE A LASTING EFFECT

    I recently read a quote that said; and I’m paraphrasing a little here, that it’s not just about the big people in your life that have made your life whole, like your parents and siblings and other close relations, but the people who have occupied your life at some stage to a significant degree, only to leave it at some later stage.

    The reasons they leave can be vary widely, but essentially they are gone. It got me thinking and realising that this is true. They are someone who may be have been there for years, someone with whom I may have shared my hopes and aspirations and frequently laughed with, but now rarely come to mind.

    I’ve no idea who these people are, but you get the drift. Image by Adine Voicu (Pixabay Images)

    I’m particularly thinking of work colleagues. Back in the early to late eighties whilst working in Liverpool I enjoyed a social life that was an extension of my working life. I can think of at least half a dozen people who I worked, gossiped, griped, laughed and socialised with on a frequent basis.

    It was a rich and in retrospect, carefree time. I may leave these people still sitting in the pub on a Friday night and then next see them sitting at their desk on the Monday morning. I recall one Thursday night in a club taking part in a hairy legs competition whilst out with three other work friends then being back in work the next day like it had been a perfectly normal thing thing to do.

    Yet it wasn’t all about non-hairy legs and alcohol consumption. Never having been much of a drinker myself, it could never have been just about that. It was just the laughter and the companionship. A shared experience. Pulling down the bosses and laughing at their pomposities and power games.

    Then, everything changed. I went travelling across America for a month and when I returned the rumours I’d heard previously regarding a relocation had occurred, and three of my closest friends had left. The relocation wasn’t feasible for them as it was up to thirty miles away; none of them drove and public transport would have been too problematic.

    This was the days before mobile phones, Facebook, Instagram and the like, and as we hadn’t actually lived near to one another, all contact was lost. Most I never saw again and my biggest friendship of them all gradually petered out as shared experiences can only last so long when those experiences are all in the past.

    Some were however able to relocate and I made new friends over the years at this new location, some of whom I keep in contact with via social media on a regular basis, and a select – let’s say elite – few I often meet up with even though we stopped working with each other at least twelve years ago.

    Yet those others from years before, and school friends, friends I didn’t work with but struck friendships that lasted for years but gradually faded into memory, all have played a part in my life and in shaping who I am.

    Image by Sajjad Saju

    I began this by saying it isn’t just about close relations, but one close relation called Martin who was more a best friend than a cousin, is currently receiving end-of-life care. From the age of five to sixteen Martin and I were inseparable and our constant laughter lit up those formative years.

    Then with his family moving away, he discovering the allure of public houses whilst I was still under age, all led to a separation that only ended when I opened a message through Facebook eight years ago that said ‘are you my cousin, Paul?’ Thus began a rekindling of a special bond with someone who not only helped shape my life, but very happily was able to return to it, something I’ll always be grateful for.

  • Claire’s Benchmark for Living #WordlessWednesday#Photography