Monthly Archives: September 2008

I was planning on going back over the last two weeks and updating the day-to-day entries of the blog to reflect all that I’ve been up to, but I soon realised that a) I’d be here all day and b) I’m not even sure I can remember exactly when whatever happened to me in the last fortnight happened.

To sum up, if you can’t be bothered to read this entire post, I have started two jobs, started a new screenplay project with a friend, pushed a short film project towards production, acquired another short film script, begun developing a slate of documentaries, watched my brother leave for a tour of duty overseas and won a Charity Times Award with the Life Life Then Give Life team for Campaigning Team of the Year.

So, biggest news first, I guess (apart from the Award, which I’ve obviously already covered), I’ve got a job.  Two, to be precise.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some part time work up to my sixteen-hour-per-week limit to retain my benefits (and beyond which I’d need to work a considerable amount more hours) and noticed an ad in the local paper for a hotel looking for part-time bar staff for lunchtime shifts.  After going over to introduce myself and fill in an application form, I text my old boss at the Theatre in MK to ask for a reference for the bar work, since she was the last person who employed me as bar staff (albeit five years ago).

She replied positively, but then said that if I wanted bar work then they could offer me a job.  Without much fanfare, I went back for a training day a week last Monday and started my first shift of paid work for two-and-a-half years on the next night.

It’s a very bizarre mixture of feelings being back at the Theatre.  On the one hand, it’s pleasantly familiar – I know most of the managerial staff (even if high turnover means the bar staff are all new to me) and also where to find most of the things I need during a shift.  The bars haven’t changed much, apart from some of the stock having changed – Becks to Tuborg, for instance, and the appearance of Magners in the fridges.

At the same time, while it’s a safe and comfortable environment to start back into a working life, it also feels a little like a step backwards.  I’m now back doing what I was doing in 2003, before my work with the Education Department and the Youth Theatres in MK and Northampton and before the experience I gained as a Production Assistant/Youth Theatre Production Manager at the Royal.

I guess the way to look at it is that as long as I have the income I need to pay all of the bills, the Theatre work is only three or four evenings a week, which frees me up to work on my own projects during the day time, for which I have a lot more time free now that K has started at Uni.

Thursday was her official first day and it was a bit of an epic one.  The commute means that we have to be up at 6am to get to the station for 6.45/7ish for the 7.11am train to Euston.  Luckily, looking at her timetable for the term, it seems that she only needs a 6am start two days a week, getting a lie-in on Mondays and Thursdays and having Fridays off.  It is very much an atypical Uni course however, having as it does, a full timetable of lectures and lab time.  Monday mornings and Fridays are all the time she has off, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are all 6-8 hour days.  It’s intimidating for her and it’s going to be tough, but I know she can do it and I’m sure she’ll be fantastic as a Speech Therapist – even if that is four years away right now.

As well as starting at MK Theatre, I also went to catch up with my old Education boss at MK, who has now moved to the Grove Theatre in Dunstable, about 20 minutes down the road from me.  Whilst catching up with her, it emerged that she had another Youth Theatre Assistant position opening up to help out with running the Sunday afternoon YT sessions for the eldest two groups of the Grove YT.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance to leap back into the deep end and get my hand in again.  Last Sunday, I enjoyed my first day working with the YT in the first session of term and enjoyed it immensely.  It’s hard work – much harder than the MKYT, actually – but the young people who attend the sessions offer much greater opportunities for rewarding work.

As well as the Grove’s YT, I have also just started work on the school’s project I’m doing with Suze and her newly minted Catalyst Theatre Arts Ltd company.  At the moment, it’s not 100% clear what my role will consist of, as I’m largely there to support the school and do what they need me to do to ensure they make the most of the project.  It’s exciting for me as it’s the first time I’ve worked and been engaged as a “proper” artist, being seen as a practitioner in my own right and not as an assistant or general helper.

Personal project-wise, I’ve now got a producer on board my short film, which will be going into production over a weekend in early November.  We have offers out to cast at the moment and are hopefully of getting a couple of recognisable names, although it largely depends on their schedules, as I’m keen not to push our shoot dates back.

I went to a Screen South roadshow this week, which highlighted the pots of money on offer for short films in the South East of England, but all of them require the director (that’s me) to have a show-reel of stuff they’ve shot before.  This is a bit of a classic Catch-22, but since this film can be shot for next to nothing, I’m hopeful that even though I’ll miss this funding round, the script I’m developing at the moment will be a possibility for the next round.

I’ve also just started writing a feature project along with a friend of mine who’s as keen as me to get writing again.  It’s a low-budget British horror-comedy which we’re hoping will be quite saleable, or at leat easy and cheap for us to make ourselves if that turns out to be the more likely option.

Beyond the fiction stuff I’m working on at the moment, I’m also developing a trio of documentaries.  Two of them are quite immediate and one is longer-term planning.  One, in fact, I’ve already started shooting a video diary for and am currently working on establishing links with the Armed Forces to see if I can take it further.

It’s been a manic two weeks and blogging really took a back-seat to all the other things I was running around doing, but I’m sincerely hoping that having more time in the day to achieve the things I need to will enable me to keep a more day-to-day blog of the things I’m up to.  I’m aware of how great a resource blogs can be to keep tabs on people and gain encouragement for the kind of life it’s possible to lead post-transplant, so I really do hope I can keep it up.  Please keep checking back and feel free to berate me if I’m lax again.

I know, I know, I know – it’s been WAY too long since I last updated, but trust me, I’ve been busy.

I will endeavour to find some time over the weekend to give a full and proper account of the, frankly, crazy-busy and pretty momentous events of the last couple of weeks, but I just had to jump on for the last 5 minutes my brain is operating today to shout about Live Life Then Give Life, the award winning charity.

I’ve been somewhat remiss in not talking on here about our recent nomination for a Charity Times Award for Campaigning Team of the Year.  The Charity Times Awards is a prestigious charity-sector awards ceremony that recognises the best in not-for-profit work and those who support chartiable organisations.

Five of our six trustees managed to make it down to the Lancaster Hotel in London last night for the Black Tie dinner at which we were all shocked and delighted to be announced as winners in our catagory.

The judges said in their citation, “This was an outstanding campaign made up of many effective and innovative strands and appraoches, achieveing great sucess.”

We were all amazed to be thought of as the campaigning team of the year, although according to the sponsor there was only ever one winner, which is overwhelming and a great boost for all of us.

We had happily resigned ourselves to making the most of the PR opportunity that being nominated for such a renowned award in only our first year as a charity, so we were all overcome with emotion when we headed up to the stage to collect our awards.

The appalause and good will from the other charities at the ceremony made us realise how well thought of (and how much more well known than we had suspected) Live Life Then Give Life is.

To see Emily, Hal and Jen’s faces as our name was announced (and it’s a picture, let me tell you), check out the video here.

We partied long and hard into the night (although mostly alcohol-free) and came away buzzing.  We have all invested so much personally into this charity since we first got involved with Emily and Emma’s campaign back in 2006 and it’s indescribable what this recognition means to each and every one of us.  We are so aware of all the help we get from our supporters and our advocates, who go out there and tell their stories and help to increase awareness of our desperate need for more donors in this country.

Rest assured, though, we will not be sitting back and feeling chuffed that we’ve done our job now we’ve got an award – if anything, this has motivated each and every one of us to keep ploughing onwards.  In the words of friend, top blogger and independent filmmaking guru, Chris Jones, “Onwards and Upwards”.

Today has been an amazing day.

Some weeks ago, Live Life Then Give Life were invited to an annual service held by the British Organ Donor Society (BODY), who hold an event every September to commemorate the lives of organ donors and those recipients whose lives they saved.

In WImpole Park in Cambridgeshire, they have an avenue of trees, which people can dedicate to loved ones or anonymous donors and every year they dedicate a tree to an organisation as well.  This year, they wanted to dedicate one to Live Life Then Give Life.

I went along with K and Emily to represent the charity and we all knew that it might be an emotional day.  What none of us knew ahead of time was just how amazing a day it would be and what a wonderful feeling it was to be there.

The service is almost impossible to describe.  In a tiny church in the grounds of Wimpole Hall, the Rector leads a service which frequently crosses boundaries between memorial, thanksgiving and celebration.  There are donor families there, people who have lost loved one but took the immensly difficult decision to allow their organs to be used, and there are recipients, like Emily and I, and their families, there to celebrate and give thanks to the people they never knew and will never know who gave life where it was ebbing away.

There is a part of the service at which anyone may stand up and talk and tell their story, or simply say a quick thank you.  To hear the contrast of stories between donor families and recipients is stark and unsettling, but at the same time it’s uplifting to see the strength that the donor families take in the knowledge that they’ve helped someone to carry on.  The gratitude of the recipients shines through more brightly than any lightbulb every could and the strength that each side takes from the other makes it a wonderfully cathartic, if hugely emotional, experience.

As a charity, five of Live Life Then Give Life’s 5 trustees owe their lives to our amazing donors, so it was nothing short of an honour to be invited to the day and to receive a tree from the Society.  As I stood at the front of the church to talk about us and what we do, to thank BODY for their gift and to thank our donors for what they have done for us, I got a strong sense of closure with my donor.

I know nothing of my donor, or their family, except that when my family were celebrating their greatest Christmas, they were enduring their worst.  I know that I will never know my donor and I will never be able to visit their grave to thank them for what they’ve given me.  But now there is a tree dedicated to Live Life Then Give Life and now that I know there is a place where donors are commemorated, I feel like I have a place to visit to give thanks, a place I can go to commune with my donor and let them know all that I’m doing to make the most of the new life they’ve given me.

Next  year is BODY’s 25th anniversary as a charity and I sincerely hope that I can be there for the service again, but also that I can pack the church with donor families, recipients and their families and anyone touched by organ donation, because being in the presence of some of those amazing people yesterday was one of the most remarkable and moving experiences of my life.

Live Life Then Give Life continued our assault on the corridors of power today as Emily and I went along to a lunchtime lecture at the Department of Health to talk about organ donation and the reasons behind it.

The talk was ostensibly to let the civil servants know the kind of policy issues they would have to address regarding organ donation in the coming months and years and was given by a lovely lady called Triona Norman, who had attended our Treasury talk and seen how great we were(!).  Emily and I, along with a friend from the Treasury, went along to give personal experiences and help to illustrate the difference a trannsplant can make.

It was also incredibly useful because we got the chance to meet and chat to Chris Rudge who is the new National Clinical Director for Transplant, otherwise known as the Transplant Tsar, who is in charge of implementing the changes recommended by the Organ Donor Taskforce report from last September.

Apart from the obvious bonuses of meeting and getting to know the Head Dude of transplant in the UK, it was fascinating to hear him talk and address many of the issues and common questions people have about organ donation and transplant.

As a national transplant charity, we often find that the same questions are fired at us constantly, mostly regarding our relation to the Spanish system.  It has been my personal position and the position of the charity as a whole, to point out to people that the Spanish system doesn’t excel simply because they follow a system of presumed consent, but rather because they have ensured a significant investment in the infrastructure needed for transplants, including staff training and – most significantly – a much larger number of intensive care beds than we have.

This is significant because the vast majority of organ donors die in intensive care, which means the more beds we have, the larger the pool of potential organ donors.  Interestingly, Chris Rudge also said that only around 20% of organ donors are victims of road traffic accidents.  Much more commonly, the cause of death is inter-cranial bleeding, more commonly known as a stroke, which can affect many young people as well as old.

The most significant part of Chris’ talk, however, was his reaction to the introduction of presumed consent. He is very keen to set up an investigation to see whether or not an Opt-Out system would actually increase the donor rate, or if other factors are more significant.  This is a breath of fresh air to me, as I’ve been saying since the recommendations came out that it’s not a given that presumed consent would increase the number of transplants.  It may increase the potential donor pool, but that’s not the same thing at all.

It’s great to get invited to talk at these events, because both Emily and I have learned from experience that making the issues personal makes and enormous difference in driving the points home to people.  But this was more of a bonus than usual, thanks to the chance to meet and chat with Chris Rudge and some of the people who actually have the power to make a difference.

Here’s a mini-transcript from a telephone conversation my dad had today with AA Travel Insurance regarding our current family cover:

DAD: “I wanted to check on cover because we have a “close relative” (our son, actually) who had a double lung transplant less than a year ago”

SP*: “A lung transplant?”

DAD: “Yes”

SP: “Was he hospitalized for the procedure?”

*Special Person