Archives: Family

My body decides that 6.30am is a good wake up time this morning and, as the room is freezing and the wind is rattling the door, any chance I have of convincing myself to go back to sleep is thrown out of the window, so I get up, close the window over lest the same fate should befall the lovely K1 and head downstairs.

I make myself a cup of tea with the penultimate tea-bag in the house2 and sit down to catch up on emails, news and blogs from the last two days since I’ve been out of the office for most of them. I promptly let my tea go cold and debate whether to walk to the shops but a) it looks freezing outside and b) I’m digging too far into the news blogs to leave my laptop.

By late-morning I’m all caught up on everything I’ve missed and have worked my way through two scripts that were in my To Read pile. I fire off an email of feedback to the writer/director of one of them, but promise myself a second read of the other, since it’s being pitched to me as a possible new producing project and I think it needs a more careful evaluation.3.

K eventually rouses herself and announces (shock of all shocks) that she actually had a good night’s sleep and feels rested and happy – not a common thing for K of a morning. She also informs me that we’re popping next door at 2 to give Wee C4 his delayed Christmas present that various events colluded to prevent us handing over pre-Christmas (or even pre-New Year).

Back from that we take a stroll down the road and pick up some tea and milk, then K hits the sofa to dig into some statistics homework while I clean up the kitchen, including mopping the floor from Thursday’s jumping cider incident (it’s been a bit sticky since).

That done, I head upstairs and have a chill out in the bath, followed by some relaxation, then make a few phone calls that I needed to catch up on, including chasing up a commission that came my way yesterday.

Phone calls finished, I try (and fail) to wrap my head around K’s statistics stuff to see if I can be of any help, but drawing a blank on that I instead fall back on my dinner-cooking talents and rustle up some griddled pork and accompaniments.

After dinner, K hits the sofa again and I head up to the office to check messages and update the blog. When K’s brain has exhausted itself and her mind is a whirl of statistical mess we play a quick game of Bananagrams before heading to the movie room and throwing in the original BBC STATE OF PLAY series, which K’s never seen. I realise I’ve forgotten just how much I love this show as we get through two hour-long eps back-to-back and could quite easily have stayed up and got through all 6 in one straight marathon, but I’m keen for K to rest up before Uni starts on Monday, so I drag us both to bed for sleep.

1. although that’s hardly likely as she sleeps like the dead once she’s nodded off [↩]
2. naturally leaving the other for K the tea monster [↩]
3. the first of the scripts is another project i’ve been producing that’s been slowly working through numerous drafts over the last few months [↩]
4. the neighbour’s 3-year-old [↩]

The alarm wakes me at 8am, which is the latest I’ve been up all week (I figure I deserve it). I get out of bed, shower and rouse K so we can make our 9.35 train to London.

We get in to Town and K heads off to Angel to Uni, where she’s meeting her study group to polish up their joint project while I head down to Waterloo to meet up with HC, a filmmaker friend of mine. It’s good to finally see her as we live a life of constant “we must meet up” messages and rarely manage to find time that both of us are free to actually do it.

We pick each other’s brains about various work-related thing, as well as chatting about new projects we have on and our hopes and plans for 2011. The hour-and-change we spend in a lovely little South Bank café1 passes way too quickly before I’m back on a tube and headed North to Angel.

I meet K to accompany her to a meeting with her Uni that she’s organised to try to sort out arrangements for her placement this term, which goes very positively and we’re in and out inside half-an-hour.

K smuggles me in to the uni library using one of her study-mates passes and I stick my head into their room to say hello to the group and thank Sc for her card. They carry on working and I sit in the main library study area and battle (unsuccessfully) with the WiFi before giving up and settle into preparing a business plan for the new project I’m working on with CR that doesn’t require ‘net accesses.

While I’m working I get an email from a Twitter contact who was involved in Danny Lacey’s LOVE LIKE HERS offering me a Line/Co-Producer role on her new short. As it’s on my Blackberry, I can’t read the script, but I file it away to come back to later once I’ve got chance to access the ‘net and read it.

I also get an email from THE PRODUCTION OFFICE commissioning me for 12 new eps of THE LOWDOWN for them this year, which is a really nice boost. I’ve had great feedback in the past on the videos I’ve done for the show and it’s always flattering to be asked to come back and do it again. I accept without hesitation.

When K wraps up her study group, I pack up my things and we stroll back up to Angel and grab the tube to St Pancras, where we’ve just missed a train home. There’s one every half-hour, though, so it’s not the end of the world and we hit Foyles bookshop to kill some time, with me wading through the business section as a bit of market research.

We hop the train and ride some, K zoning out with tiredness while I read an eBook on her iPad for the first time. I’m impressed at how nice it is to read on it, as I’ve only used it for games and “useful” apps before. The workflow for reading PDFs is a little fiddly, but once they’re on there, it’s great.

We get home and swing by KFC for K and I whip myself up some chicken mayo sandwiches from the leftovers in the fridge2. We watch some SIMPSONS while we eat, then head up to the movie room and the PS3 to stream the first ep of FAMOUS AND FEARLESS that we missed on Monday, which we jump through the key moments of before coming back down to tonight’s Sky+’d final. It’s such an odd show – potential to be very, very good, but the live studio format necessitates quite a lot of padding. That said, if it weren’t live it wouldn’t have the same edge to it, so it’s a bit of a conundrum for the producers. It’s great to see Chris Evans doing good TV again, though – I miss TFI FRIDAY.

It’s late once F&F is over (well done Charley Boorman) and we take ourselves off to bed where I read for all of 10 minutes before conking out.

1. Earl Grey for her, green tea for me, both served in little bowls [↩]
2. K’s not a sandwiches kinda girl [↩]

Sadly, despite being up ’til past 2am two nights in a row, my body1 just isn’t in the mood for sleeping.

I’m an impatient slumberer and if I’m not asleep within about 30 minutes of turning the light out, it just makes me more restless. So, around 3am I get myself up again and head downstairs.

I move the laptop through to the dining room (I feel like working at a desk/table), brew myself a cup of green tea and get down to doing some work on a website I’m prepping at the moment for a new project that’s hopefully launching in the next few weeks. I realise there’s a lot more to be done than I thought and I hit up some WordPress forums for a bit of help with some coding.

After an hour-and-a-bit of that, my brain is a little too numb to focus on any one tsk any more, so I set about backing up all of the various blogs and websites I run2, whilst reading some wisdom of Seth Godin, my new guru of choice, and catching up on some news websites I like to stay abreast of, like Mashable and Hollywood Wiretap, the latter of which is a little devoid of news due to the NY break, being trade-based.

I sort out a calendar-syncing issue K and my computers are having and eventually, around 6am, I’m finally too tired to think and I take myself to bed. I get upstairs to discover that K is also still awake, although she has a higher tolerance for just lying in bed when failing to sleep.

We both turn out lights out and try for some sleep, which eventually comes our way.

I wake around 11.30 and drag myself out of bed to eat something and knock back my a.m. dose of meds that are now a little late. I wolf down a bowl of cereal and the tabs, shoot-up a good dose of insulin3 and take myself back to bed for more rest.

I snooze lightly but happily for a couple of hours and eventually drag myself out of bed around 2pm, brewing myself a cuppa and hitting the sofa to chill out with some TV in the background while I surf the ‘net and investigate Squidoo, a rather neat-looking idea that is currently intriguing me.

K gets up and I make more tea and we sit and chat with the Strictly edition of Question of Sport on in the background. Tea down, I decide to get off my butt and go for a walk around the village, the old parental mantra of “a little fresh air does you good” ringing in my ears.

On my way round I stop at the Co-op and pick up some grub for dinner and some bits and pieces for lunch tomorrow when K’s girly mates (plus manly men, plus bambinas) are coming over for a post-Christmas catch-up.

I get home and K is busy cleaning, tidying and taking the decorations off the long-dead Christmas tree. I take the tree out, along with a few bags of rubbish and recycling for he outdoor bins, then sort dinner out with our revived George Foreman.

We eat, clear up the hit the sofa to watch ERIC AND ERNIE on Sky+. BBC drama is usually good quality, but even by their standards, this was a doozy of a drama, both of us really liking it.

After the film I go for a bath to chill myself out before sleep4 then come back downstairs to grab my evening meds and update the blog while K switches places with me in the tub before we both sack out for sleep.

1. or brain, not sure which [↩]
2. mostly through the infinitely adaptable WordPress platform, which makes it incredibly easy to backup [↩]
3. it was a slightly naughty cereal [↩]
4. in the vain hope it might help tonight [↩]

New Year started, as most do, at midnight. K & I were down at the Black Bottom Club in Northampton for the second year running. This year was a little different, with a rocking indie band as opposed to the more chilled jazz band of last year. Different, but not worse.

After seeing in 2011 we eventually rolled back home after a detour to drop S&G off at theirs around 2.30am. I drove, which meant sobriety for me, but K was not so hampered by the restrictions of driving laws and just about managed the stairs to bed before crashing out.

Being in bed after 3am, I was pretty disappointed that my body decided to wake me at 10am. Granted, 10am is a pretty good lie in for me, but I felt like I could do with at least a couple more hours.

I get up, grab some brekkie and make some tea and sack out on the movie room sofa to explore the 007 game K picked up for me this week to go with the free PS3 she got on her new phone contract just before Christmas. I get one stage in (the pre-credit sequence) before her ladyship awakes and comes to join me.

I shut the PS3 off and come downstairs, making us both tea. We opt for a movie and flick through the Sky planner, eventually settling on SAVE THE TIGER, a Jack Lemmon flick from the 70’s that neither of us have seen or heard of. Turns out to be pretty good, but halfway through K’s not liking it and heads off to catch some more Zzz’s. I finish the flick while updating the blog and being sure to pimp it on Twitter before shutting down to head up for some kip myself.

I realise as I’m getting upstairs that I’m not actually tired enough to sleep, so I wonder what to do with myself. I to-and-fro up and down the stairs, make some coffee and a cuppa for the not-sleeping-either K and leave her to try out her new Mario 25th Anniversary edition game on the Wii.  I head upstairs to the movie room and throw on WAR OF THE WORLDS as background while I do some stuff online.

No sooner is it on, however, than I change my mind and decide it’s about time I sort the DVD collection out. It’s been randomly thrown on shelves since we moved in August and it drives me nuts having to hunt out the film I want to watch when I used to be able to grab it from my stack without a bother in the flat.

I empty the shelves and discover I’ve got enough DVDs to entirely cover the floor and I set about constructing a heavily-geeked up system of storage, based on genre, director and other random categories.

Around 4,30 I finish up the sort, although still with minor adjustments to be made, and jump into the shower before we head over to my ‘rents for a New Year’s dinner of roast lamb with all the trimmings. Awesome meal down, we chill with the ‘rents and play some Bananagrams1 before heading back to ours and getting in just after 9.

K retreats to bed, nursing a delayed hangover and over-eating-itis2, while I jump on the corner sofa downstairs, legs up, old episodes of ED from Sky+ playing the background while I download the NYE pics and write this, the very first ‘new’ post on the combined archive blog.

I note my paunch staring at me as a look down on the laptop screen and realise just how important my fitness goals for this year are. The belly will be banished.

Despite aiming for a 2 ep max, I end up on the sofa until nearly 1.30am at which point, 5 eps in to a mini-ED-a-thon, I close up shop and head upstairs.

1. an awesome game that both Mum and I bought for presents this Christmas, based on our deep love of playing a friend’s version [↩]
2. a sad curse of my Mum’s extraordinary cooking [↩]

It’s been a while. In truth, I didn’t want to blog until I could find something positive to put down on these pages. And after a month like January, that’s been very, very hard work.

In addition to the funeral of K’s aunt, who died in late December, this month has seen us lose Jess (as detailed in my previous post) and then, last week, a very close friend’s baby brother, too. It’s been an absolutely heart-wrenching start to the year, especially after 2010 began with such excitement and promise.

I’ve also been hinting and nodding towards a new project which was supposed to be up and running by the end of January, that still hasn’t taken off. However, the reasons for that delay are more exciting than they are dispiriting, but all the more frustrating that I can’t share any details of what’s happening just yet.

One element of the project I can talk about is the attempt – along with my band of merry men – to complete the 3 Peaks Challenge in May this year, the weekend before my 28th birthday. It’s a truly daunting task and the most common reaction I get when I tell people about it is, “Why?”.

So I’ll tell you all now to prevent the mass of comments and emails about it following this post: because I can. Because I’m now able to push myself physically; because I’m able to see what my mental strength can carry me through; because I survived when others didn’t and have been given the perfect opportunity to do the things I want to do; because I can help to show the world just what an amazing difference organ donation can make to someone’s life.

This time three years ago, I was still recovering from Christmas and wondering if I’d see my 25th birthday. From then to now I’ve been able to go the kinds of things I only ever dreamed of and pushing myself physically and mentally through the toughest of challenges is something I’ve always wanted to do. And now I can.

There will be more details on the Challenge itself as well as the wider project as things progress, but today felt like a good day to sit myself down, slap myself round the face, pull myself out of my funk and start moving forward with the gift that is another year of life. Today was my first session at the gym in preparation for the 3 Peaks and it hurt like hell – but the pain of physical endeavour pales in comparison to the pain that my friends and their families have been through in the last month.

This is for everyone who can’t, everyone who wants to and everyone who never will achieve their dreams.

I’ve been struck again by one of my intermittent bouts of insomnia and have – as usual on nights like this – found myself sitting and contemplating all around me.

In particular, I’ve been reading back over this blog entry from the summer and going back through the last few months on my Facebook. I wanted to break into the “real world” and do something that felt like a tribute to my donor. I know now that the decision to go to Liverpool was made in haste and a fog of ambition and clouded judgement.

I can’t regret that decision, though, as it’s left me in a place now that’s so much happier than I was before I left. Being away has made me realise what it is I want to do, but more than that it’s shown me that I have the knowledge, drive and courage to pursue it.

I’m immensely lucky to be surrounded my my wonderful family, my always-supportive friends and, of course, my wonderful K. Since getting back from Liverpool I’ve been happier in my life, my house and my skin that I can remember for a long time.

At the same time, thinking about the future has made me think about all those around the world less lucky than me. I lost my friend Jo just a few short weeks ago and said my final goodbyes last week and knowing that her family face Christmas without her is heart-wrenching. Added to which I’ve got one friend in hospital over Christmas, another friend’s baby brother in intensive care and two more friends facing the very real possibility that this will be their last Christmas if their transplant doesn’t come in time.

This time last year, my brother was fighting in Afghanistan in one of the longest and most protracted operations of our combat there. On Christmas Eve, in an experience I’ve never had before, I was overcome by emotion during the midnight service thinking about him and the dangers he was facing. Without realising, and something I can only attribute to the kind of sibling bond I’ve always derided, I woke on Christmas morning to a phone call from my parents to say that he’d lost one of his closest friends right by his side that night.

In truth, despite our hardships, my family is undoubtedly one of the luckiest and most blessed in the world. I’ve fought and won battles within my own body and been lucky enough to be given a second chance at life. My mum has battled her own illnesses and come through with flying colours and my bro has fought and survived one of what is turning out to be the bloodiest wars in decades for the British Armed Forces.

I’ve been blessed by so much happiness in my life and as Christmas approaches with people living in fear, in hope and in grief, I realise more than ever that now I know where I’m going, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal and get my arse there.

I can’t wait to get started. Here’s hoping that the New Year brings all of us the things we want most in life and, should it fail to and instead present us with more, deeper challenges, may we all have the strength to fight, battle and rail against them and emerge victorious this time next year.

As a wise man once prayed: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Merry Christmas to you all, and a Happy, Healthy, New Year.

Happiness is an often elusive thing. It is at once indefinable and definite – you just know when you’re happy. It’s also vital to life. Or at least to mine.

A long time ago, pre-transplant before I was seriously ill, I promised myself that I would never have “just a job” – that I would always do something that made me happy. It didn’t matter to me if that was street sweeping, rubbish collecting or running the biggest company in the country; if I was happy that’s where I’d want to be.

This has come back to me over the last few weeks and months up in Liverpool. The ultimate truth is that I’m just not happy up here.

The decision to come to university was made in a rush of confused feelings about my past, my present and my future. At the time it seemed like a great option for me to explore what life is like outside the confines I’d previously lived in and that life as a student – something I’d missed out on when I was still in my teens being too ill to go – would suit me and re-energise me.

The theory behind the decision to come to LIPA was sound: I’d always wanted to come and when I saw the place in clearing I leaped at the chance to be a part of an institute I’d always wanted to go to. I didn’t, however, consider well enough the value of the course to the way I see my life panning out.

LIPA is a remarkable place – the people, the building, the students, the tutors, the shows: all outstanding. But it’s not the right place for me to be.

I’ve been unhappy here for nearly as long as I’ve been up here and it’s taken me a long time to reach the decision that I’ve come to. In the end, though, the opportunity to come back and start the rest of my life with my wonderful, devoted and utterly beloved K combined with the chance to pursue a project I’ve wanted to push through for well over 3 years was too good to turn down.

K and I have been through rough times in the last six months or so. We’ve been through rough times in our own, individual lives; we’ve been through tough times in our relationship and we’ve been through hard times in our lives together. But we’ve come out of it stronger and more supportive than we’ve ever been.

When I came back South a few weeks ago, I had a long chat over lunch to two of our closest friends who, when I aired my views about Liverpool, came up with one singular piece of advice: follow your heart and not your head.

I have spent too much time in the last few months thinking through everything. Wondering about what my family would think, what K’s family would think, what my friends would think and – most important of all – what my donor and their family would think. What it comes down to is this:

I want to do something that makes my donor proud to have bestowed this gift on me. And sitting up in Liverpool, miles from the woman and the people that I love and living 3 years of an already-shortened life being unhappy just isn’t right.

So it is with a heavy heart, but high hopes that I take my leave of Liverpool and LIPA later on today. It’s been a great ride: Wind in the Willows was an amazing show to work on and I’ve made some firm friends. But it’s time for me to do what’s right for me, regardless of what anyone may think or feel about it.

Am I sad to be leaving? Yes. Am I disappointed in myself? I am a little. Am I excited about what comes next? You betcha.

After everything that’s happen this week, there has never been a more important time for me to dedicate myself to the life I want. The life that makes me happy.

Today marks the point 2 years ago when I received the ultimate gift from a wonderful person. It is, therefore, a day to celebrate.

Being currently ensconced up in Liverpool and far away from many of my friends, I’ve developed a slightly novel way of celebrating using the magic of Facebook and Twitter.

I’m asking anyone who wants to join me in celebration to find their own way to mark the occasion, whether it be a party, a trip to the pub or just raising a glass in their living room and to take a picture of themselves doing it and upload it to either the Facebook event page or onto Twitter.

If you’re on Facebook, search for “Oli’s 2nd Second Birthday. Party Where You Are Party” or find my profile and get to it from there. If you’re a Tweeter, simply use the hashtag #oli2nd.

Have a great day today and, if you get chance, raise a glass to me and my donor.

As the years of my wait for a transplant slipped by and my health got progressively worse, I was more and more confined to my flat in MK unable to venture out without massive exertions. Inevitable, I suppose, this led to periods of struggle with my mood and fight to stay positive (of which long-time readers will recall this being a large part).

Another large part of that battle to keep my head above the depressive waters that threatened to flood over me was the DVDs of Eddie Izzard’s previous UK tours, most notably Glorious and Dress To Kill.

Both of these would never fail to make me laugh and would frequently result in intense bouts of coughing which, if nothing else, made my physios happy as it cleared a lot of gunk off my chest.

Last week, when scouting around the ‘net for things to do with K when she came up for her visit this weekend, I discovered that Eddie was playing at Liverpool’s ECHO Arena. Expecting it to be fully sold out, I nonetheless logged on to the ECHO website and to my amazement and joy I bought us two tickets.

After nearly five years since first coming across him and 2 years of a fight for life, following a two-year recovery period with as many lows as there have been highs, I finally got to see the man who helped me through it live and in the flesh.

There’s really no way to describe a comedy gig comfortable in writing, so I won’t try to. All I’ll say is that if you know him, if you like him, you are duty-bound to seek out his nearest date to you and go see him.

The man’s a legend and my ribs still hurt.

Everything I’ve seen about Heath Ledger’s final film has told me two things: 1) It’s Heath Ledger’s final film (he died half-way through production, to be variously replaced throughout the film by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel and Jude Law) and 2) It’s utterly rubbish.

From watching the film myself today, I’ve discovered three things:

1) It’s almost the ultimate Terry Gilliam movie, combining the tangible, off-kilter world of a only-slightly-stylised reality with the final-given-enough-money beauty of the CGI creating the heavily surrealist world beyond the mirror that take people inside their own minds. Where his previous films have failed for me has been the difficulty in realising this clash of the real and the fantastical, but Parnassus does it almost perfectly.

2) The three actors who came in to finish the film, playing 3 versions of Ledger’s Tony who appear through the mirror did a great job. Admittedly, knowing the story behind the film made me almost predisposed to look on them favourably: all three stepped in as friends of Ledger’s to offer their services, all three fitted the film in around their other filming commitments and all three donated their fees to Ledger’s young daughter. But all three of them also hit just the right balance of the surrealist elements of a shape-shifting lead character by keeping just the right amount of Ledger’s original performance while infusing it with a spirit and attitude of their own. It never feels like 3 people pretending to be Heath Ledger, which would have been dreadful.

3) I really, really, really liked it.

So I may well be the odd one out in all of this, but frankly, who cares? I unashamedly love this movie. I love all that it stands for, I love all that it means, I love all that it’s been through and I love the end product more than any other Gilliam film I’ve seen before.

As a side note, K’s come back up to Liverpool with me today and we saw Parnassus at FACT, an amazing Liverpool cinema and gallery space which impresses me more and more every time I go. Today’s screening was in a small-ish box room with the audience all seated on 2-person sofas; a brand new experience for me, but a great one. There should be a flickhouse like this in every city.