Archives: Film

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.

This week we have been rudely invaded by the real world.  After 10 months of existing in a perfect little post-transplant bubble, the time has come to look at things that people out in the big wide beyond have to spend time looking at.

With K off to uni in 3 weeks and counting, she is, naturally, going to have to give up work.  The full-time commitment of the course, coupled with the 3-hour daily commute is going to sap every last bit of energy she has, making weekends a time for rest and recovery and not for the usual kind of student money-making that normally earns the bookworms a crust.

So it falls on me to start winning the bread for the house hold.  It’s a very strange position to be in, seeing as I haven’t been in paid employment since I left Northampton Theatres in April 2005, nearly three-and-a-half years ago.

One thing I’ve learned from friend-of-the-blog Emily is that returning straight into a ful-time job post-transplant is a bit of a no-no.  Although I now have more energy than I think I’ve ever had in my life (barring, maybe, my early years), that doesn’t automatically equate to being able to put up with the stamina required for a full-time job and the stresses and strains that go along with that.

Instead, I’m going to be looking for something smaller and more part-time, but then I hit the thorny issue of benefits.

At the moment, I’m still covered by incapacity benefits because I’ve been under doctor’s orders not to work.  The idea of incap is that in order to help you return to work, you are allowed to do a certain number of hours of paid work per week without incurring penalties on your benefits.  The trouble with incap is that once you pass the 16-hours-per-week threshold, you lose everything – there is no middle ground.

And it’s not just the incap that you lose.  Incap comes tied in with an entitlement to various other benefits including Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, which basically means my rent and council tax are paid for me as my income isn’t high enough to cover them.

So, all-in-all, the loss of benefit will cost us in the region of £800 per month.  That’s an enormous gap to try to cover between working 16 hours per week on benefits and finding the rest of the money once you cross that line.  In effect, it means that you are forced to jump rom 16 hours per-week all the way up to a full-time 30-40 hour week with no middle ground and no safety net, beyond returning to incapacity benefit.

It sounds easy enough to try out full-time work and use the Incap as a fall-back option if you can’t cope, but that’s forgetting the psychological impact of going back to “illness”.  Everyone I know post-transplant has faught an incredible battle to get themselves back on their feat and rebuild new lives in the wake of a truly life-changing blessing.  What all that effort means, however, is that none of us want to return to the perception of “illness” that dogged us for years both before and initially post-transplant.

So the search for so-called “gainful” employment begins.  Where am I going to end up, who knows?  As long as it pays the bills, I have to be happy with it, but I would much rather have an opportunity to do the things I want to do with writing, filmmaking and educating than have to sit in a call-centre 37-hours a week.  Hopefully, the 16 hours I need to start off with will enable me to carry on with my personal projects and find a way to make them pay.

Watch this space!

Today’s been an awesome day, celebrating K turning 25 – quarter of a century old and heading off to Uni to do the thing she’s most wanted to do all her life.  People seem to see me as somehow admirable, but as far as I can see it, I just survived – K is doing something altogether bravery and more worthy of admiration than anything I’ve done (with the possible exception of the time I went on that Pirate Ship ride even though I was terrified because my Godson wanted to…).

One of the (many) things I love about K is how amazingly special she makes special days for all those around her.  She works tirelessly to make sure that her friends and family have a great time on their days – be it birthdays, anniversaries or celebrations.  Because of her unending dedication to others’ enjoyment, I wanted to make sure that this time, just for once, she had an amazing day of her own to lodge in her memory bank.

I didn’t tell her anything about what we were doing all day – perfectly aware that she doesn’t like surprises (they scare her slightly) but knowing that 1) it would be good for her and 2) it would make the day that much more special (or so I hoped).

So I started with a lie in for her and an early morning for me.  As it happens, I didn’t actually sleep all night anyway, so the early morning part wasn’t too hard.  I got up and sorted out her big bag of presents, laying them all out nicely on the coffee table in front of the sofa with all of her cards.  That done, I headed down to Tesco to pick up some fresh pain au chocolat for breakfast, one of K’s faves.  Then I watched the Olympics until she got up.

As soon as she was up and about, I made tea (always a requirement) and she got stuck in to opening her small mountain of gifts.  She received some really wonderful things – very pretty, very individual and very K – and then we broke off for a bit of breakkie after she’d spoken to her sister on the phone.

After breakfast she got back to the unwrapping and got to her Wii.  She’s been lusting after the Nintendo Wii almost ever since it came out, but certainly since last year when the two of us played on her brother’s.  Now she’s got one of her very own (which she’s actually playing on right this very second) and loves it to pieces – a good choice, it appears.

Once we’d unpacked it all and set it up, in between showering and me doing the washing up, we played a few rounds of various Wii sports before heading to the flicks.  This was the only part of the day in which she had any say – 27 Dresses was showing for one showing today, which is one that she missed when it was first out and I know she was keen to see it, so I gave her the option of catching it while it was on the big-screen today.

Post-flick, we headed over to Deanshanger to stop in on our sis and niece and nephew, who’d managed to fall over hard yesterday and give everyone a fright that he may have broken his leg.  Seeing him today, it looks like the hospital were right when they said it was just badly bruised/sprained, but he certainly wasn’t himself – he’s normally running around like something that runs around really a lot, but today he was much more subdued and only wandered about the house to find one of us and plead, “More horrid.”  (That’s his way of asking for another episode of Horrid Henry from the Sky+, not a request for us to treat him badly, just in case any child protection officers happen to be reading…).

After checking in on them (and picking up the birthday card from K’s ‘rents that we’d (sorry, I) left there on Saturday, we headed up the road to stop in on K’s ‘rents, the most important part of said visit being, of course, the birthday cake.  With a fairy on it and everything.

After munching cake, drinking fizzy pink stuff and waking her dad up from his nap, K opened up her various presents that had been dropped at her ‘rents, including the one which had originated from there – a mini (and I mean mini) dictation machine that she has wanted to get for Uni, as it’s apparently a great way to revise the day’s lectures, by listening back to them and typing them up as an aide memoire.  It’s a great little thingy, which records very clearly from quite a distance and then downloads directly to a computer.  Fab.

Once we’d had a cuppa and some fizz and opened all the extra pressies, we popped round to another family friend to say hello and thank her for the present she’d left for K.  After a quick stop, we carried on out and went back into town for dinner at Brasserie Blanc (or brassiere blank as we’ve heard it called recently).  K’s wanted to go there since it opened, so it seemed like the perfect treat.

As you may guess from the name (unless you think it means White Cafe), it’s a part of the Raymond Blanc empire, recently arrived in the newer, upmarket area of MK known as The Hub.  Rubbish name, yes, lovely place, though – full of really nice eateries with a wonderful European open-plaza style to it and much more of a communal atmosphere than many places in the UK today.  Brasserie Blanc is on the outer side of the square (away from the main hustle and bustle) and it has to be said it is absolutely exquisite.

It’s expensive there, but it’s one of the few restaurants where I really don’t begrudge the prices they charge.  The food was absolutely beautiful.  It was hands down one of the best meals I have ever eaten in my life and certainly in the running for the best meal I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  I had a rack of lamb so succulent and juicy that chewing was optional.  K had a fillet steak, which was similarly top-quality and we finished it with two heavenly desserts which I couldn’t finish (although K polished hers off).

It’s not just the food in there that makes it worth it (although I’d have eaten off the floor in a flea-pit for food that good), it’s the whole experience.  The setting is lovely – clearly catering for an up-market crowd, but without the stuffiness or coldness of many places along similar lines.  It’s warm, friendly and very comfortable.  The whole evening is topped off by, I think, the best service I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  A waitress who isn’t just there to take an order and shove it at the chef, but rather to help enhance the whole experience for the diners – chatty, polite, helpful and informative.  As I signed the cheque, I made sure to check which was the best way to pay the tip to make sure it went to her and wasn’t shared out.

(As a side note, tipping is very important to me.  I object massively to the accepted wisdom of a straight 10% tip for any waitress.  If I get good service, I’ll tip well, if I get average service, I’ll tip averagely and if I get poor service, I won’t tip.  But beyond that, I don’t agree with pooling tips and splitting them.  If someone gives me exceptional service, as was the case tonight, I want to reward them for it – not to find myself giving a tip to the not-so-good waitress who happens to be sharing the shift with my one.  If they’re good enough, they’ll earn their own tips, if not, they’ll learn they need to work harder.  The point is, if you want to make sure you’re tipping the right person, you need to check.  For instance, had I placed the gratuity on the card I was paying with, by typing it into the machine, then it would have been split.  Leave it in cash on the table, however, and it all goes to the waitress.  This is usually the case, but it’s always worth checking – and making sure you ask the right questions.  Asking where the gratuity goes if it’s put on the card, the waitress is obliged to explain the sharing policy.  She is forbidden, however, to inform you of the cash policy.  Only if you specifically ask can you find out where the tips go.)

Coming away well satisfied after a fine meal, we headed back home where we were met again by friends to help us Christen the Wii.  Two hours of constant game-play between the four of us later and we turfed the guys out to take ourselves off to bed and our much-needed beauty sleep for the return to the grind tomorrow.

I’m generally not one to get excited about birthdays – mine or anyone elses – but for the first time with K’s birthday today, I was genuinely excited about it and I’ve had an absolutely brilliant time.  I’m still buzzing from it and from the look of pure happiness on her face that hasn’t moved for the entirety of the day.  It just goes to prove, it truly is better to give than to receive.

This week, so far, I’ve seen 3 movies at the cinema, two of which provided the perfect lesson in contrast between special effects handled well and believably and, well, not.

First off, though, I feel obliged to encourage all of you to go check out Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging – or at least all those of you who can remember what it’s like to be a teenager.  I have to admit I didn’t have high hopes going into this one, but K wanted to see it and so we decided to take our niece along to check it out (having a nearly-teen niece is a great excuse for watching flicks you feel like you shouldn’t be seen at).  To my complete surprise, I absolutely loved it.

It’s incredibly honest and true, with just the right amount of whimsy without making itself over-the-top of unbelievable.  If you remember what life was like when you were struggling for the guts to ask out that girl you fancied, or struggling to make that gorgeous guy realise you existed, this is totally a movie for you.  But it goes beyond simple teen-dom to encompass the battles that parent’s fight, too.  Being stuck in a weird age-group that’s no longer teenager, but not yet a parent, I found myself more than able to sympathise with both sides of the arguments.

As opposed to the majority of teen movies where controlling, embarrassing parents are the clear-cut bad guys of Teen freedom, this paints a much more subtle picture, showing the adults as they really are – just people who used to be kids trying their hardest to do what they think is right and make sure that they bring their children up properly.  Yes, their embarrassing and occasionally misguided and hurtful, but you can see that it’s all with the best of parental intentions and never just to spite the kids.

It must be said that the film is helped massively by a fantastic cast.  Some of the girls can be a little drama-school-y, very well spoken and enunciating carefully all the time, but nonetheless convincing in the majority of what they do.  Alan Davies proves that he’s more than just a comedian who did Jonathan Creek and the rest of the adult cast round out the film nicely.

The two effects-heavy films of the week provided a stark contrast not just to Angus, Thongs, but also to each other.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a fantastic, fantastical sequel to the original Hellboy.  Directed again by Guillermo Del Toro, this time feels very different as, off the back of the inimitable and remarkable Spanish-language Pan’s Labyrinth, he’s been given a much more free-role to create the monsters and the world he wants to create.

The effects work in this film is stunning.  The majority of the creatures are created with a combination of practical (ie – man in suit or puppet) effects and the more common and oft-overused (see below) CGI effects.  What’s remarkable, especially to someone like me, for whom CGI and effects in general are often such a bug-bear they ruin the movie (see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), is that it is almost impossible to see the joins.

So photo-real are the CGI effects that, similarly to The Dark Knight, it is hardly possible to spot the when they are using practical on-set effects and when they’ve resorted to CGI.

On the other hand, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is very much the other end of the scale: stacked full of CGI which looks, funnily enough, just like CGI.  How the producers haven’t learned their lesson from the execrable effects at the end of The Mummy Returns is beyond me.  The first Mummy movie made a real effort towards photo-realism and although it looks slightly dated now, was something of a bench-mark and a wonder at it’s time.

This time round we have to contend with an almost 100% CGI Jet Li doing all kinds of craziness.  I understand that most of what they did they couldn’t do practically in terms of shape-shifting and such, but there are much simpler things they could have done to help sustain the audiences suspension of disbelief at least a little longer than the first shot of a sequence.

Practical make-up effects are undoubtedly making a come back as producers and studios realise that audiences are growing tired of the artificiality of CGI that is being churned out at speed in a lot of movies, but there are still a large amount of films using poor-quality CGI thanks to rushed post-production periods enforced upon them to hit their release dates, which are often set before the film even starts shooting.

What frustrates me about the current crop of CGI-heavy, story-poor movies is that the effects houses that are working on them are very, very good at what they do.  But the truth is that they can’t work miracles.  They are artists and you have to give them sufficient time to finesse their artwork before you put it on display.  Like all art, if it’s rushed, it shows.  While that may be fine for a Jackson Pollack, it doesn’t work when you’re dealing with supposedly photo-realistic bad guys who are supposed to be able to scare you by making you believe they exist.

And don’t even get me started on the Yetis…

I may just have spent my day today watching the best film of the year, swiftly followed by the very, very worst film of the year.

The Dark Knight is so unbelievably brilliant and above my sky-scraper-high expectations that after watching it yesterday morning, I headed straight back in for the first showing today and it only managed to get even better over night.

Mama Mia on the other hand is so incomparably bad as to warrant a new classification below second-rate, third-rate and any other -rate you can think of.  To call it sub-par is an insult to average films around the world.

It’s not just the tacky scenery which looks like it may have been lifted straight from the stage show, complete with appallingly bad “summer” lighting, interrupted by the occasional use of a Greek island to try to sell the artifice.  It’s not even the fact that the majority of the cast can’t actually carry a tune, or that the story is so ham-fisted and spends most of its time bending double to try to line itself up with a vague reference to ABBA lyrics which can kick off a song.  Beyond all of that it’s just plain bad.  Bad shooting, bad lighting, bad singing, bad choreography, bad film.

It’s hugely disappointing to see actors of the calibre who have signed to this film being forced through the most tortuous of musical hammery.  It may work wonderfully on stage, but if the recent film musical boom has taught us anything about the way to make them work in the cinema, it’s that theatricality doesn’t work.  You can make it slightly surreal and artificial (see Chicago) if that’s the way you want to go, but you can marry realism in one part of the scene to over-the-top hammery while singing.  Emoting every lyric with a pained expressions on your face and your hand clenched into a fist as if you’re grabbing an imaginary floating cow’s udder just doesn’t do it for the filmic adaptations.  And it’s 100% the director’s fault for letting those moments creep in.  If you don’t have the strength to tell Meryl Streep she looks like a muppet you shouldn’t have cast her in your movie.

The Dark Knight (aka Batman 2, or 6 depending on your view) on the other hand is a classic example of masterpiece filmmaking.  It’s also the first time in as long as I can remember (with the *possible* exception of Iron Man) that a film has actually repaid my rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth excitement and optimism.  Ever since the War of the World’s debacle of 2005 I have struggled – and mostly failed – to keep my excitement for the summer event movies in check.

I’ve been fairly successful from time to time, but at the end of the day I’m a movie geek and even if I don’t know the source material of the comic adaptations inside out, I still can’t help but join the gathering momentum of the summer storm of blockbusters.

Christopher Nolan has been one of my favourite directors since I first saw Memento and looked up his debut, Following, a super-low budget thriller which plays with timelines in much the same way as Memento, the film that got him noticed in Hollywood.

Too often as a film fan you spot an up-and-coming director you want to keep your eye on and they head off either to disappear into the ether and never re-emerge or end up churning out studio tosh that they take for the paycheque.

Nolan, though, is an exception.  After proving his metal with Hollywood’s finest in Insomnia he took on the resurrection of one of the cinema’s most succesful but most derided franchises and turned it around in a way no one expected.  Not only was Batman Begins a great Batman film, it was a great comic book film, but not only that, it was just straight up a great film.  Not many adaptations achieve that.

The Dark Knight, Nolan’s first sequel, is a triumph in every sense.  It is bigger, bolder, darker, scarier, mmore emotional and more horrific than the first.  And it’s better.  Much better.  I didn’t think it would be possible for Nolan to top the enjoyment I felt absorbing Begins three years ago, but he has.  From start to finish, despite coming in at 2-and-a-half hours, the film is not only gripping but rawly emotional and darkly funny in places.

Heath Ledger has been gaining plaudits right, left and centre for his out-of-the-box, out-of-this-world
performance as the Joker and rightly so.  This is what people call a “career defining” performance, sadly not for the reasons it should be.  But for an actor of Ledger’s stature to disappear so completely into a role of this kind is uncanny.

The same could be said for many of the supporting cast, who are seemingly queuing up to work with one of Hollywood’s hottest directors of the moment.  Most of the original cast return, along with a handful of new faces played by familiar faces, all of them on the top of their game throughout.

I cannot stress enough how good this movie is or that you should go and catch it at your earliest opportunity.  It is, quite simply, awesome.

And  in the words of the world’s deadliest Panda, “There is no charge for awesomeness.”

Tonight I popped down to Euston station in London to meet with the director of the film I’m producing on Sunday.

I was pleasantly surprised that he was much more prepared than I expected him to be. There were a lot of questions about the shoot I hadn’t asked him and was expecting pretty negative answers to, but he answered all of them and showed himself to be very ready for the mini-battle ahead over the weekend. He even offered me a place to sleep for the two nights of the shoot, which was great.

I have to say I’m very excited to be involved in a film project again. It’s been a long time since I last was and although I’m not in my ideal position of directing, I’m loving producing at the moment. It’s all very logistical and analytical, which is really good fun and suits my skillset really well. It’s also a lot more creative than people think, since if I come up with a problem that I think we need to get around, it’s my job to think up alternatives and present them to the director for discussions, rather than simply highlight the issue and get him to do the donkey work.

I’m a little sad I didn’t get involved in this project earlier, but I clearly missed his first call for a producer. It’s no the end of the world, though, and coming on board now means I’ve got the fun part of the shoot to deal with and be there for then I get to over-see post-production, where I hope to learn a lot more about certain aspects of it, before heading off to trail the film round the international festivals, if we can admission. Should be great.

Under pressure from outside sources (no names, Lisa), I have forced myself to my desk to write an update.  I had – honestly – been intending an update for a while, including some back-dated film reviews (it’s been a busy week on the film front) but just haven’t seemed to find the time to do it.

My energy is still coming in fits and starts.  After a busy and productive week last week, this week has been a little more relaxed and less work-focused.  The new issue of CF Talk is taking shape, but is now at a stage where I’m waiting for our writers to draft their articles and send them in, leaving me without a great deal to do other than sit and wait.

Live Life Then Give Life is going from strength to strength since our charity registration came through and there are a number of projects being mooted between us as I speak, sadly none of which I’m at liberty to disclose just now.  If you live in the Manchester area, though, what this space over the next couple of weeks because we may have something exciting to announce.

I have also got myself back on the writing wagon, having taken my Headliners screenplay up to 40 pages and still going, which had really excited me as I whenever a hospital is around and about I seem to lose a great chunk of my creativity and imagination.

In fairness, I suppose it’s not the hospital so much as the condition I’m in.  After all, if a hospital stay is called for it means I’m not doing well and if I’m not feeling well then, as has always been the case, my creativity and artistic expression is the first thing to go.

Next week I’m due to give a speech at the Ipswich Press Ball about CF, which I’m really looking forward to – black tie events always excite me, mostly because the old performer in me loves getting dressed up and being the centre of attention.  Unusually for me, I have actually written my speech this time.  It’s not long, only a couple of minutes, which I would normally busk my way through relying on my natural charm, wisdom and eloquence, but clearly my faith in myself has deserted me.

Actually, quite apart from this being a posher and more official deal to the kind of speech I’ve made in the past, I also had some strong ideas for the speech that I didn’t want to lose in the weeks building up to the speech.  In the process of getting my ideas down on paper I got carried away and ended up writing the whole thing.  After the ball, I’ll pop the text up on here for you all to peruse and tell me where I went wrong.

Other than that, not much has been happening, really.  Although looking back over what I’ve just written I realise I started by saying I’ve not been doing much but have now clearly proved I’ve actually been quite busy.

Next week is hopefully dedicated to CF Talk and preparing articles for submission to the designers, with a short break away in Ipswich at my Godfather’s place for a couple of days of proper chillage before the Ball.

Promise I’ll have more updates on the boring things soon, and won’t leave it so long.  Mind you, how often have I said that…?

Last night I sat at my computer, whiling away the time until K had finished in the bathroom before heading to bed and I started reading back through my old blogs. I had to moderate a spam message which had attached itself to a posting in mid-December, which lead me right back into the heart of the post-transplant ups-and-downs and I felt a sudden urge to go back to the start and read all through the Transplant from the day of the call.

I’ve read bits and pieces of K’s postings from while I was on the ward and, of course, all of the messages that were left for me while I was going through it. It’s still weird, though, reading back through such thorough descriptions of all the various events which went on, particularly in the first couple of weeks, which are still pretty much a blur to me, although reading the blogs I realise I actually haven’t forgotten as much as I thought I had.

That first month seems a world away from where I sit here, but Sunday marked the 5 month point since I had my op – it’s amazing how quickly the world moves.

Today has been K’s day – she finally finished her college course, which I rather unhelpfully got in the way of before Christmas – handing in her dissertation and doing a presentation to her main tutor. He has told her that she’s already passed with the highest grade possible (Level 3) without even having handed her dissertation in and that her presentation was the best and most professional he’s ever received for a student.

Now, we all know that K is wonderful, amazing, intelligent and a whole load of other incredibly positive adjectives as well, but it often passes her by completely. Having someone who actually matters (as opposed to… you know… me) tell it to her, and to have a piece of paper telling her it’s true, seems to have made the world of difference as for at least a few hours today, she actually believed it herself.

After picking her up from her presentation, all bouncing, bubbly and beautiful, we headed to the flicks to catch Flashbacks of a Fool, the new Daniel Craig film. No one can say that since being passed the mantel of Bond that Craig’s left himself open to type-casting. He’s working incredibly hard to make sure that all the time he’s contracted as Bond, he’s not letting his career slide, turning in some great performances in smaller, more independent fair like this. And he is excellent in it, let me assure you. There’s a scene towards the end of the film where he confronts/approaches/meets Claire Forlani’s character (something of a blast from his past) in a graveyard and his eyes are simply mesmerizing.

The film itself is a cleverly-structured deconstruction of the life of a Hollywood mega-star for whom bad news forces him to remember a time he’s spent a lifetime trying to escape from. What could be scene as a somewhat hokey narrative device become an interesting and plausible plot device by being plastered across the film’s title. Knowing you’re going to be dealing with flashbacks restrains you from dismissing them as is so common in modern movie-making. What’s more, they’re actually accomplished in a much more deft and sensible manner than many films who aren’t so up-front about their usage.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with a couple of exceptions who don’t really need mentioning as the don’t really spoil the film. The flashback sequence is perhaps a little on the slow side, perhaps a touch too long, but it’s impact is undeniable and the Daniel Craig bookends so riveting and absorbing you forgive the sluggishness of the middle portion.

It’s undoubtedly one to check out, although it’s not the most happy, uplifting film in the world. Precise and carefully, considerately put together, but heart-warming it is not. Check it out, if you don’t mind taking a tissue or two.

Around September/October last year we – as a family – decided that we’d grace my Godfather and his family in Ipswich with our presence at Christmas. They did invite us, it must be pointed out, we didn’t just decide we were going to descend on them and then inform them of their newly arranged festive plans. We were all looking forward to it – Mum because it meant she didn’t have to cook, me because getting away anywhere was a bit of a treat at the time, epic as it was to shift all my kit from place to place, K was positively brimming at the prospect of swimming on Christmas day.

We all know how that turned out, of course (or if you’re that much in the dark, check out the blog entry for Tuesday 20 November to get abreast of my detour), much to everyone’s consternation, not least Mum’s as it meant she not only had to cook, but subsequently take me to hospital while hurling my insides up on Boxing Day, lucky lady.

I jest, of course, being as we were all delighted to have the world’s greatest Christmas present thanks to the generosity of one family and their amazing loved one who took the time to sign the ODR. That being said, my lovely “Auntie” Norma has not stopped chiding me since my op for abandoning them over Christmas.

As wonderful a Godson as I am and as much as they berated me, it’s taken me until the end of March to find the time to take out and go to see them all. Mostly, that’s down to the hospital visits being way too regular to get over to Ipswich and back across to Harefield and enjoy anything of a stay there. In the end, once the docs decided they were sick of the sight of me and told me to go away, I managed to phone Norma and let her know we would be imposing ourselves for the week this week.

Best laid plans and all that, the week turned into 3 days after I planned a CBT on the Monday, which was (as you may have read) snowed off and switched to Friday, meaning we’d need to return from the East on Thursday night for me to make the 8.30am start.

Still, 3 days is better than nothing at all and it was a wonderful opportunity not only to see them all for the first time post-op, but also to get some good gym work done in their fantastically appointed gym and swimming pool, which has recently been complimented with a gob-smacking spa complex to boot.

So after a mad morning of rushing around trying to get a prescription done last-minute (because I’m a womble and I forgot), we set off and headed down/across/up/whichever way Ipswich is and found our way there after only going wrong once (quite an achievement considering the tiny, twisty, back-country lane they live down) – and that was on the main road, too.

After chilling out a little, it wasn’t long before my Godfather, ex-Army man that he is, had me bashing the treadmill to show him what my new lungs could do. They held up admirably to the strain, I have to say, Graeme working me harder than I’ve ever worked on these lungs and although I felt like I was just about to be flung full-force backwards across the gym by a treadmill turning way too fast for my ever-weakening legs, there was actually an amazing sense of accomplishment afterwards.

It wouldn’t have been a visit to G&N’s without a quick dip and K had me in the pool no sooner had we finished in the gym, K proudly sporting her new swimming leggings and imploring me to teach her how to swim, completely over-looking the fact that the last time I’d been in a pool was quite possible over half a decade ago and the last time I’d had anything approaching a lesson I’d still been shy of single digits.

We swam all the same, and took advantage of the gorgeously relaxing rainfall shower in the spa before drying off and heading in for dinner.

Best part of the day, though: hands down the after-dinner retirement to the top floor cinema room, with drop down screen and Blu-Ray projector with U-shaped super-comfy sofa on which we settled with tea, cake and biscuits to watch Atonement, an amazing flick which is one of the few adaptations I’ve seen in recent time to do their literary counterpart justice. James McAvoy is remarkable and Keira Knightley very good, but it’s director Joe Wright’s grasp of the subtlety of emotion and deft handling of the varied viewpoints and tricky time-lapses which give he film its weight. Some of the choices on dialogue delivery weren’t my cup of tea, but I could acknowledge them as a strong stylistic choice and as such not something to do the man down for, nor was it anything which would spoil the film as a whole.

Suitably buoyed up by the happy-go-lucky flick* we all stumbled off the sofa in the direction of our beds, with another day of activity – not least another gym session – ahead of us.

*not an accurate reflection of the film. It’s more down-beat that something incredibly down-beat with strong undertones of “somber” and a slight edge of “depressing”. But still very good. And surprisingly warm.

Being exhaustedly tired didn’t seem to do much – if anything – for my ability to sleep as I once again lay awake until gone 3am.  Annoyingly, it was the kind of lack of sleep where you are so nicely chilled and relaxed that getting up is pretty out of the question, but somehow you can’t complete the transition from awake to asleep.  At least it was 3am tonight, not 7am like last night.

As promised, apart from waking for Tac at 10, I did manage to sleep myself through till midday, which was a lovely battery-recharger.

Many moons ago, soon after Emily got home from her transplant last year, she offered to pass on to me her smaller, more portable oxygen concentrator, which gave me the freedom to visit other people’s houses without worrying about when my O2 was going to run out – all I had to do was plug Claire in and I’d be sitting pretty for as long as I liked.  Since I’m now blessedly no longer in need of it, Em and I put our heads together and came up with a friend of ours who would benefit from Claire’s friendship and emailed her to see if she wanted her.

Since the initial email about 2 months has passed and I have forgotten no less than 3 times when I’ve seen Em to pass Claire on to her as Sam only lives about 15 minutes from her.  After my final act of stupidity last week when I was in London seeing Em and only about 15 minutes from Sam’s house myself, I decided that I couldn’t beat about the bush any longer or try to wait for or engineer meetings to hand stuff over and just bite the bullet and drive to South London (Sutton) and drop Claire off.

As it happens, there was almost no traffic at all on the roads yesterday, everyone travelling for Easter clearly having done so the day before or that morning.  So while everyone else in the country was playing happy or not-so-happy families, we trundled our way down the M1 and round the M25 through some of the craziest, mosy bizarre but brilliant weather I’ve ever seen.

We would go from bright sunshine to torrential rain through sleet, snow and hail all within the space of a few miles.  There was one amazing moment on the M25 when we were driving along in brilliant sun and ahead of us we could see what looked, totally honestly, like a piece of cloud had broken off and fallen down onto the road.  There was just a sheet of grey mist falling sideways across the carriageway and dumping itself onto the road in front of us.

Surprisingly, there were no crashes and no major hold-ups and the journey took precisely as long as the AA website told me it would, which I had thought pretty generous considering quite how far round the London-loop we were going.

On the way round, K spotted a signpost for Southampton, where my Dad’s family are from and near where his dad and sister still reside.  Once K had pointed it out and mentioned (in jest) that we could go, I got to thinking that I’d not seen any of my Aunt’s family since my op, apart from my eldest cousin who stopped in to the hospital the week after her mum had.  And from South London, it’s really not that far to their house.

So, once we’d dropped Claire safely at Sam’s to start a new life of independence-making (hopefully), we set off down towards the South coast to drop in and surprise my Aunt and her clan.

We eventually arrived (after a slightly longer journey than we anticipated…) around 6ish and everyone was duly surprised, luckily in a pleasant “great to see you” kind of way, not the usual “oh no, not them again” kind of way.

We stopped and stayed for a cuppa (or two) and my Uncle introduced me proudly to Jeeves, his pride-and-joy in the garage.  It’s an old… car that’s really very pretty and cool and as my cousin pointed out, means they can now play gangsters up and down their road properly, as they have the wheels to hang off with their Tommy guns and three-piece-suits with Trilbys.  Being that they live right out in the contryside not far from Winchester, there’s not a whole lot of people to gangster at, but I suppose they could always go rough up some sheep.

After persuading them that we really didn’t intend to impose ourselves on them for dinner and that they didn’t have to make it stretch (which they probably couldn’t have anyway, what with my appetite and three near six-foot teenager boys in the house), we headed off just before 8pm and rolled back up the A34 through Newbury and Oxford to MK, rocking up at home just before 9.30pm.

Having not been to the flicks for over a week, I couldn’t pass up the offer of catching The Cottage with Steve at 9.50, so I pretty much headed straight back out again, leaving K behind cooking fairy cakes as Easter presents for our little nieces and nephews tomorrow.

The Cottage is an absolutely hilarious horror-comedy with the always fantastic Andy Serkis (who made his name by not actually appearing on screen at all as the motion-capture performer for both Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Kong in King Kong – although he also played Lumpy the Cook in the latter) and Reece Shearsmith of League of Gentlemen Fame (not a show I’m a fan of, but he’s great in this).  Jennifer Ellison plays the kidnapee in what starts out as a fairly straight-forward ransom-thriller with deft comic touches, the quickly changes pace mid-way through and turns into the most hilarious stalk-and-slash horror movie I’ve seen in a long time.

As a Brit-flick, this was always destined to be compared to Shaun of the Dead, another comedy-horror which took the world by storm back in 2004, and it’s to its enormous credit that it actually stands up to the comparison.  It’s a very different film, not just in genre of horror, but in the way that while it manages to include pretty much all of the stalk-and-slash horror staples, it never directly references any specific film, whereas Shaun of the Dead was full of nods, quips and homages to the very best in Zombie horror.

There are some brilliantly nasty death scenes in The Cottage, but never have I laughed so hard at so many people’s unfortunate ends.  Makes you feel terrible at the time, but the sheer inventiveness with which they knock off one of the main characters is near-legendary.

It doesn’t pull its punches and it’s a pretty full-on gore fest at times, but if you like horror movies, especially the good, old-fashioned slasher pics with an iconic bad-guy, you’ll get a kick out of this.

I got home from it around midnight in time to catch the end of Devil Wears Prada, which K had settled into on the sofa – a slightly difference flick to my night’s other watching.  By the end, my eyes were closing and I dragged myself off to bed, where I get through a few pages of my book before conking out.

Without doubt this has been one of my best days post-transplant.  When I woke up, it felt like a real chore to be getting into the car and schlepping all the way down to Town and back, but when I took a second to realise how cool it was that I could actually even consider jumping in the car and heading South, it cheered me up.  Coupled with being able to exploit a random whim and scoot off to see a family with whom I share so many of my happiest memories and still having energy enough to go and catch a great film afterwards, I can’t imagine a better way of showing the fantastic difference a transplant makes to anyone’s life.