Archives: Firsts

I wake up at some point in the morning, fairly late if I remember rightly, seeing as I’ll be hardly getting any sleep over the next few days, and I lounge around for what’s left of the morning before a friend pops over from to fill me in on her current term at uni. It sounds spectacularly unimpressive and, since she’s doing a film course and is both talented and passionate, I do my best to convince her without saying it explicitly that she should jack it in and come work with me. (OK, maybe saying it straight-out…).

In my defence (if it is one), I would love to work with her and I really don’t see any value in degrees in Film anyway, but she knows that already so it’s hardly a clincher. I think she’ll stick it out, which is probably the grown-up, sensible thing to do, so I’m not too disappointed.

As she leaves, I head out with her and jump in my car across Keynes to meet Dad in a pub half-way between him and me for a spot of lunch and friendly (free) legal advice. In fact, considering he paid for lunch, I think it must be the first time a lawyer has technically paid to be able to dispense advice. Families, eh? They turn everything on it’s head.

Once we’re done, I head back home and chill with K for a while, then jump on my email to catch up with things and square away the few bits and pieces of LLTGL stuff I need to deal with, since I won’t be back at my desk before the meeting on Saturday.

That dealt with, I sort out some dinner for us both and we eat and chill in front of the TV to some Sky+’d something or other and then hit the sack relatively early, although we end up reading and talking until nearly midnight. Given the few days I’ve got coming up, I should have slept earlier, but it’s fun when you get chatty in bed, so I tend to be terribly ill-disciplined about it.

Although we sleep in this morning, it’s still a wake-up dictated my alarm-clock, which is getting slightly tiresome for a supposed holiday period.

The alarm gets us (well, me) up at 10am and I make K a cup of tea and take my Fosemax tabs – horrible things I may have written about before, which are supposed to deliver calcium-enriching…things… to the body to help prevent loss of bone density and Osteoperosis (and I’ll thank the medics reading not to point out that they’re essentially the same thing) but that require the tablets to be take on an empty stomach with a full glass of water and not to be followed by any other food or drink bar water for the next hour or more. They’re pretty nasty things and my stomach isn’t a huge fan of having a load of water dumped in it unaccompanied first thing in the morning, so I always end up feeling a little squiffy until I can eat something. Mind you, it’s better than not being able to run or do fun stuff for fear of snapping bones all over the shop.

We’re up and out of the house just after 11 to get to my appointment in Newport for 11.20, where I have a hasty blood test to keep an eye on my CMV levels to prevent any recurrance, then we head off into town to hit the sales.

I hate sales shopping with a passion. When I shop I like to look around, take my time and not feel rushed, not to grab whatever I can as I’m bustled passed the racks of goods by the ebbing tide of the sales-masses. Still, K wants to hit them up to spend our Christmas vouchers, so I tag along.

We start by finding parking, which is a mini-epic of it’s own, but eventually end up getting somewhere near M&S, a minor miracle. We decide to start at the furthest place and work back towards the car, so we hit the O2 store to return my busted Blackberry, but it’s rammed and quite clear that customer service is going to be a while, so I give up on it straight away – I’ve been using my old phone for over a month now, so a couple more weeks to fix the new/old one isn’t a big headache.

We make our way round to the Apple store, my mini-Mecca, but without time or the cash to stop and fully appreciate their wares (re: to buy their wares), we hit them up for an iTunes voucher, which they don’t sell in the range we want.

0 for 0 from 2 shops, we hit the soon-to-be-defunct Zavvi to see if we can gather ourselves some bargains in the closing-down sales. It’s like a zoo where they’ve let the monkeys feed the elephants in there and we fight our way around the DVD racks hunting out interesting pieces and debating how much we can afford to splurge.

We come away with a stack of DVDs and a couple of CDs and break out of the madness before it consumes us. I shoot across the Place to Waterstones to see if they’ve got a book I’m after which they do, and reduced by half as well, but when I get to the counter, they tell me it’s not reduced at all so, with the flashing totaliser of the Zavvi spend in my brain and the knowledge of an impending Borders trip, I pass it up and move on.

As K heads for M&S for underwear shopping and voucher-spending, I make a dash to the bank to pay in a cheque, then catch up with her in the Minotaur’s maze that is the Lingerie section of the ‘Sparks. Slightly bored/self-conscious of being surround by women sizing up and purchasing their unmentionables, I opt to head to homewares to see what we can pick up with our Christmas vouchers.

By the time K’s finished up I’ve noted a few options and we settle on a 3-tiered hob-steamer and a blender. Once we’ve paid and got out to the car, it strikes us how upsettingly grown-up we are buying things that are actualy useful with gift vouchers and being genuinely happy and excited about what we’ve got. We resolve to correct it by buying something frivolous at Borders.

We hit up the Big B and grab some cards for impending birthdays and babies, then K hits the sales racks while I go off hunting for the book I missed out on in Waterstones. I come up with nothing, but very nearly bag a whole load more DVDs before thinking better of it and heading back up to the till where I find K with an epic bag full of stuff she’s just grabbed, so I jump in the queue to get my solitary DVD, impressed at my restraint, and manage to pick up the right-sized iTunes voucher at the till point as well.

We shoot over to Deanshanger to collect the couple of bits we left there last week, including K’s complete Calvin and Hobbes set Santa brought her, and Mama D, like the classic Ma that she is, provides us with nourishment in the form of bacon sarnies after which, like the ungrateful offspring we are, we jump straight back in the car and head off again (we did say thank you, though).

We make K’s day by stopping in at TK Max on the way home and she picks me up a cafetierre – a present she had intended to get me for Christmas but then a case of crossed-wires with other family members meant I ended up not getting one. We also grab b’day presents for friends and then head to Tesco over the road to stock up on all the New Year’s Eve party stuff we’ll need for our Wii Party – crisps, dips and softies for those who aren’t bringing a bottle.

We head home, unpack all the bags, then hurriedly change into our going-out gear and head down the road to a friend’s 30th. Being pregnant and newly-installed in their freshly extended house, it’s an open-house affair and we arrive in time to see her family off from their day in the den, but have enough time to catch up with them first, which is cool.

We can’t stay long as we’re then off to a big Chrimbo meal with our friends organised, bizarrely, by the only one of us who no longer lives in MK. It’s great to see the whole gang again though, minus the odd couple of peeps, and we have a good giggle over some tasty Mexican food, even if they don’t know how to make a Caesar salad.

Our friend plus baby is there and K goes into broody mode, taking the baby away so that Mummy can eat her dinner, but loving every minute of it. As everyone is taking the mick and pulling my leg about the impedning pressure for sproglets, I’m forced to admit that I’m actually on the same page as K right now and am loving the number of baby cuddles we’re getting.

I take my turn and we head off to investigate the flashing lights on the Christmas tree (we don’t like standing still), then find an interesting plant that has leaves that are rough and not like normal flower or plant leaves at all, which keeps us interested for a good few minutes while Daddy finishes up his dinner and gets the car seat ready.

With baby out of the picture, we’re forced to interact with our peers once more and continue to have a good giggle. The meal done, almost everyone else is headed across the way to the pub for a drink, but with the knowledge of an early start tomorrow and a long day’s driving, we call it a night and head home.

We get back in and empty out some more of the bags while we grab a cuppa and watch a bit of telly before quitting for the night and hitting the hay, where I desperately try to get into my slow-starting book which I’m praying will improve. After a couple of chapters with no joy, I call it quits for the night and put my head down.

I wake up later than I have for a while at around 10am and realise I need to take my tac, so head downstairs, where I grab a bite and my tabs before running a cup of tea up to the still-snoozing K.

I shower and dress and start packing up as K comes to life, then we head down and wave off Mum and Dad who are heading off as fast as they can, since they’re back to a party this evening.

Before we head off, I slip my friend’s soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated short film, Gone Fishing into the family Blu-Ray player and head upstairs to watch it projected on the big screen in the cinema room. Although I got a real kick out of it on the small screen the 3 other times I’ve seen it, watching the 35mm print-made DVD with full digital sound ramps it up to another level.

I’ve honestly never seen a short film so accomplished in its technical efficiency, story-telling or sheer emotional impact. If you’re at all interested in film, I urge you to go here and pick yourself up a copy. You’ll probably know how much an Oscar campaign can cost to run, even for a short, and every penny made from these DVD sales goes towards the Oscar run which concludes in February at the ceremony itself. Please, please support this amazing, home-grown filmmaker with a true passion, talent and cutting edge in his field. He’s been a great support to me over the last 18 months and I’d love to repay him by giving him a bigger and better war-chest for the final push of his campaign.

The trailer, if you want to know a bit more about the flick, is here, for those of you who are interested. And for those of you who don’t understand a trailer for a short film, let me assure you this is nothing like the whole story – you really have to see the whole thing.

Once we’ve peeped Fishing out, we grab our bags, load the car and head off, making a quick detour through Ipswich to visit my Nana’s grave. I barely knew my Nana, my Mum’s mum, as she died when I was 3, but from the stories I’ve heard tell she was a remarkable woman. In fact, when I was a baby and in obvious (but then-inexplicable) pain, she was the only person who could quieten me down. I like to think that had she stayed around she’d have been proud of me and what I’ve done – and started to do – with my life and I hope that she smiles down on me from her lofty perch.

Once we’d say a hello and Happy Christmas to Nana, we jump back in the car and head back to MK and home to see it in daylight for the first time in nearly a week.

We head to Tesco to pick up a few essentials, then hit the flat and unload the car. We were planning on heading out to catch Australia tonight, but based on the fact that we’re both shattered and the film runs close to 3 hours, we change our call and opt for a night in instead. We throw on Jersey Girl and kick back on the sofa. As soon as the flick’s done, we’re straight off to bed and we both pass out pretty quickly.

Boxing Day starts slowly with an 8.30 alarm call upon which I find K still sound asleep despite claiming to be getting up at 8am to shower and wash her hair. I nudge her awake and we realise her alarm failed to go off, largely due to a failure of being set.

Devoid of any major urgency for the day, she ambles out of bed and into the shower while I sit in bed and read awhile until she’s done, when I get myself up, washed and dressed and we head down stairs. I grab coffee, K tea, and Mama D cooks us up some French toast and bacon for breakfast to sustain us on the drive to Ipswich to catch up with my folks.

We load the car up with bags of gifts from yesterday and head off, stopping in at the flat on the way past to drop some bits off and pick up the various bits we forgot, like my swimmers, and some extras we need having arranged to stay another night after tonight, rather than shoot back tomorrow night.

We eventually leave MK around 11.30 and arrive in Ipswich after an amazingly quick and unproblematic run between 12.30 and 1. Once there, I unload the car and say my hellos to the fam and to my Godfather and his fam, plus the other guests at the Boxing Day lunch, a work colleague of G and his family. I’m slightly embarrassed by the familiar way his daughters greet me as I have no recollection of meeting them before, but they seem to know me instantly. I’m sure they noticed, but we still ended up all getting on really well.

After a chill and a chat, we hit the dinner table for a cold-meat and salad lunch which we crack through. The wine on the table in five separate decanters is from a single, epically-sized 5-litre bottle of red on the side. I forget to look at what it is, but hate to think where it came from and what it cost.

After lunch we head up to the cinema room to play with the newly-installed Wii Fit on the giant screen – it’s an amazing experience which could only be bettered were I to have any kind of balance whatsoever.

A little later in the afternoon, once the dark has drawn in, we all change into our swimmers and hit the pool. The outdoor pool. Swimming outside in England is strange enough at the best of times, but on Boxing Day in the middle of winter it’s straight-up surreal.

We mess around and throw balls to-and-fro across the pool into the inky, steamy blackness where we hope to find a person to collect and return the ball and then start playing “toss the ball at the girls in the jacuzzi” which is fun for a while until I managed to nearly knock Mum out with a badly-aimed and over-powerful throw. The games cease.

I swim properly for a little bit, but am not feeling my fittest, filled as I am with nearly a week’s worth of gourmet over-indulgence, so settle in for a quick jacuzzi before calling it a night and showering, dressing and grabbing a beer.

Post-swim we all sit around nattering, drinking a little more and enjoying the chlorinated glow of the night’s festivities. The others leave sometime after midnight and we all hastily call it a night to get some rest before tomorrow.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to spend another 500 words harping on about how brilliant the world is and everything that’s in it and how great my life is and how I love everything I can do that I couldn’t do before (I’ll probably get back to that tomorrow…).

No, this post is about the movie of the same name, the 1947 Frank Capra classic with James Stewart and that lady that K tells me went on to be in Oklahoma!

Our local Cineworld, despite having been kitted out with state-of-the-art digital technology as part of a Government scheme which was supposed to see more and more independent films hit the high-street, has a pretty poor record on showing anything that’s not a blockbuster.  So it was not only very refreshing, but also amazingly fulfilling to be able to go and see – for my first every viewing of the film – It’s A Wonderful Life on the big screen.

The flick is one that K likes to watch every Christmas without fail – it’s a perennial favourite of hers.  Last year she introduced it to my family, but over-dosing on immuno-suppressants as I was this time last year, I was upstairs trying to sleep and not throw up at the time.

So when we both heard that Cineworld was screening it, we knew we had to go.

The delightful thing about old films is how they take their time in telling their story.  They’re happy to wander and meander and see where they get to before the main bits kick in and they’re happy to settle for periods on minor details which nowadays would be incredibly plot-specific, but then were simply interesting things they wanted to show.

That’s also partially their downfall, though, too.  For no matter how much I want to watch some classic movies, I still find myself getting fidgety if I’m in an environment with lots of other things going on.  If I’m going to watch an old film, I need to be able to turn off my phone, close the curtains, turn the lights off and focus 100% on the screen and let myself get sucked right in.  It’s increasingly hard to do so in the modern world, though, so I fear I’ve not seen as many classics as I should have for such a profound movie lover.

It’s A Wonderful Life had all the elements to be a really disappointing film.  After all, how often have you heard someone rave about a movie for days on end and then when you see it there’s nothing there to back it up, or maybe it’s just been over-hyped in your mind.  This, however, was everything K said it was and more.  Clever, funny, emotional and kind-hearted, it’s the very definition of a feel-good Christmas movie, but not in the modern sense of garish colours and broad comedy – this is a movie to get swallowed up in and one which leaves you wishing you lived in the age when a man wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without a hat to tip to the ladies.  When women wore nothing that wasn’t immaculate and beautiful and when Hollywood was unafraid of the soft-focus close-up.

If Cineworld don’t have it back again next year, I swear I’m going to launch a sit-down protest in their popcorn machine.

Today was both an emminently enjoyable day and a massively frsutrating one.

A while back, as you’ll no doubt have noticed from the banner on the right of the page here (unless you’re reading this through in the archives in the middle of 2011), I signed myself up to take on this years doitforcharity.com Santa Run through Greenwich park.

At the time – about 7 weeks before the run – I thought that a small, fun 5k could be just the right way to ease myself into the physical challenges I’ve set myself for the next couple of years.  I’ve developed a bit of a master plan that I’m not going to la out on here because I’ll only fall foul of it at some point and feel lousy, but suffice to say that a 5k before Christmas seemed to be a good way of easing myself in.

Then came my port op at the end of last month and truly knocked me back.  Not physically – or at least not in my chest – but the pain in my shoulder and the general disablement it brought caused me to have to stop running.  I figured that even having missed a week’s training I’d still be good for the run, but it appears that my shoulder protests too much.

Any kind of movement of the shoulder, particularly harsh, juddering, running-style movement, has been really painful and – mindful of the fact that I’d have to operate a car all the way home after the event – I had to take the disappointing decision to “drop out” of the run.  I say drop out, but that’s really not true, I just ended up walking it instead of running it.

I was, frankly, really bummed about it the week leading up to it – the whole point of the exercise had been to give myself a physical challenge to round of what’s been an amazing twelve months – but as people kept pointing out to me, it’s a big step forward.  I just wasn’t so sure it was, after all, I’ve done a lot of walking since my op, not least back in October when I not only walked 5k, but did it with a video camera on my shoulder to shoot Nelly’s World’s Biggest Walk.

It was only once I was actually walking around the park, breathing in the freezing cold but deliciously crisp winter morning’s air that I realised what a difference the last year has made.  At this point 12 months ago, I was just learning to wobble around the ward on two very over-sized legs in between bouts of dialysis to keep everything under control and on course for a Christmas release, a date which seemed to be looming without signs of improvement.  To be wandering freely through the park today, holding conversations and pushing Nelly up a really steep hill (until her family came to a perfectly-timed rescue) is a miracle beyond words.

I feel like I spend every post on here at the moment in a moment of thanks to my donor and their family, but if it wasn’t for them I’d never have had the chance to do all of that.  And I’d never have seen my Great Cousin born last night, either – so thank you all, whoever you are.

Haven’t been up to a whole heap today, but got incredibly excited this evening when I got a reply to an enquiry on my cousin’s health introducing Sebastian George Phillips to the world.

(That’s not to say I didn’t know he was due, which is kind of how the above sentence reads back, actually.  In fact, the text was checking on Baby Mama’s state of annoyance/concern/frustration/happiness at being nearly 2 weeks overdue).

7lbs 14oz at just before 9pm this evening I became another Great Cousin.  Obviously I’m already great, but now I’m Great again!

Congrats, guys – many happy years of fun and frolics with the littl’un.

One year ago, precise to the nearest hour (rounded up), I sat as I do now sitting up in the middle of the night while all about me are sleeping.  That night, 366 days ago (leap year, before you correct me), I wrote:

“I can only hope that [this new low] marks the nadir of my fortunes and that things are all-the-way upwards from here.”

as part of this post.  Little could I know that within 24 hours everything would have changed and that what I was writing then would prove to be so eminently prophetic.

I don’t know quite why I am unable to sleep this time – I know, thankfully, that it’s nothing to do with the intense physical struggle I was fighting a year ago, nor is it a concern about how imminent my death may prove to be – but I suspect that it’s the knowledge that a year ago today marked the point at which one person’s life ended and gave me the second chance I had craved.

I’ve never really struggled with the idea that for organ donation to be viable, the donor must be deceased – certainly in my case.  But something about an approaching anniversary makes you re-assess things you take for granted.  I suppose it’s why New Year brings so many resolutions.

More than that, though, I suspect it is the knowledge that over the last 12 months I’ve seen two friends lose their lives in the way I always imagined I’d lose mine and – just this week – a very close friend lost his 14-year-old son.  Standing on their doorstep to offer our support and help in any way we could, their grief was over-whelming.

I have been much blessed in my life, not least in that I have never lost anyone of my immediate family at an age where I was aware of the pain it caused all those close to me.  I’ve never fully appreciated the wrench, the true sickness inside, of losing a member of your family.  Of course I remember my Nana – just barely – and my Granddad, but I have no concept of their deaths when I was 3- and 5-years-old.  I remember more clearly the death of my Grandmother two years later, but only in as much as that Daddy was sad and I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral.

Never before have I touched – or been touched – by such heavy, all-enveloping grief that weighs on the family like a leaden cloud, which rains down tears of desperation and confusion without any seeming hope of the oft-fated silver lining.  A grief which swallows people up and prevents them from seeing anything around them, or even in front of them.

It occurred to me, sometime after that doorstep encounter, that while my family and I were rushing to hospital a year ago this evening, another family were in the very first stages of just such an overwhelming feeling of loss and despair.  And now, one year on, they must be thinking back to that fateful day and wondering if anything more could have been done.

As I’ve documented on here previously, I know nothing of my donor, nor their family.  I can only imagine the circumstances under which they came to be in a position to save my life and mere conjecture is all I can muster towards how they dealt with it at the time.

As I prepare to celebrate the first of my second birthdays with a party on Thursday night, I am overcome with the thought of the loss someone has had to suffer for me to be here.  All I want is to know that whoever my donor may have been, they are smiling down on me now and are proud of what I have achieved since they gave me a second chance.

I want to know that they believe I am worthy of the gift they have given me, that I have done my best to make the very most of the lungs they bequeathed to me and that if they could, they would be telling the ones they left behind that I am fit to carry on in their stead.

19 November will live forever in my mind as the day my donor died, quite separate from 20th November – the day my new life began.  And I’m grateful to have the two separate days to honour – the one to mourn the passing of the person who saved my life and the second to give thanks for the life I’ve been given and to surround myself with my family and friends who make it all worthwhile and make me feel worthy.

I heard a quote from Nietsche on the radio today,

‘He that has a “why” to live can deal with almost any “how”‘

With the knowledge of the sacrifice that was made in my name and a determination to be the best I can be, “how” I live will never be an unconquerable hurdle, merely a method of honouring the “why”.

At this very moment right now, I was supposed to be standing on a sunny but slightly chilly street in the middle of Bletchley shooting my first short film as a director since 2003.  Instead, I’m sitting at home in a T-shirt (and jeans, you mucky-minded fellows) and writing this.

The course of true love never did run smooth, someone once kind of wrote (gotta hate people who paraphrase the greats, haven’t you?), and the course of navigating my way to and through my first love – film – is proving exceedingly bumpy.

The film that was scheduled for this weekend is a script I’m really proud of that I’m confident I can turn into a brilliant little film.  Sadly, although it’s been in the pipeline for months, it all fell-apart mid-week when the actress playing one of the two leads (in fact, one of the two parts) pulled out due to commitments early next week.

I spent a furious few days scrabbling around trying to find a replacement before, in a phone call with the producer on Thursday night, finally giving up the ghost and conceding that we’re better off to postpone the shoot until we can find the right girl, not just any girl, to fill the role.

It has caused me a lot of pain over the last couple of days to come so close to shooting and then see it slip away, but at least I’d not spent any money on it.  I’m in a difficult kind of limbo right now where I know in myself that I have the talent to direct, but I also know that to all appearances outside my own head I have nothing at all to show for it.  Let’s face it, no one wants to give a job to someone who has nothing to demonstrate that they are capable in any way whatsoever.  No matter how much I bullsh*t or try to talk my way through things, without demonstrable evidence to show people, there’s no reason for anyone to have any confidence in me.

Which is why it was so important to me to get at least this first short under my belt and then move on to other things.  Sadly, that’s not to be, for now.

I’ve spent a good couple of days moping about this now, but yesterday I managed to pick myself up and start looking at the other projects I’ve got going, which had somewhat fallen by the wayside in the build up to the One Under shoot.  This succeeded at least in shifting my brain from mope-mode to active-mode, which is always a good thing.

Then a funny thing happened.  Feeling restless and couped up this morning, I wandered down to the corner Tesco to pick up some bits and pieces (milk for tea being the most important) and as I was walking back up the hill to the flat, I flashed back to the time back in January/February when I first walked down to the shop having recently returned home from hospital and then my parents’ and discovering the true capabilities of my new puffers.

Walking back up the hill today was immeasurably easier and less hard work than that time all those months ago and it served to show me – and remind me – just how far I’ve come in the last 12 months.

Sure, I’ve not managed to make a film in my first 12 months, as had been my hope, but far from being the enormous downer that I’d raised it up to be, I realised that with the new lungs I’ve got and the new chance at life I’m enjoying, I need to focus on the bigger picture just as much.  To never lose site of the fact that this time last year I wasn’t even well enough to be considering making a film, let alone being disappointed that it all fell through at the last minute.

Filmmaking is undoubtedly important to me and it’s 100% what I want to do with myself.  There will be more opportunities to come, at first of my own making and then, hopefully, at the behest of others who recognise what I’m capable of.  Until then, it’s just a case of sitting back and thanking God for the gift I’ve been given and the life I can lead now.

The choices are all mine right now, and that includes my attitude.  So away with the moping and welcome the joy of expectation.

Things are picking up pretty fast now, as I move further and further towards the world of work.  Today I went down to Bletchley train station to do a location scout for the short film I’m shooting in just 2 weeks’ time.  It’s unbelievably exciting to be actually preparing to do something for real that I’ve been imagining myself doing all through my time on the list and before, when I was too ill to consider actually getting on and doing it.

Now, more than ever, I’m aware that filmmaking is 100% what I want to do and to earn money doing it is my ultimate goal.  The next few weeks are going to be a kind of make-or-break time for me when I will discover whether I am actually capable enough to pull it off, or if I’m going to have to revue my plans and options and consider a change of direction.

The scout was really exciting as it really drove home the fact that is is definitely happening now.  It’ll be a real challenge and it’s already pushing me creatively more than I’ve been pushed before, but I’m absolutely loving it and thriving on the freedom to make decisions based on what I want to achieve, rather than aiming for the results someone else is going for.

I can’t wait to get shooting and turn out a really top-notch little film.  Here’s hoping it can meet my expectations and provide a launching pad into the career I’ve wanted to follow since I was in my teens.