Archives: Film

You know, living from day to day gives a weird perspective on life. I’ve said it before and doubtless I’ll have plenty of opportunity to say it again in the future, but this bumpy road called life certainly throws up a few of those Yank-loved curveballs.

Today, I’ve done hardly anything more than I have done for the last three weeks – I took K to work (possible on a good day, not an exceptional event), I worked on the computer (and have just remembered the one thing I had to do that I forgot to – hooray for me), I had a cup of tea with my Mum (she was having withdrawal symptoms, so had to swing by on her way off for the weekend) and went for a bit of a drive in the sunshine when I picked K up from work, which is about the only difference to my days of the last month or so.

But I did all of this while feeling absolutely brilliant. My chest felt open and clearer than it has in ages, I only stopped to grab my breath a couple of times in the whole day. At no point did I get overwhelmed by tiredness and I didn’t have to have a snooze after my afternoon dose of drugs. It would not be an over-statement to say that today I’ve felt amazing.

It’s all relative, I know, and compared to “normal” people, or even to how I was six months ago, it’s probably not much cop – I’m certainly not bounding up staircases or thinking about giving my oxygen the heave-ho – but to spend a day without the burden and weight of lugging around a stroppy chest and cloudy head has been truly indescribable.

(There’s an irony here about an entire blog entry trying to describe something which I can only describe as indescribable. Maybe there’s a hint at how I can cut down my word counts, too…)

I’m also aware that this feeling may not last for long. By tomorrow, the updraft could have floated away on the breeze and I’ll be gliding gracefully back down to sofa-dom, but interestingly I think it’s made me appreciate and enjoy today all the more. I have so many truly rubbish days these days that to have even a sniff of a good one is beyond compare.

If it goes a little way to making this journey a little smoother, to making me a little happier, to making these blowers last a little longer, then I can plough through the rough and enjoy the hell out of the smooth.

Tonight, aided by Happy Feet (go rent it now, it’s brilliant) and the unmistakable rhythm of life, my heart and my head are vibrating with the energy of the world and an old African proverb has just sprung into my head:

“If you can walk, you can dance
If you can talk, you can sing.”

Let the sun shine, let the music play, let the world spin on and don’t let it stop. In the words of a much wiser lady than I, “This is my life and I choose to love it”.

It’s been pointed out to me that my last post was a touch to the darker side of happiness and light.

In the spirit of remembering the title and inspiration of this blog, I wanted to post to clarify that I’m not living a world of utter blackness with no mirth or merriment whatsoever.

I’m not going to edit or delete my prior posting, because I stand by not only what I said but also the sentiments expressed in it.  However, I wanted to add that I can still see the funny side of life, swinging as I do from mood to mood like a restless teenage monkey trying to impress the girls with his feats of daring in the tree tops.

To illustrate the fact, I’ve just giggled my way through nearly all of Punch Drunk Love – I don’t mean I watched nearly all of it, I mean I was giggling at most of it, but not some parts (the bits that weren’t funny), because those of you who know me will know I can’t just watch a bit of a movie, it’s all or nothing.  You will also notice I’ve lost none of my pedantry in the process, either.

Still, I’ve just giggled my way through most of Punch Drunk Love, which would be a great illustration of my current access to the fun-sensors of my brain, were it not for the fact that only a very few people can I imagine extracting the same bizarre glee as I do from this quaint, weird, surreal little movie.

I would encourage all of you to go and seek it out to see what all the fuss is about (check out my ego too, thinking that my little mention in a blog which barely 100 people read counts as “all that fuss”), but I’m fairly sure that 90% of you (so, erm… 90 of you) would not only not see the same thing as I see in it, but in it’s place see something incredibly dull, surreal and very, very odd.

In fact, I think you might lynch me.  90’s a good number for a flash mob.

Anyway, I just thought I’d write and say, honestly, I’m OK, really.  Kind of.

Boy, annual reviews are depressing.

I’ve never liked the yearly MOT, ever since it was my only trudge over to Oxford every 12 months as part of my shared-care arrangement with Northampton Paediatric Unit (not an uncommon arrangement for PWCF, especially children), when it was marked with endless hors of waiting around and pointless questions from a doctor who you see but once a year but spends their brief meeting with you asking the sort of intimate question you’d struggle to find the courage – as a child/teenager – to answer your own doctor about.

Seriously, how many 14 year-old kids are going to sit in a consulting room with their Dad and answer anything but “No” when the doctor says, “do you smoke”?  Obviously, I never have, but there are those – even with CF – who do, and it is critical to their ongoing care that the doctors are aware of something like this.  Asking in front of Dad is not the way to go about finding out.

As the year’s have gone by, and the process has moved from being an annual schlep to Oxford to being just another clinic appointment with my adult team at the Churchill – and one that’s marked by a good deal less waiting and a good deal more friendliness – it’s taken on a paradoxically much more unpleasant feel to it.

If progress were marked on a chart – and with many areas of CF, it actually is – the over-riding theme of annual reviews is to watch the graph slip-sliding ever so slowly downwards in an ever-decreasing mountainside style.

This year, I suppose it reached it’s nadir – there isn’t a whole lot lower to go, and compared to last year, things look pretty (‘scuse the French) shite.  It’s hard to stay upbeat and positive when you’re looking back at a set of results which at the time were immensely disappointing, but for which now you’d give your proverbial eye teeth.

(By the way – can anyone tell me what eye teeth actually are and why they’re called that?  It’s dead confusing.  Answers on a postcard, kudos as a prize…)

There are moments of levity in the experience, though, things which I suppose I must cling to, although all of them come firmly in the category of “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry”.

Take the psychological survey, for instance, an 8 page document quizzing you on how CF affects your quality of life (or QOL as they like to put it), with the kind of inane multiplle choice answer boxes like A Lot, Not Much, A Bit, Not Really.

“Does CF affect your day-to-day life?”,  “Does CF prevent you from doing the things you want to do?”, “Does CF affect your relationships?”.  A monkey could answer these for me right now.

What did make my nurses laugh, though, was my minor fit of pique whereby I simply crossed out the entire section devoted to “social life and socialising”.  I wish.

I now have to wait a few weeks and head back for an ultrasound scan and then to see my doctors, who will have all of my results and can sit down and take me through them.  Can’t wait for that day – it should be a barrel of laughs.

Anyway, I’ve had enough of bleating about the awfulness of annual reviews, my chest and my life at the moment – I’m going to go and plonk myself on the sofa in front of a good movie and forget about everything.  Until I remember it again…

It would appear that my Monday was, in fact, a delayed Sunday (or a British Rail Sunday, as I prefer to call it), bringing with it as it did all of the slowed-down, energy-less deflation that I was expecting to get as a hangover from my Brummy exertions.

I haven’t been feeling completely rubbish, but it was certainly a LOT harder to get up and out of bed this morning than it has been for the last week or so.

A good session of physio once I had managed to get up and about seemed to sort things out, but I took the day very easy anyway, spending most of it on the sofa watching the extras on my King Kong DVD (have been totally addicted to the superb production diaries) and getting through 3 episodes of the first season of Entourage, a show which managed to sneak under my radar but which is brilliantly my kind of thing, following as it does the path of a Hollywood actor and his close-knit bunch of friends. Aspirational TV, I guess you could call it.

Once my batteries were sufficiently DVD-charged, I did manage to plonk my butt down in the study and get some work done, reviewing pages for the new issue of CF Talk and responding to some emails which have been hanging around for my attention for a while.

Also had to tune in to Richard & Judy this evening to catch the ever-wonderful Emily turning on the charm for Mr & Mrs daytime (or is it prime-time?) TV, along with her charming and incredibly open mother, whom I like to call Mrs T. Using footage from the various interviews they’ve done with Emily over years, pre- and immediately post-transplant, I have yet to see a more convincing advert for the benefits of organ donation that seeing the contrast in Emily in those films.

The thought of the immense and immeasurable ways in which my life could change with just one phone call is at once hugely exciting and tremendously saddening. It is impossible to see into the future and to know what lies in store for me, but the thought of such amazing, intangible possibilities sitting so close but so very far from reach is a hard one to reconcile in one’s mind.

It’s a process in which I feel like a terrified passenger, willing the runaway train to stay on track and ease into the station set for new life, whilst all the while knowing that one little bump will send it hurtling off the rails.

How do you live your life from day-to-day with something like that hanging over your head? I’m not sure even I know, except to say that if I wasn’t living it, then there’d be no point waiting for the transplant, I guess.

So, for those of you who are in touch with the Big Man Upstairs, now’s the time to get on your knees, bow your heads or do whatever comes most naturally to you when you pray and ask Him to bless me with a second chance. And for those of you who don’t believe, well, maybe He’d like to hear from you, too.

Woke up this morning later than I have been – all of 9.30am – fully expecting to feel worse than horrible and was surprise (and delighted) to discover I didn’t.

In fact, I felt as good if not better than I had the previous morning.  No complaints from me on that one.  I was a little bit more chesty than I have been, but I think that’s down to not getting as long a session of physio in last night as I would usually do, largely due to being so shattered from the day.

I’ve spent the day on the sofa doing next to nothing – watched the British Grand Prix and then realised that all through this season I’ve sat and watched races, only to remember with a quarter of the race to go that I really don’t like F1 anymore because it’s so chuffing dull.  When the only time cars overtake each other is when one of them stops for petrol, you know you’ve got a problem with your sport, surely?

I remember the olden days when the cars used to drive quite close together and every now and again one of them would try to get past another one IN A CORNER – oh, the memories.  I still have no idea why I sat through all 60 laps of today’s GP other than using the excuse that I was deliberately trying to do nothing.

My dad has it right – he Sky+’s most of the races, and then zips through them at x6 speed, which is much more interesting.

To break from the sporting tedium, we sat and watched The Queen this evening, which was entertaining, but no where near as grand as it’s been reported to be.  Helen Mirren is outstanding, but the script is INCREDIBLY clunky in the first 10-15 minutes where the filmmakers are clearly working over-time to make sure that all the Americans who want to watch the film are up to speed with how our country works with the monarchy, the Prime Minister and all the rest of our constitutional gubbins.

It’s hideously badly handled, although I suppose the defence would be that it had to be shoe-horned in to make the film make sense to the foreign markets.  I still think there are other ways of doing it, though.

The cast are generally very good, although some veer towards the bad side of impressionism and caricature,  and the idea of a peering into the Royal household at such a difficult time is intriguing, even if some of the scenarios they come up with stretch the bounds of believability a little.

I was worth seeing to see what all the fuss was about, but I wouldn’t rush out to pick myself up a copy (our copy being a lovefilm rental).

Hoping for an early night tonight, although with my brain running the way it does at the moment, I’ll be wide awake again come 8.30 and it’ll take me till midnight to feel sleepy again.

Earlier this week I sat down with K to show her a film I thought she’d like that I’d caught on TV a while back and just picked up on DVD.

The Gathering Storm covers the year or so leading up to Winston Churchill’s re-appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1935, during which time he tries in vain to convince his Parliamentary colleagues that Germany is re-arming itself for a war which no one else in Europe is prepared for.

It’s a fantastic film – an HBO/BBC co-production for television, not cinema release – with a marvelous central performance from Albert Finney and an eye-watering supporting cast.

What struck me, on watching it back again, though, was the reminder of how Churchill struggled with what the doctors called, “a certain melancholia” and what his family – most notably his wife, his adored Clemmie – called his Black Dog. Nowadays, of course, it would be called depression and he’d be on all manner of pills and psychological couches to come to terms with things, but this isn’t the time or the place for a detailed break-down of my personal feelings towards today’s current epidemic of depression.

I have, of late, felt myself under attack from the very same Black Dog as afflicted Churchill, I feel.

The analogy to a dog is remarkably accurate – it carries a life and a will of its own and it can come and go as quickly as the summer sun behind the clouds at Wimbledon. Like a dog, it can be docile and quiet one minute and turn unutterably savage the next: a constant threat hanging over you, but with no indication when or how long the next surge will come.

Today was very much a Black Dog Day. It seems at the moment that whenever my chest is less than perfect… hmm, no, that’s not the right way to put it, given that “perfect” is something my chest hasn’t been since my earliest years… but whenever my chest is a little worse than it was yesterday, or whenever I feel slightly more under the weather than I have been for the few days previously, the Dog attacks with a savagery I’ve never before experienced.

Yesterday was my last day of IVs for this course – normally a time of great celebration and a chance to enjoy a long, hot, refreshing shower (something I can’t do with my port accessed, so I have to settle for half-baths which don’t get my shoulder wet). This time round, however, I feel like I’m losing a crutch which I’ve been leaning and relying on to improve me.

I’ve been so used, over the years, to going down hill, having a course of IVs and pitching out the other end all fine and dandy, it’s an alien feeling to come to the end of a course of IVs as I have the last couple of times and still find my chest almost as clogged up as it was before, albeit with markedly less infection and with much thinner and more “friendly” sputum.

I think there’s a part of my brain which is still convinced that I’m not actually any better at all and that I should still be on the drugs, something which all medical evidence strongly contradicts. It is this nagging centre of the brain which I think is holding the leash for the Black Dog and sees fit to set him free at the merest hint of a down-turn.

I’ve had a few really good days since I arrived back at the flat almost a week ago. I’ve been getting stronger and feeling more upbeat than I have in a long time. So it’s all the more arresting when the Dog attacks as he did today.

As if lost in a cloud of darkness that envelops all around it, I found myself losing touch with myself and veering off down a course of negative thinking that I normally nip in the bud in seconds. And where I sit at the moment, once the cloud does descend, once the Dog has its teeth into me, there’s nothing can be said or done to clear the air or shake it off.

Strangely, the fog I found myself in for most of the afternoon suddenly lifted this evening. I strongly suspect it’s down to a fillip in my physical state, whereby my chest deigned to allow me out of bed without making all kinds of disagreeable noises and causing problems.

What I need to find is something that will disconnect my mind from my body – to keep my mental state separate from that of my physical. Because let’s face it, if I start to bottom out at the first sign of a little physical hurdle, I’m going to be fighting through far, far to many mental battles when I should be focusing all my energy on my physical ones.

Anyone know where I can buy a muzzle?

I’ve been wading my way through quite a bit of TV drama of late, spurred on by positive reviews in the press of all the new things like New Tricks, Hustle, Kingdom et al, and have found myself almost constantly disappointed.

There’s just something terribly formulaic and dull about British TV drama where it pales in comparison to even the most ropey of American TV product. There’s just a slickness and a freshness to the US output which I find myself yearning for whenever I park myself in front of the telly for the new “best thing” on our screens.

So thank goodness for David Suchet, Craig Warner and Colin Barr – the star, writer and director respectively behind Maxwell, last night’s dramatisation of the last days of the life of Robert Maxwell.

Not only was it brilliantly scripted and performed with a tour de force from Suchet, Barr’s direction and the immaculate and very filmic camera work really set the whole thing apart from the usual hour-and-a-half one-offs that we get over here, and puts it in a whole different league to the dull, lifeless weekly dramas we get over here.

I don’t know if it’s to do with the time constraints imposed by low budgets, or a dirth of creativity within the industry at the moment, but every drama programme seems to follow the same visual formula and the same stodgy editing techniques which seem to be turning a very visual medium into a close-up-ridden copy-cat of a good night at the theatre, but sadly lacking the good scripts and – all too often – the performances.

I yearn for a bit of directorial freedom, to see talented people take the scripts that are there (which must be dramatically improved, if you’ll excuse the pun) and turn them into their own films, not the cookie-cutter rehash of last week’s episode.

I understand that within a series there has to be continuity, and that there’s an accepted way of going about doing things, but when anything artistic reaches a status quo it rapidly loses merit.

It doesn’t seem any wonder to me that Channel 4 and ITV and Five are tripping over each other to buy up American drama for over here – and apparently making big mistakes while doing it, according to the press this week – because they simple can’t rely on this country turning out enough drama of quality to fill their schedules.

If we could only produce drama good enough to entice and intrigue and audience, perhaps we would see broadcasters relying on hideous grotesques in “reality TV” to fill their schedules and boost their ratings.

It’s about time we had something to shout about, and Maxwell is certainly a stonking start.

It’s been a bit of a weird week this week – I appear to have been either out of the house working or running errands, or asleep.  It’s a bit all-or-nothing.

After travelling home on Monday I was shattered, but ok with a bit of an afternoon nap, then I had Tuesday morning to laze around before being on Taxi duty for K (through choice not compulsion, I must add).

Then yesterday, K started her new job (yay!), which meant I was up at 8am to get her there (boo), and then found myself coming home and passing out on the bed again till the afternoon – not intentionally, but when your body’s bossing you around after a weekend like mine, you listen.

Then last night it was back to normality with my session at MKT with the Youth Theatre.

I say “normality”, but it’s not every week that I get to spend 20 minutes shooting part of a short film with Samantha Janus just after she’s come off stage in Guys and Dolls.  Even by my celeb-bumping-into standards, this was a bit on the surreal side, my friend Helen (who’s the dep wardrobe mistress on the show) having spoken to her and got her to agree to do us a favour and pop up in cameo in our opening film for the YT show.

She was lovely, and very accomodating, especially since we literally accosted her straight off stage, at a time when I would imagine most performers just want to be left alone to veg out – especially with another show starting in just over 2 hour’s time.  But she happily stood around and delivered her line of dialogue for us enough times for us to cover it and we left her to it.

The rehearsal itself was very good again.  I spent the first part working with the Chorus on the piece I’d written, which was good fun, although slightly odd to be blocking something I’ve had in my head.  It’s what I love about working with performers, though, because it really gives you a chance to work through things and see how they work -and if it’s your own script, you can chop it and change it as much as you like.

The second half of the session was back with my Hamlet trio, who again worked diligently and have formed a great little grouping.  They were struggling slightly to get to the meaning behind some of the Shakespearean waffle, but we worked through it and managed to get through to what lies underneath the flowery poetry and make it make a bit more sense.

Although the show’s not too far away now (and if they’re reading this, they really need to be learning their lines!!), I think this piece has the potential to really show how talented some of our young people are.  Combined with the piece that Suze is directing – called After Juliet, a modern take on the aftermath of the Romeo and Juliet story – it’s a chance for our older members to really show some flair for the dramatic, and we both know that they’ve got the range and the power to do it.

That’s not to say it’s not going to take a considerable amount of work on their part, and support for them on ours, but if the work goes into it, they could make it something really special.  Of course, if they don’t, there’s the worrying prospect of it coming out as a group of youngsters lost in a mire of misunderstood poetry.  But that’s the challenge.

I’m hoping that this weekend is going to provide a nice window of relaxation for me – a chance to stay in bed, or veg on the sofa and do as little as possible, whilst shoe-horning as many calories as possible down my throat to keep energy levels high and infections at bay.

It may have left me struggling for energy, but I’m determined that the weekend isn’t going to take me down!

I’m always loathe to jump up and down and rave about having a good few days without any enforced bouts of bed rest.  Well, let’s face it, I’m always loathe to jump up and down full stop any more.  All right, I’ve ALWAYS been loathe to jump up and down.  Even when I could.

Still, it seems that the last few days have been particularly encouraging for me – a full day’s shooting all day Saturday, a nice, restful Sunday which still managed to include a trip to K’s parent’s for a lovely Sunday/Brithday lunch for her Mum and a middlingly-active day today getting K sorted for her new job and fixed up with sexy new specs.

I seem – seem – to have found a nice equilibrium with my energy levels for the moment – succeeding in balancing a need for restful periods with achieving the most important goals of the day without running myself completely into the ground.

I’m hesitant to be fully excited until I get a couple of days further into the week with no repercussions, but so far, so good.

The day’s shooting on Saturday was really good fun.  Although we had quite a bit of time pressure to ensure we were out of the public areas of the Theatre by the time the matinee audience came in, we actually got all of the stuff we wanted relatively quickly and with very few hiccups.

We did, unfortunately, realise later that we’d miss-shot one scene and made a fatal error known in the trade as “crossing the line”.  This is far too hideously boring to explain in full to anyone not familiar with the term, as it’s a bit of a pedantic, anally retentive technical thingy to look out for, but unfortunately it’s one thing that can completely ruin a film when it’s all cut together.  Most of an audience would never be able to point it out, but would undoubtedly know there’s something wrong with what their watching.

Luckily for us, the scene in question with the minorly-major technical hiccup (or f**k up, depending on your view) is one which we still have to shoot a couple of additional shots for, so shouldn’t be too much of a problem to go back and rectify.  Fingers crossed.

Today I spent another morning in front of a camera, this time giving an interview for a student film for Bournemouth  University’s journalism programme about transplant and life on the list, as well as what can be done to increase donor rates.

It’s nothing major, but I was put in touch with the filmmaker through UK Transplant and as I said at the time I agreed to it, any publicity is good publicity.  I think it’s particularly good because there’s a chance it’ll be seen by a good number of students at the uni and that the message it sends out will get through to one of the most campaign-aware sectors of the population.

There’s huge amounts of resources sitting around university campuses in way of students who can be incredibly vocal about any subject close to their heart.  Make just a few of them aware of the importance of having people signed up to the organ donor register and there could be a whole new wave of Live Life Then Give Life supporters coming through the system and shouting louder than we have before.

Arrangements continue apace for Laughter for Life and I’ve spent a large chunk of the day on the phone to various people and rapidly swapping emails to finalise press strategy for the week, with local MK releases going out tomorrow.  Our national campaign should begin in earnest this week, too, although we’re a little disappointed that Bill’s not able to help us with shouting from the rooftops due to his already manic schedule.

That said, we’ve got an entire 3-hour gig lined up for Sunday night with some of the countries top comedians donating their time for nothing and for which we’ve already sold out a 600-seat Theatre, so it’s pretty hard to be unhappy about anything!

Here’s hoping the rest of the week stays as smooth as today.  We’ve got a few auction lots to finalise and gather, as well as the press and media work to cover.  I’ve got some technical gubbins to double check and artists to liase with.  We’ve got an auction to plan and sales to figure out, and I don’t even know what I’m wearing yet!

Gosh, it’s all go!

I’m in a bad mood: a grump, a fog, a depression, a dip, a lull, a negatively-buoyant, anti-happy smudge of a grey-day melancholy.  And I don’t really know why.

It could be the over-exertion of spending a day on my feet shooting the Youth Theatre video yesterday, where I was less than proficient at keeping my energy levels boosted and trying to stay seated as much as possible so as to conserve as much energy as possible.

It could be because this afternoon I went out to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz (which is great) when I should have been lying in bed forcing my body to recover from yesterday’s runabouts rather than forcing more activity on it.

It could be because I missed my dose of steroids at lunch time and didn’t catch up with them until nearly 6pm this evening, so my system is significantly down on it’s currently beefed-up power supply.

It could be that after going to the cinema, which I shouldn’t have done, following a day of shooting which I didn’t manage well, forgetting my steroids and driving over to Mum and Dad’s and back again just for a bite of dinner and not taking oxygen along for the car journey, I’m just a little bit pooped.

It could be that I’m just tired.

Whatever it is, I’m in a really bad mood.

This is supposed to cheer me up – my blog and blogging on it.  It’s supposed to remind me that when the going gets tough, the tough get going – or at least in my case the tough laugh in the face of the other toughness and tell it to be on it’s merry way because tough isn’t welcome in this part of town and if it doesn’t go away swiftly-and-I-mean-right-now then I’m going to do something really drastic like laughing even harder.

It’s not.

I’m still just feeling pretty grumpy.

So I’m clearly beyond help.  Far beyond the outer reaches of the depths of the far side of the distant part of somewhere that’s really not very close to the vicinity of the place where I am and help’s ability to reach me.

So there’s only one thing for it: I’ve just got to go to bed.  And sleep.

Like all big problems in life that at times seem insurmountable,  I’m confident that this will see me through.

Actually, thinking about it, there’s not many insurmountable problems that are cured by sleeping.  Insomnia, maybe.  But not cancer.  Or AIDS.  Or even HIV, for that matter.  War is rarely solved by sleeping, although I suppose if all the people on both sides were sleeping then they couldn’t be shooting each other, so it’s a kind of solution, but not really practical or workable as peace-plans go.

Murders aren’t solved by sleeping, and dogs aren’t walked by sleeping.  Sleeping does nothing to stop the spread of malicious rumours regarding the alleged illegal exploits of footballers or politicians, nor does it make any headway into the resolution of global warming.

It does, however, stop mindless, idle drivel like this, because when I’m asleep I can’t type.

There are many things on this earth and in this life for which we should all be thanking the Good Lord who watches over us.  And me being asleep and not writing any more of this is one of them.

Good night all.