Archives: Projects

Nothing like a break through in planning and organisation of a big project to stimulate the happiness and reenergise you (see – it’s not just the steroids…).  As of this moment, tickets for Laughter for Life, hosted by Bill Bailey and featuring Dara O’Briain, are ON SALE.  You can buy them here

This is undoubtedly the coolest thing to happen this week, and will totally keep me charged full of positive energy until at least six o’clock.  And then I’ll come back here, read my excitement and get excited again.

But you must HURRY, because this is a fabulous evening of hilarious comedy from fantastic comedians (and other such hyperbole) and it’s going to sell out fast with a capital FAST (not hyperbole, actually true).

So if you’re really my friend, buy some tickets, otherwise I won’t like you any more.  And if you want to be my friend, buy tickets and I promise I’ll like you.

So there.

Did I mention it would be funny….?

Tuesdays are traditionally oone of those nothing days, aren’t they?  They’re not Monday, so there’s no real reason to hate them, but neither are they Friday, with the joy of an impending weekend, nor Sunday, with it’s laid back, pipe-and-slippers feel.

So it was a wonderful turn up for the books yesterday when we seemed to have a belated Christmas of good tidings all tumble into our laps over the course of a happy, exciting, smile-making morning, afternoon and evening.

First thing in the morning, we kicked off with a wonderful double-whammy for K where in the space of 30 minutes she discovered not only that she had she been accepted on her college course – a 12-month access to healthcare which will set her up to head to uni to study Speech Therapy next year – but also that she’s been granted an interview for a job which would fit both her and our needs perfectly.

Coming directly on top of that, I had a HUGELY productive morning working on the Laughter for Life show, getting to grips with a number of pressing issues.  Most unbelievably generous and fantastic for us was the agreement of Steve at Tin Racer, who do all the design work for CF Talk, to design the programmes for the night for free.  Not only that, but he also offered to talk to his contacts to see if we can get it printed for free, too!

After beavering away on all things funny for the morning, we then popped out to Mazda to test drive the Mazda 6 – a proper, grown-up car which I have to confess I’ve rather fallen in love with.  I’ve been looking to change my current car on the Motablilty scheme since November, when I realised that in order to stay mobile when I’m less well, it may be better for me to have an automatic gearbox, to take away some of the physical exertion of driving.  It now looks like we’ve found the right car – and may well be off to order it tomorrow!

On top of all of that, K then started her college course in the evening (cutting it fine on the admissions front, MK College…) and came through the evening unscathed and looking forward to what the next 12 months hold academically.

I spent the time she was in college hanging out with a friend who I haven’t spent a lot of time with for ages and we caught up.  Adding to the Super Tuesday feel, he was filling me in on his new relationship (early stages, but hey, it’s still a relationship) and I couldn’t have been happier for him.  I know he’s feeling a bit conflicted about it all at the moment (loooooong story…) but I think it’s fab and he should enjoy it!

Every now and again one of those days come along where everything just seems to go your way.  So often in life we can only remember those days when everything seems to go against you, so I’m determined to hold on to the memoryof my Super Tuesday and use it in future to blast away the cobwebs when I’m starting to doubt my productivity or the wisdom of things.

Everyone should have a Super Tuesday at some point, and when you do, make sure you lodge it in your memory and share the good news with all around you.  Nothing like a ray of sunshine through the snow to make people smile.

Believe me, I know how strange this sounds coming from someone who’s spent the last two months writing about the various different ups and downs in his live, but just now I’m finding it unbelievably hard to find the right words to describe just how happy I’m feeling.

This is one of those periods of life that just make you sit back and smile – to count your blessings and realise that the world is not really a big, evil place that intent on wearing you down, but rather that if you put yourself in the right position to be the master of your own destiny and you look at the world from the right perspective, things will sooner or later start to swing your way.

I can also appreciate how bizarre it might sound for someone who is currently waiting for someone else to die so that he can have a chance of a fresh, new tilt at life to even begin to decribe himself as the master of his own destiny.

But success or failure, good or bad, up or down is all a matter of perception.

Paul McKenna, in numerous published writings (not least Change Your Life in 7 Days, which I would recommend to anyone, even the most sceptical of self-help depreciators) cites the words of Thomas Edison when questioned as to how he felt after failing for the 700th time in his attempt to invent the electric light:

“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated all the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Right now, in as much as these things matter to me, everything is going my way:

I’m back living at home in my lovely little flat with my girlfriend whom I’m very much in love with and I’m honoured to say is very much in love with me.

I’m working on 3 projects which not only motivate and excite me, but also give me aims, objectives and reasons to keep well.

My chest is behaving exactly as I expect it to.  It’s not ever going to fire on all cylinders again, but that’s why I’m on the transplant list.  All I can ask it to do now is support me as best it can until such time as God sees fit to call time on these knackered old blowers and give me a fresh set.

I’m surrounded by people whom I love and who love me back – my friends are fantastic and don’t ever make me feel bad for not being able to join in  things, nor complain when I pull out of things at the last minute; my family all go out of their way to do whatever I need of them, no matter how little or unreasonable; people I work with make huge allowances for what I can and can’t do and never bat an eyelid or make me feel like I’m stretching their patience (even when I know I must – I stretch my OWN patience with some of the last-minute turnarounds, it can’t be easy for others to deal with).

Every once in a while all the pieces in your life seem to align just so – like the planets and the sun, or the cogs of a machine – and for a moment life seems just right.  And it’s so, so, so important to seize that moment, to recognise it for what it is: fleeting perfection of it’s own kind which will last but a flicker, but if you see it and grasp it, it will last forever in the memory.

I’m under no illusions that this will continue unabated; I know there will be trouble ahead – harder times, darker times, more challenging and less fun times, but damned if I’m not going to enjoy the good stuff while it’s here.

Like the song says: while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance, I’ll be the one on the dance floor.

Today has been just as productive as yesterday, but also HUGELY more exciting because I officially climbed aboard a project being run by the Live Live Then Give Life campaign putting on a comedy night at the Mermaid Theatre in London in March.

The history to the night is quite long and convoluted, but mainly involves Emily getting a phone call a while back from Bill Bailey, who’d been told through the grapevine from a reader of her blog that she was a fan and had been having a hard time.

Now, there’s a very funny story here about serial-schmoozer Emily getting hideously tongue-tied and not being able to form sentences, but I wouldn’t like to embarrass her, so I’ll leave that bit out. Oh wait….

Anyway, after chatting to her for a while, Bill apparently succumbed to what many people have come to know as the “Emily Effect” – that is, having spoken to a remarkable friendly, eloquent, funny, determined and energetic (in speech, at least) young woman about all the issues on which she campaigns, he offered to do whatever he could to help.

Some months later, Emily has decided that now is a good time to go get some new lungs (I’m told they’re 2007’s must-haves) and left her LLTGL partner-in-crime Emma high-and-dry staring down the barrel of a show in 6 weeks time with a whole range of “To Do’s” still “To Be Done”.

So, shining my armour and mounting my steed (yes, my steed!), I fired off an email to Emma gallantly offering my services as Production Manager extraordinaire to fill any gaps she may have.

Now, there must have been some sort of mis-communication here, because Emma and her wonderful, throw-your-hand-in, get-stuck-in, jump-in-the-deep-end husband Brad seem to have developed the mistaken impression that I was actually offering to help them out and do some work.

Clearly, they don’t know me well enough to know that when I offer to help it’s nothing but an empty gesture and what I really mean is I’ll be happy to sit on my rump in bed at home and watch Bill Bailey DVDs and tell people how funny he is.

Still, being the awfully polite person I am, I suddenly felt like it would be terribly improper of me to point out their error, so it looks like I’m on board…

I really don’t know how I get myself into these fixes, but now I’m here, I supposed I’ll just make a fist of it and see what I can’t do to make things run a little smoothly.

Right now there’s all sorts of bits and pieces remaining to be organised, including nailing down who exactly is going to be on the bill.  Through Bill Bailey’s management we’ve aquired a strong line-up of fresh comedians willing to entertain the masses, and we’re still hopeful of getting a few last gasp names to pop along too.

I’ve got my list of To Do’s passed down and am liasing with the venue and management about technical requirements and other such things, as well as sticking my oar in wherever I see opportunity.

It’s looking like it’s going to be a really good evening and, more importantly, is going to go a good way to helping support the LLTGL campaign’s current objectives – of which more at a later date.

Tickets should be on sale within the next week or so and I’ll post with details as soon as they are, but for now if you’re in, around or fancy going to the Mermaid Theatre for a cracking night of stand-up, book out 4th March in your diary and watch this space!

A new era has been ushered in in the House of Oli (like the House of Usher, but hopefully not falling*) – an era of cool, calm productivity which, I predict, will reign for years to come.

Sceptics would say that it will reign until a week next Wednesday, but I’ve never listened to the nay-sayers in my life, so I shall continue to thumb my nose at them and live in blissful ignorance for the foreseeable future.

Today, I have mostly been working diligently in my study – beavering away at my newly-imported (read: bought in John Lewis) keyboard which has made my entire office set-up both more ergonomic and more fun – the clacking of keys on a proper keyboard is so much more preferable to the tapping of lap-top keys, don’t you find?

Of course, it may only be little ol’ me who has a strange obsession with the noises made by keys on a keyboard, but when you’re working life consists almost solely of one particular noise, it’s good to find one that agrees with you. Not that lap-top key noises are disagreeable, as such, they’re just not as good as…. oh stop now.

Anyway, in addition to going a good way to clearing the backlog of emails waiting for my immediate attention in my three inboxes (don’t ask, it’s too complicated), I managed to comission two articles for CF Talk, take further steps towards establishing a dedicated DVD section on the Close-Up Film website, of which I am nominally DVD Editor but have yet to really start work proper, and also got involved in a really exciting charity project happening in March, which I will expand on when I’m able.

Not only did I achieve all that just from sitting at my desk, but I also cleared a huge backlog of clearing and tidying of the stuff we brought back to the flat from my Mum and Dad’s, AND had time for a 2-hour brain-storming planning session for the video sections of the Youth Theatre show in April.

Now, those of you who followed the progress of the last show on my Myspace blog will know that the multi-media elements served to provide the toughest test of my unflappable Production Managership (it’s a word, I said so!!) and my “never rip the head off a moron” motto.

Luckily this time we will be undertaking the filming work purely on our lonesome, Suze having handed over the reigns to myself and Rheya, my counterpart in the production management of the show and soon to be co-producer, co-director of the filmed sections of the show. We have no obligation whatsoever to involve Milton Keynes College or any of their students – Happy Day!
At the flat today we spent a wonderful couple of hours batting ideas to and fro and narrowing them down to a workable length and story-line to open the show with. Obviously, it’s all mega-top-secret and if I told you I’d have to kill you, so for both our sakes (don’t forget I’m lazy) I’m going to keep my cards close to my chest. My eyesight’s not good anyway, so it’s easier to read them the closer they are.

Tomorrow, I’m aiming for more of the same, and I’m also going to try not to eat strange little badly-cooked frozen mini-pizzas for lunch. But that’s another hurdle all together…

*If you don’t know it, Google it!

Who’d have thought I’d be back to studying, eh?

Not 24 hours after my mammoth meeting on the new show, I realised that if I was going into rehearsals on Wednesday, I’d sure as heck better have done some work on the script I’m tackling.

It wasn’t till I sat down to piece together the sections of text from Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that I realised it was going to be impossible to work from copies of the script I had, so I’d have to type it all out fresh for the cast to use.

Laborious as it was, I’m actually grateful for the need to take the long way round, because it took me through both texts line-by-line, which got me much closer to them than I would have been if I’d just have given them a cursory glance through.

The basic idea of what I’m trying to do is use two of Shakespeare’s scenes with Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or Ros and Guil, as their mates – well, my type-worn fingers – call them) to book-end my favourite section of R&GAD involving a rapid-fire word game which is not only fun to watch, but also to perform and direct.  The contrast between the language and the style of performance in the two different parts (ancient and modern) is a great opportunity for the actors to really explore and play with the text and their characters.

What I didn’t count on, wading through the text as I typed it out, was just how much extra work I’d created for myself by going back to Shakespeare’s original.  Foolishly, having studied it for A-Level, I was hugely confident of my grasp of the material.  But looking at it again I realised that although I still had a good hold of the sense of it, there were a hundred questions that leapt out at me from the verse which, as an actor, I would immediately have thrown at the director.

Being the director, that means I have to know the answer.  Of course, it’s not as simple as just throwing out an answer – I prefer, in rehearsals, to let the actors reach their own decisions and conclusions about what they’re doing – but in order to keep them on the right track and not flailing off in random directions which take us round in circles, I needed to swat up on my ancient English and get to grips with Will’s words.

Remarkably, I slipped back into my studying patterns without so much as a hiccup.  In fact, I think I may have been better at it now than I was when I was studying it to be tested on.  Whether that’s a reflection on my abilities, or motivation, as a student, or on the problems with teaching Shakespeare in an English class I’m not quite sure.

Whatever the result and however well it goes in rehearsals, there is no doubt that getting back into creative endevours – and practical ones at that – has refreshed my mind and my imagination and pushed my motivation to stay fit, healthy and able to work even harder than it was before.

More than anything else right now, I want to be able to see this through to the end.  Ok, if I get my transplant call, I might just see fit to relinquish my role (provided, of course, I get comps to the show…), but beyond that, I don’t want anything else to get in the way of me being able to do the thing that’s been so missing from my life.

So it’s double-physio, extra drinks (of the build-up kind, not the alcoholic kind) and plenty of rest throughout the day so that I can make the very most of the opportunity afforded me.

And if you haven’t bought your tickets yet – why not!?!?!

I’ve had a brilliant day today, taken up mostly with a mammoth 4-hour meeting with Suze and Rheya about the MKT show this April.

The show, which is going to be in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, will be something of a gala performance for the Activ8 Youth Theatre, with whom Suze and I have worked (on-and-off on my part) for the last 5-6 years.  We’ve never had the opportunity to start with such carte blanche as we’ve been given here, and it’s fantastic – if a little daunting.

The Youth Theatre have been lucky in the past if they secured a single performance date in a 12-month period, so to have this show coming so quickly off the back of the summer show is exciting in and of itself, but to have such free reign to make the most of our stage time is a fantastic opportunity for all the children and young people involved.

So far, we’re looking at doing devised pieces for the youngest three groups, and then a combination of devised, scripted and new-writing pieces with the oldest group – who have mostly been with us for a long time and will no doubt be raring to display the many facets of stage-craft they’ve had the chance to develop working with a practitioner as accomplished and, let’s face it, off-the-wall as Suze.

Today’s meeting was spent hammering out exactly what each group would be doing – allowing for the fact that the rehearsal process is sure to kick up a few new challenges and options on the way – and also going over a few storylines for some of the devised pieces which needed solidifying before we past them back to the groups to continue working.

The groups have already been working on some of the stuff that will be incorporated into the performance in the last term, but the ideas they’ve developed will all be picked up and run with over the course of the next 10 weeks leading up to the show.  The idea is that we’ll be using familiar material but probe deeper into it to make sure we’re challenging them to come up with something that will push them and make the most of the showcase they’ve been offered.

I’m most excited about the fact that I’m due to return to rehearsals on Wednesday and Suze has offered me the opportunity to write part of the show and to direct a separate section with some of the older group involved.  It’s been so long since I’ve directed anything from scratch that I’m REALLY looking forward to it and can’t wait to get going.

The section I’m working on is an amalgam of scenes from Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead – a show I’ve always wanted to direct in its entirety.

I have to confess I’ve been a little on the tired side after our enormous brain-storming/planning session, but I feel so jazzed at the thought of being part of this show.  It’s wonderfully exciting to be working with the groups towards something that will really show their families and, hopefully, the wider community, what they are capable of doing.

Tickets are available NOW from the Milton Keynes Theatre box office 0870 060 6652 (with a booking fee) or online here. (plug, plug)

In other news: my new BlackBerry arrived today, too!!  After all my to-ing and fro-ing with O2 (the phone company, not the oxygen people), I managed not only to secure a free upgrade to the BlackBerry, but also to upgrade my call plan to double the minutes (400) and ten times the texts (1,000) per month for the same money.  And I only wanted the phone….

Unfortunately, since it arrived I’ve been castigated by K after spending all morning and half the afternoon in a meeting for then getting so wrapped up in my new toy that I’ve hardly paid any attention to her all day. 

I’d like to make a witty-yet-cutting riposte to show her that she’s completely in the wrong and I’m smugly in the right as usual, but I really can’t defend myself on this one, so I’m going to slope off and use my apologetic face.

EMILY UPDATE: For those of you still keeping tabs on Em (of which I know there are tons) she’s still doing well.  She’s still on the vent for the moment, but her family say things are looking good for now.  Thanks to you all for your love, prayers and support – I know they’re greatly appreciated. 

It’s been a bit of a quiet, stay-at-home kind of day today, spent largely on the sofa chilling out.  I have, however, managed to do my first piece of real writing for ages and I’m really pleased with it.

It’s an odd thing, writing.  I love doing it and when I sit in front of a screen with a real purpose to my ideas, I seem to be able to rattle things off at speed.  The 6-page scene I wrote today, which is something that will hopefully be part of the Youth Theatre show in April, took me a little under an hour to write, although I must confess I wrote the verse part of it over the course of an hour waiting for K yesterday.

It seems that when I have a deadline to write to is when I do my best writing and when my mind focuses most clearly on what it’s trying to do and say.  If I’m just sitting there of my own volition, tapping away at the keys and seeing where I end up, it doesn’t come in the same way.

What this means, of course, is that once I start getting commissioned and paid for my work and I’m a top-flight, in-demand scriptwriter and playwright, I’ll be knocking out classics left, right and centre (OK, OK, but stay with me), whilst right now I need to find that spur to keep me going when I don’t have an identifiable goal to achieve in front of me.

People say the key to it is to make sure you write a little every day, no matter what it is.  Specifically, I’ve heard it said that you should set yourself a page or word target that you must hit no matter what.  The trouble with those plans is that I always just end up writing drivel to fill the quota and end up hating myself for being so uncreative and unimaginative.  And when you think you’ve lost it, your enthusiasm for the project drops off the face of the planet.

All of which does nothing really to solve my dilemma, but it’s nice to be writing again and reading my own words on a page.  There’s still something wonderful about reading back over scripts that have just emerged from your head through your fingers and ended up as a formatted file on a hard drive and ink-on-paper in front of you.

It never ceases to amaze me when I sit at a computer that in a matter of a few hours I can turn out something really quite readable to fill a blank page and possibly more.

My head tells me that I need to set myself some time aside everyday to try to achieve something in writing, even without self-imposed artificial quotas and the like, but at the same time I know that if I set myself a timetable and don’t stick to it or am too tired to achieve it, I’ll just get down about it.

But enough of that – it’s all a bit unnecessary.

Today I watched FIELD OF DREAMS with K on the sofa and absolutely loved it.  It was a Christmas gift from her because I had told her I’d not seen it and I’d heard lots of good things about it from lots of people, so I finally sat down to watch it today. 

It’s a lovely little film, filled with a beautiful kind of magic that you somehow just don’t question.  It’s one of those films with such wonderful heart that you forgive it it’s little foibles and unnecessaries and allow yourself to get swept up with the characters and their journey and the magic they’re experiencing.

And who knew Kevin Costner used to be so watchable?  And not in dodgy-accented, car-crash kind of terms?  I mean, he was almost like a real actor.  You’d have sworn he’d never do something as silly as make Waterworld.

I also wasted nearly an hour of my day on a programme about the Archers, which promised in it’s Sky+ blurb that it would follow the production team as they put together the show’s 15,000th episode – the kind of behind-the-scenes peek that I’ve always been addicted to.  But instead, it spent the vast majority of it’s time covering the whole of the back-story to this momentous episode. 

Which, when you’re covering a radio drama on TV, is somewhat dull.

Still, at least I watched that before I watched Field of Dreams, so I could have my memory of it wiped.

Also watched a great Mark Lawson interview with Armando Iannucci, one of the writer/producers behind things like The Day Today and Alan Partridge or, more recently, The Thick of It.  I love watching programmes about writers and programme makers and getting a glimpse into their various thought-processes and working practices.  It helps focus the mind onto things I want to do and ways in which I could drive myself forward.

Of course, we all know all I really need to drive myself forward is a deadline to write to.

Had a really good giggle last night when I ventured out with the fam and K to watch my bro enjoy his birthday pressie from earlier in the year with 10 minutes fly-time at Airkix indoor skydiving centre in MK.

It’s unbelievably cool – a little plexiglass bubble one story up above a pair of jet turbiney things (that’s their trade name, obviously), which serves to suspend people mid-air as if falling at great speed from a plane.

My bro, the sicken sports fanatic that he is, got on amazingly well.  He did 4 “jumps” of 2.5 minutes each and manged to learn 8 out of 10 techniques of flight.  His instructor told us afterwards you’re supposed to learn one per flight, so he’d doubled the expectation and mastered most of them within his 10 minutes.  I really hate him sometimes.

Mind you, it was hilarious to watch him with his little cheeks wibbling away in the uprush of air.  He even managed to dribble upwards.  It feels a little odd when you watch people do it, because you’re the other side of a plexiglass window about 2 feet away from them, so if they lose control a little, they endup nearly head-butting you.  Nervous laughter abounds amoungst the spectators getting a little weirdly close to people the don’t know in zoo-like conditions.

It’s an amazing thing, though, the Airkix centre and I have to recommend it to anyone as a gift, or even as a treat for yourself.  It’s not cheap, I know that much, but it looked like so much fun.  I was extremely jealous, but I’ve got something else to add to my list of post-tx “must do’s” now.

After we watched his diving antics, we all headed off for a nice Tex-Mex dinner, which went down wonderfully.  By the end of it, though, I was exhausted.  Is wasn’t until we were in the car on the way home that K pointed out that I’d woken up at 6.30am that morning (no reason, was just awake and couldn’t nod off again) and without a sleep in the afternoon, it was no wonder I was a touch on the snoozy-side.

This morning I woke up even earlier, 5.30am, with roaring chest pains.  After my last little pointless jaunt to casualty with over-exuberant pre-diagnosis, I decided it best just to grab some painkillers and immobilize myself for the day, so I duly took to the sofa in true grumpy-lunged sulk.

Watching the sky-diving and at the restaurant I’d gone without my O2 and I think this is my body’s way of telling me that it was distinctly unimpressed with my choice to move around quite so much without additional support. 

I’ve been a lot more comfortable this afternoon than I was when I woke up, but I know a chiding chest when I feel one, so I’m sworn to “good boy” status for the next few days to make sure I can make the most of Christmas.

It was also pointed out to me today by the lovely Lady K that my last update vaguely referred to things going on in April without any real expansion.  Apologies for the vagueness, and I promise I’ll post with full and inclusive April updates shortly, but for the record there will be a fundraiser for the CF Trust through the MKT Activ8 Youth Theatre by way of a mainstage performance in the middle of April.

More to come, so watch this space….

MUCH better day today, as I was sure it would be.  Well, semi-sure.

But my body’s been decidedly responsive and I’ve managed to pass through an entire day with remarkably high energy-levels and not very much in the way of breathless episodes and other nastiness.

I slept pretty well, which is always a good start, and didn’t lie in bed too long this morning, which is something I’m increasingly persuaded is a bad thing in terms of momentum for the day.

This afternoon I ran K over to an appointment in Northampton and used the spare time to visit Suze, my partner in crime from MKT, from where I’ve sadly been completely AWOL for the entire term.  It was good to hear that all the work they’ve been doing is going fabulously well and that plans for the show in April are really rolling along.

I’m desperate to get back there and get my creative juices flowing again.  The workshops really energise me – working with kids and young people is so inspiring because of the way they see things and tackle problems.

One of the things I always fall back on when I tell people how great it is doing what I do is how much we can learn from children.  The most important thing in a 6 year-old’s life is whatever they happen to be doing at that moment in time, and that’s absolutely the way that we should all live out lives.

The trouble is as we get older, other stresses and worries crowd in and take over the freedom and innocence we enjoy as children and everything becomes more complicated.  But working with the younger groups at MKT has really helped me keep in touch with the old adage of living every day – and moment – for what it is, not what it could, should or has been.

The older groups at MKT simply serve to drive me forward creatively.  There’s nothing so powerfully motivating than seeing a group of people you’ve worked with for a long time learning and growing and expanding their experiences and outlooks on life, and to be challenged in your beliefs and understanding of the things around you. 

They push me to better understand myself and my ideas and to make sense of what I’m trying to communicate, to them or an audience or anyone else.

And working with Suzanne has given me the opportunity to be involved in a whole load of things in a whole load of capacities that I never would have had chance to do were it not for her faith and trust in me and what I can (or can’t) do.

Needless to say, I miss it mightily and I’m yearning to go back.  What’s fantastic about today is that having spoken to Suze and caught up on life, the universe and everything (sorry about the house!) it’s helped me to remember just how much I do want to still be part of what’s happening and it’s making me more determined than ever to get a grip on what my body’s doing and learn to play it properly so I can get myself back into sessions, even if it’s only for a couple of hours a week.

So today has also proved to myself that although bad days come along once in a while, but that they will always pass and be replaced by a good day.  I’m lucky in that it’s turned around quickly this time, but even in the blackest of nights it’s important to remember that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel – and you know you’re going to get there in the end.

Here’s to April.