Archives: Random

For those of you who are not on my email list (you lucky, lucky people) and who may be close enough to me for this to matter, here is a copy of an email I sent out last week proclaiming my up-coming 25th birthday:

“Dear one and all,

As I’m sure you’re aware (ahem), the 25th of this month sees me notch up a quarter of a century on this planet.  Whilst that may be an ambitious target for the English cricket team, it was one that at one time or another many have believed to be beyond me.  Thanks to brilliant medical teams from Northampton (as a kiddie) and Oxford (as a growed up), I’ve celebrated many more birthdays than I may have otherwise.

Although I may not be a picture of health, I could certainly pose for happiness: I am surrounded by family and friends whom I love very dearly and who love me just as much in return (that’s you, that is!).  I’m blessed to be in a position where I don’t really want for anything more than a new pair of blowers to enjoy your company all the more.

Because I consider myself to be so lucky and to be in need of so little, I have decided this year that I would rather put all of your love and good will to use and ask you to make a donation to charity rather than buying me anything or sending me a card.

I don’t expect any huge sums, all I ask is that whatever you would have spent on me (even if it’s just £1.50 for a card and a stamp), you instead donate to the CF Trust through http://www.justgiving.com/oli25 where you can also leave me a birthday message.  Like the ad says, every little helps.

For the traditionalists who still want to make contact on my birthday, you can email me or text me instead and save not only trees, but perhaps some lives too.

And if I’ve been far too presumptuous and you wouldn’t have bothered sending a card, then that’s fine, too.  I still love you all the same.

With love and best wishes to all,

Oli
xx”

You know me – I’m really not a mean and nasty person, and they say you should be careful who you tread on when you’re going up lest you pass them again on your way down.

Since I very much hope I’m still on the way up, and since I very much hope that I’ve got lots more publicity left in me, I’ve ducked my head back below the parapet and removed all references to the exact publication I was referring to yesterday.

I know, I know, I’m weak and feeble and shouldn’t give a flying one about what people think of me, but the way I look at it is this: in the coming months I’m going to be looking to do a lot more awareness raising of Transplant and Organ Donation and I want as many people on-side as possible.  Surely a petty (albeit nicely amusing) rant about the quality of a paper’s stories shouldn’t get in the way of that.

At least now they’re not likely to find it on a random google search of the name and I shouldn’t find myself blacklisted next time the wonderful Paula sends out an immaculate press release she’s authored on my behalf.

I shudder to think of the low esteem some fellows writers and bloggers would feel about me reading this, but I suppose that’s just who I am – I need to be liked by everyone because I’m a very insecure and shallow person.  So there.

On the up side, I’ve had  some great ideas for promotion and publicity as well as a few short films and other projects I might just have on the burners right now.  Who knows what’ll become of them – and I’m not going to detail them here just yet, because we all know what happened last time I did that – but we’ll wait it out and see.

The sun took a long time to come out today.  I’m hoping it does better tomorrow.

Some days are easier than others, that’s pretty clear after all the months I’ve been scribbling these bits and pieces for myself and whoever happens to be passing to peruse. But while a day may not have been as good as the day before it, at least you can rely on the laughably awful local newspaper to make you giggle through anything.

It is, quite possibly, the worst newspaper in the history of publishing – it would be laughed out of Fleets Street and probably still raise quite a few disparaging chuckles from Sesame Street. It’s pathethic, lazy journalism with hardly a hint of any sub-editing. But boy, does it make me laugh.

Take today’s issue, which landed on my doormat this morning. The lead story was about a pensioner who’s been BANNED from his golf club for using his own buggy. Or at least that’s what the headline leads you to believe. Actually, he’s bought himself a golf buggy to save money on hiring one from the club and they’ve told him he can’t use it because they’re not insured for it.

Laughable health and safety procedures, yes, but hardly the totally-out-of-order disability-discrimination they’re trying to make it out to be. Sure, I feel sorry for the old fella: it’s not cheap to hire buggies. But honestly, it’s hardly the meanest, nastiest thing in the world, is it? It’s a bunch of silly rules which have upset a pensioner.

It gets better, though. How about the article (or is it just an advert) about the new flats going up in Bletchley. With over half still on the market, you too can share the AMAZING views of Milton Keynes from your living room window. It’s even illustrated with a picture of the amazing view: IKEA. Well, IKEA, ASDA, the new footie stadium, downtown Bletchley and some trees. Not exactly the inspiring penthouse vista that you might have anticipated.

I’m consistently amazed and amused at the hilariously low quality of the rag (it really is a rag), and it’s collection of “human interest” stories which get published every week. I suppose I shouldn’t be railing against it quite so much as I have, on occasion, been known to use it myself as a voice of publicity for the various campaigns I get involved in. But even then they managed to spell my name differently in the main article than from the headline. Awesome.

I honestly don’t know if it’s just that MK doesn’t have enough in the way of “news” to make it interesting, or if there’s a genuine total lack of decent editorial leadership, sub-editing or reporting skills, but whatever it is, the paper is worth more as a source of entertainment than as a source of information on the city.

Oh the joys of having very little to do: you do get to see some wonderful things.

All those of you who visit and read me avidly (or just slightly bored-ly) and long to pass on my blog address to others to entertain, or bore stupid, but have trouble remembering the site address – REJOICE!!

For the benveolent Family Matlack from Texas, with whom I managed to HUGELY over-stay my welcome in early 2004 (which is an epic tale far too long for this post) have once again come up trumps, totally out of the blue.

Clearly worried that far too many people were missing out on my myriad ramblings and mighty rants against the world/my chest/other people’s blogs/life in general, Adam – the techno-savvy gadget-freak I always wanted to be – has not only registered smilethroughit.com for me, but also done all those little bits of re-directing and stuff that I would never have known how to do.

So now you can email all your friends, update your myspace, add to your favourites and generally pass on to the world that the greatest blog in Knaresborough Court is now officially www.smilethroughit.com

Woo-hoo!! And YAY for our American cousins (when they’re not duping Tony B into war….)!!

AND I bet I still can’t beat him on the X-box….

Sometimes people really make life hard for themselves – and they don’t seem to realise how much they’re contributing to it themselves.

It struck me watching the BBC’s new Fame Academy thing for Comic Relief first off. Every night they all step up into the “circle of fear” to perform slightly out-of-tune, glorified karioke versions of wel-known songs to varying degrees of success (and even I’ll admit that Ray Stubbs had me smiling tonight with his version of “Lola”). But what kind of a mind-set does it get you in to call your performance space the “circle of fear”?

If you want to ward off your nerves and give of your best, you need to be feeling positive and confident when you step up to the mic. Telling yourself you’re stepping into the worst 12 feet of space in a building is hardly gearing yourself up for success, is it?

But that’s not the thing that’s lead me to this. What’s bothered me tonight is reading another blog of a lady who says she’s “not coping” with all the things in her life.

She lists all the many things going wrong with her – some unavoidable, some unbelievably sad and some which, to me, are a matter of pure perspective.

Some people – and this isn’t aimed merely in one direction – don’t seem to know how to let things go. They like to wallow in their failures, their mistakes, their foibles and to make sure everyone else knows how much they are suffering.

You know what? We all are. We all have our own daemons, our own battles to fight, our own mountains to climb. Bad things happen – that’s a part of life.

But the measure of a man – or a woman, or a child – is whether he can take the knocks on the chin and get right back up, look life in the eye and say, “Is that all you’ve got for me?” It’s not easy, but neither is it meant to be – nor should it be. Where is the joy in victory if you’ve not had to fight to get it?

Sometimes you fight and sometimes you lose, but there’s no good to come from dwelling on your losses. That’s not to say you can’t learn from them, but you’ve got to take your lesson and move right along. A rolling stone gathers no moss, it’s said, and why open yourself up to being over-taken by weeds when you can keep on moving and break free?

Blame is the hardest thing in the world to accept, yet some people choose to heap it on themselves. Why go through life carrying a burden that you’ve given yourself? Come on, life gives us enough to carry on our own, there’s no point adding to it. Blaming yourself for things you can’t change is a surefire way to get yourself into a vicious circle of personal degradation.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m belittling people’s problems, nor do I intend to suggest that I’m forever rosey and never have my dark days – anyone reading this blog over time will know how much I’ve struggled. I merely mean to suggest that sometimes, you need to offer yourself a fresh perpective on your situation – to look at it from a different angle and see if the insurmountable is actually just really f***ing hard.

“Fate doesn’t hang on a wrong or right choice,
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice.”

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.

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….?

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.

After nearly 6 weeks away from my little Oli-world in far, far Bletchley (that’s kind of like a Galaxy far, far away, only with less hospitable bars) I’m back and wonderfully happy to be in my own space again.

Mum and Dad have been fantastic over the last two months and have really gone out of their way to make it look like they’ve not been going out of their way to accomodate me, when I know it must have been a pain in the butt.  I appreciate the fact that most parents would do whatever they could to make life easier for their offspring, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful when they do.

I suppose it helped that my bro was home for a good chunk of the time too, because at least I could pretend that maybe a little of the disruption was thanks to him, but I know that it’s mostly me!

Still, I’m out of their hair now, although I dare say I’ll be just as, if not more, reliant on them back here than I was at home.  I know that when the going gets tough here, it’s going to get really tough, even with K around to help out, but we’re all prepared for it and we’ll tackle whatever hiccups come our way head on and with true Lewington smiles plastered all over our faces.

It’s just a really wonderful feeling to be back here, living with K and enjoying being just the two of us for the first time since November.  More than anything, it’s been lovely tonight just to curl up on the sofa and watch TV and chill out.

I’m possibly slightly sadly over-excited at the thought of getting down to work tomorrow in my newly re-mastered study – the story of which is an epic tale of human calculation and lateral thinking that only my Dad and I could get lost in.  Even my mild-mannered mother started losing her rag with us yesterday.  Suffice it to say that it’s not too easy to work out how to fit 2 bookcases, a desk, a filing cabinet, a drawer chest and a soon-to come coat stand into one former bedroom.

All of the excitement of the move and the on-going tidying, sorting and clearing has drained my batteries for the day, though, so I’m off to bed for a good rest up in my own bed, with my own pillows, my own sheets and my lovely K beside me.  Oh, and Neve, too.

In the last two days I’ve come to a shocking personal conclusion: I’m an addict.  Twice over.  I’m now – 100% officially – addicted to Sky+.  And I’m now – 100% officially – addicted to Borders.

Nuts.

I don’t watch much TV – hardly any at all when I’m not around K.  She’s a terrible influence on me because she’ll watch any old rubbish and claim it’s interesting, happily squidged on a sofa all day long.  Ironically, I can’t get her to share my passion for films because she doesn’t have the attention-span for them.  Hmmm…. there may be something in this “MTV generation” theory after all… but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, I don’t watch much TV – maybe an hour a day, possibly two and it’s usually specific programs that I want to watch.  I’ve never been much of a sofa-surfing channel-hopper.  Well, OK, I was once upon a time, until my brother began to tease me about my being able to win Telly Addicts on my own and I started having nightmares of Noel Edmonds in family-knitted garish Christmas jumpers.

So it used to really bug me when I’d look at the night’s listings and discover that the only two things I really wanted to watch were on at the same time.  Or, more particularly annoying, given it’s infrequent occurence, when I had something planned which clashed with something important.

Since moving back to Mum and Dad’s, however, I’ve been blessed with the genius that is Sky+.  The best thing in the world about Sky+ is it means I don’t ever, EVER have to watch daytime TV.  Even if I do have those days when I really can do nothing but sit on my butt on the sofa and veg out, I can record a whole evening’s worth of vaguely-entertaining fayre, without having to resort to the daytime schedules of not-even-close-to-entertaining pap.  Or Neighbours (which is another category altogether).

Most of all, what I love about it is being able to watch things whenever I want to.  For example, I’ve developed a new routine whereby I keep myself busy for most of the day, but permit myself a “lunch hour” in the middle of the day to grab lunch and sit and do nothing.  Which means I can record things from the night before and catch up with them today.

All of which is a really long way of going about saying that I watched a really interesting programme today.  But actually, I’ve been prattling on so long about the genius of Sky+ it seems pointless to go into my new-fangled theories on positive thinking and instead I’ll save it for another day and come back to it fresher and less Sky+’d up.

Back to my addictions, though.  Borders: the wonderful world of literature and other stuff that’s descended from on high (read: opened a store in MK as opposed to the nearest one being in Oxford) and plonked itself slap-bang in the middle of my everyday life.

I’ve been there 4 times now, 3 times in the last week and for a combined total of around 4 hours and I still don’t feel like I’ve managed to have a really good look around.  I maintain, in fact, that I still won’t until I’ve settled myself into a comfy Starbucks chair and flicked through an un-bought book for half an hour, finished my coffee, put the book back and come home.

The great thing about Borders, and what really stands out when you walk in, especially for someone like me who loves books, is that it’s just so wonderfully full of books.  I mean, they’re everywhere.  And not just in a regular book-shop kind of way. 

I mean they’re EVERYWHERE and “everywhere” goes on for absolutely AGES.  It’s the biggest biggest biggest book-holding space in the whole widest world of Milton Keynes and is so spectacularly amazing it makes me positively dribble with excitement.  I can almost smell the print.

So now I can’t keep myself away.  I have to have my Borders fix.  Twice in two nights I’ve been there for an hour between 8pm and 9pm, just to wander around when it’s not full of silly people doing silly things like trying to shop for Christmas presents when I’m trying to be there and just enjoy the SPACE.  Inconsiderate little so-and-so’s.

It is mildly – only mildly – concerning what effect this could have on my bank balance.  I’ve been fairly good so far – so far – at keeping my wallet in check and not splashing out, but it’s only a matter of time.

I see Borders, and my addiction to it, as rather like one of these new Super Casinos that are due to be hitting our shores sometime in the near future (you know, the one that should be in Blackpool that the Government are making everyone think they might put somewhere else, just to spite Blackpool and take away it’s “UK’s Las Vegas” tag, as if that was something to be proud of in the first place).  You think you’ve got it under control, and that you’re winning.  But sooner or later the situation’s gonna change, everything will turn around on you and you’ll find yourself completely wiped out.

Mind you, at least when I’ve cleaned myself out, maxed out my credit cards and had to lock myself in the flat and barricade the baliffs out I’ll have something good to read….