The Christmas roller coaster continues on it’s ever-hastening track with a visit to Southend to see A&A and Sebby G, the newest addition to my Mum’s side of the family.

Try as I might (even with the might of Google) I can’t figure out what relationship he is to me, though. What I’m almost sure of is that he’s either a second cousin or a first cousin once removed. An initial Google search turned up a definition making him my second cousin, being a child of my first cousin. The mighty (but often incorrect) WIkipedia, however, suggets the child of a first cousin as being my first cousin once removed, by dint of the fact that our shared relation is one-step removed between us (ie, my shared relation with my Cousin is my Grandfather, and Seb’s Great-Grandfather), which makes more sense to me, although frankly, it’s way too early in the morning to be calculating all this.

Anyway, he’s the newest edition to my extended clan and whichever way you look at it, he’s awesomely cute.

We were up at 8 for the drive, which didn’t take us as long as expected, even though it involved the M25 on the last “trucking” day before Christmas. Arriving around 12, we all immediately set about scrapping over first dibs on Seb, but were scuppered by his mother handing him straight over to my mum. Although, frankly, she’d have got him first anyway, she could beat any of us in a fight if she wanted cuddles.

Taking my lead from last night’s Ebn cuddle order, I swept in for seconds after mum, but managed simply to cause the little one to burst into tears, being rescued by K, who shut him up immediately with some random female witch-doctor power that she has.

Lunch was a separate whole bundle of fun, enjoying as we did a Raqlette (which K will no doubt sweep in and spell-check for me when she reads this) which is essentially a really easy way to cater for groups as it involves cooking your own food in a delightfully fun way. There is a grill element covered by a large slab of granite on which you cook strips of meat, veg or whatever else takes your fancy, while underneath you have a mini-frying pan to slip under the grill to melt cheese or fry quails eggs, as is your wont.

The only issues with this style of dining are that you never know when you’ve eaten too much until it’s too late and, from my perspective, it’s almost impossible to keep track of how much you’re eating and thusly how many Creon to take in order to make sure it’s all digested.

Once we’d laughed our way through a cracking meal, we all settled our stomachs by making arses out of our selves on the Wii-Fit, a ridiculously stupid device that uses your body-weight on a board to move the characters in a computer game.

I soon realised it wasn’t my day when I tried out the Yoga challenges and not only couldn’t even manage a single press-up, but end up almost flat on my face from trying to be a tree. Balance is not my forte.

By this time, after his post-lunch nap, Sebastian was being passed around the room again and this time turned the opposite cheek, crying at K and falling asleep again as soon as he came to me. Clearly an indecisive kid, although he certainly knows when he wants to sleep and when he doesn’t. He managed, through the course of the Raqlette, to sleep through two smoke alarms going off directly above his head.

By 7pm we were all pretty shattered and I still had a 2-hour plus drive ahead of me, since I’d been dedicated (or foolishly volunteered to be) sober-one for the day, seeing as we had to use my car anyway following a minor mishap on my mother’s part in Dad’s car.

On the road just after 7, we eventually got back to our humble little homestead about 9 and pretty much directly hit the sack. I love Christmas.

Who’d have thought that going to a theme park in the middle of winter could be fun? I suppose it helped that it wasn’t totally freezing, just a bit on the nippy side. I think the thing that really makes it, though, is the company you keep on days like today and I couldn’t have had better company for keeping the place cheery and fun than my Godson whose idea it was to go in the first place.

Gulliver’s Land in MK is the place I took him the very first time we went out together on our tod. He was probably not a lot older than 5 or 6 and Gulliver’s caters perfectly to that age, with a large selection of Alton Towers-lite rides that are fun and a little scary but largely all appropriate for the post-toddler age group.

Now pushing 11 and with me lolloping up through my 20s it occurred to me that it might not be as intensely amusing as the last time we went, but if anything we had more fun today than we had last time, despite the larger half of the park being closed off due either to the wintry weather conditions or the low levels of staffing.

We managed to amble around the park for a few hours of festive fun, queuing for almost nothing and having a whale of a time on just about everything (altough the Might Mouse roller coaster was neither mighty nor really a roller coaster so much as a large figure of 8 with a train on it). In fact, many of the rides were incredibly dull, but I haven’t laughed so much and so solidly for quite a while.

Dodgems with only two people is an interesting experience, as is riding the same mini-whirly-pirate ship four times in a row, although ride of the day has to go to the back-to-back teacup rides which left us both staggering around the park like Santa getting off his sleigh at the end of a globe-trotting 24 hours of non-stop sherry and pies. Mind you, if we’d had the pies they wouldn’t have been safe in our stomachs (images of the Red Dwarf “food escape!” slipping into my head…).

And, ironically for a theme park – which are, at the best of times, renowned for their escalated prices within the boundary walls – we actually found the city’s cheapest pick-n-mix, which delighted not only the two of us, but also K when we arrived to pick her up from work with her own little bag of goodies.

After a quick cuppa back home, we then assaulted the arcades in the snow dome and whittled away even more time and pocket-heavy change doing everything from shooting zombies to playing mock-basketball before running Li’l R home.

We made a quick dash to Tesco for a few last Chrimbo bits before heading across the road from ours to see a friend and her mum for a little festive cheer with mulled wine and assorted Christmas treats (pigs in blankets, anyone?) and to have cuddles with not-so-little Baby E.

Having wedged herself in for firsties on E this evening, I have taken the executive decision that K has forfeited her rights to first cuddles with Sebby G, my cousin’s newborn, when we see them tomorrow. Although I suspect I may end up in a fist-fight with my mum over him, I know that I have dibs on first cuddles between us to at least.

I can’t wait!

PS – today also saw the internet debut of Live Life Then Give Life’s latest video piece, which I directed, shot and edited to highlight the varying attitudes to Christmas from different transplant perspectives. You can check it out here.

So after my ill-advised comments on the frustrations of seeing Mamma Mia knock Titanic of the top spot in the historical British box office charts I thought I ought to make sure today’s is something that’s not going to get anybody’s backs up.

So here it is:

Today, I drank 2 cups of tea and I also had some smoothie made from just fruit and nothing else and I went shopping a little bit and got some stamps and some other things.

K is poorly, which is sad.

I hope this post hasn’t caused any offence.

It’s been a really strange day today, giving me a surreal, 3rd-person insight into how my life has changed in the last 13 months.

I was out for the day filming with Emily for the Live Life Then Give Life website – part of our new media project to add even more impact to our life stories by getting the people in question on film.

First port of call was our fabulous advocate (or Fabocate, if you will) Jess, who has been waiting nearly 3-and-a-half years for a double-lung transplant and is now way beyond the “worrying” stage of the wait and headed rapidly downhill. Sitting an interviewing her at her home in Kent, I remember how similar I was last year just weeks before my call – I couldn’t really move around, everything was a struggle and, mentally, I was right on the verge of giving it all up.

She also made me realise, however, just why people find people with CF so inspiring. As I sat and watched her making light of her situation while pausing for enormous, breath-stealing coughing fits, I saw in her something which I suppose many people once saw in me – a determination not to be beaten by something we’d battled for years. More than that, though, I sat there and wondered to myself how on earth I did it.

At the time, you don’t really have a choice, you just get on with it, but looking at it from the outside yesterday I could see just how much hard work it is to stay alive and keep fighting and I was blown away by Jess’s willpower. She’s a phenomenal girl and I hope and pray that she gets the call she so desperately needs now.

By way of total contrast, we left Jess in the mid-afternoon and traveled to Epsom in Surrey to talk to another one of our advocates, Lisa, who is celebrating, like Emily and I, her second Christmas post-transplant. In fact, Lisa, Emily and I were all transplanted in 2007, spreading ourselves through the year – Emily first, in January, Lisa later on and then I brought up the rear in November.

Talking to Lisa I was given chance to reflect on the changes that happen between the state we were all in pre-transplant and the freedom and joy we all feel now it’s behind us. We’re all incredibly lucky people, but it made me realised even more strongly than usual just why we all work so hard to raise the profile of organ donation – this life we’re living now is amazing, remarkable and truly miraculous, but we still lose over a 1000 people who need a transplant every year. That’s more than 10% of the people who are on the waiting list.

It doesn’t have to be like that – we can all help to change it by talking to our loved ones about our wishes and making them talk to their friends and their families and to let everyone know that giving someone the gift of life when you no longer have yours is the greatest thing anyone can do for another human being.

Sign up. And Talk.

I often laugh at the BBC local news when they run Transplant-related stories – they’re so hackneyed and cliché now that you can pretty much use the same voice-over and just change the pictures.

But I had to eat my words this evening when I got this link through to my friend Sally’s report that went out this lunchtime.  It’s hard to think that a little over a year ago I was in exactly the same position – here’s hoping that this time next year Sally’s in exactly my position.

Today’s been a productive day (alongside yesterday) in getting started on a new writing project whilst polishing an old one.

A previous screenplay of mine on which I’ve been sitting for a while has come back out of the draw for a once-over.  I’m impressed actually with how good it is, but far too aware of it’s limitations.  When K first read it, she gave me some great notes on it, which I’m now about to implement, along with a whole raft of changes I’ve identified for myself in my latest read through.

At the same time, I’ve been hit by one of those rare ideas that comes into your head almost fully-formed.  It’s a complicated story (or rather group of stories) that will take some time to work into a coherent structure, but I’m really pleased with the concept, which I think could be really powerful.  And, without being too pessimistic, cheap to shoot as well.

On top of those, I also wrote a short film script this morning as well, which has been floating around in my head for far too long and finally found itself a place on the hard-drive of my computer.  It’s actually a really simple story and a really easy shoot, so I’m in the process of working out if there’s any way I can fit it in before Christmas.  I guess as a little present to myself or something.  It would be nice, but it does involve finding a cast of one guy and one girl who are free for a day to shoot in MK sometime next week (possibly Thursday 18th), so we’ll see what happens.  I’m not getting over-excited about it yet, but it could be cool if it comes off.

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.

For most people who know me and have ever had any kind of a discussion of musicals with me, you’ll be well aware, no doubt, of my “issues” with Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (which, apparently, is a registered trademark, according to the writing on the back wall of the set…).

I think the best description of my attitude towards Joseph is “jaded”.  Having worked at Milton Keynes Theatre – one of the country’s biggest receiving houses – for nearly seven years, on and off, I have seen Joseph pass through, in one incarnation or another, five or six times.  It’s a great, vibrant, fun show, but after the third or fourth year, having seen the comings and goings, the shabby sets and sometimes dodgy backing performers, you can get a little tired of it.

Which is why sitting in the audience of the Adelphi on the Strand last night I felt a tremor of fear rippling through me.  Lee Mead was a classmate of my cousin’s at a local drama school in Southend way back in the day, so they have been following his progress carefully since he first popped up on the BBC’s show about the show’s lead.  I have to say he was always a clear winner of that, so I figured that the show must be worth going to see to find out if I was right or not.

In addition (and probably more importantly), K is possibly the only person in the world who loves Joseph so much she not only knows it word for word, but when we was still single-figured in age she managed to wear out the tape of the original London cast recording with Jason Donovan, and yet has NEVER actually seen the show.  To say she was excited is like saying people think Michael Jackson is a little on the odd side.

The show itself was outstanding, I must admit.  It’s got an absolutely fantastic cast who are all consummate professionals to a man, woman and child.  The quality of the singing and dancing was fantastic.  Having read the notices when the show first opened, it appear to suggest that they had simply jazzed up the sets from the touring production, but this was like nothing I’ve seen on the tour – they’ve re-imagined it (to steal a pseudo intellectual arty-farty term from the movies) and come up with something very similar in concept by with many more modern flourishes.

I’m told that the whole production is based on the 90s Palladium version, starring first Jason Donovan and then the slightly left-field but equally acclaimed Philip Schofield. It certainly has a much bigger feel to it than the touring version and is a lot busier with set moves and scene changes.

The whole thing is technically remarkable, very much akin to the proverbial duck on the water – the staging is incredibly simplistic and the technical side appears incredibly simple.  But sitting and watching the vast variety of pieces coming to and fro around the two revolves centre-stage, it is easy to imagine the manically-paddling feet of the technicians backstage.

Talking to one of the cast after the show (which I’ll come to later), he was explaining how the technicians are almost as precisely choreographed as the performers on stage, such are the quick-change demands of the props and set dressings that are almost constantly on the move.

As is my wont at most theatre I go to now, with several friends working in the theatre and knowing some of their friends, I tend to scan the programme for names I may recognise in passing.  Imagine my surprise when, glancing down the cast list, I came across the name of a good friend of mine from my early days working the bars at MKT.  A friend who ran away from MK and his “cosy” box office job to enroll and subsequently take by storm the Guildford School of Acting.

Not having had his number for some years, I legged it around to stage door during the interval (not as simple in Town as it is in MK or Northampton, it must be said) and dropped him a note with my number on it to see if he wanted to catch up.  I was a mite nervous of meeting him as I was informed by K that she had been horrible to him when she knew him before.  That was before I realised she had meant when they were 8.  I figured he’d probably got over it by now.

So after the show we ambled round to stage door, dodging the throngs at the front of the theatre waiting for Mr Mead, and met up with JS and headed to a quiet little bar just around the corner for a drink and a catch up.

JS is one of my friends I’m most proud of – he’s gone out and done what he’s always wanted to do.  So many people who work front of house in theatres spend a lot of time talking about how they want to be on the stage singing, dancing, acting and everything else.  JS actually got off his arse and went and did it.

He auditioned like mad, got into a great drama school, did three years of hard graft and came out at the top of his class.  After jobbing for a year or so post-graduation, he joined the original cast of the new Joseph from the start and opened the show in the West End, where he’s now done a full 18 months and still has 6 months on his contract.  Not only that but, as a Swing, he has the hardest performing job in the West End.

Not many people know what a Swing is, other than it being a name at the end of the list of characters in most musical programmes.  A Swing is, in essence, a cover-player.  They are there to fill in the gaps when anyone is off sick or injured.  There are two types of swing – an on-stage swing or an off-stage swing.  An off-stage swing is essentially an understudy for a lot of roles, an on-stage swing is basically a performer in the show who plays whoever he’s needed to play.

In Joseph, for example, that means that JS has to know the part of every male character in the show, bar Joseph, Jacob and the Pharaoh – all three of which have their own understudies. That equates to 11 different roles that he has to know inside-out and be able to play at the drop of a hat.  And he rarely plays the same role more than a week at a time and often changes role every night.

Next time you’re in the Theatre and glancing down the first few names on the cast list, take a look down the bottom and spare a thought for the hardest working performers in the Theatre – eight shows a week of they-know-not-what, but rarely put a foot wrong.

All in all, it was an awesome night – a great show (albeit with a few slightly odd stylistic decisions – the less said about the random psychedelic 60s sequence the better) and a great time catching up with an old friend.  Who could ask for more.  I want to say a big thanks to my Ma and Pa for getting the tickets for us as a first 2nd birthday present – it couldn’t have been better.