Dedicated to my 11 year old self!

God Save the Queen - red button theatre and film workers' co-operative

Born Middle Aged!

The Shark Fisherman of Wales was born middle aged. I was born with a Pipe and Slippers. I have never been young. Maybe in body, but never in spirit. As a Teenager in the Early 1980's I was listening to cassette tapes of Rock & Roll. Used to go into Our Price in Watford and get the most obscure Rockabilly I could find. I always wanted a Flat Top. Never had one! I was on the lookout for Chucka Boots. You've probably had the feeling that you belong to a different time, era, place, planet even. As I stated at the beginning of this blog, I felt it then to be a Farewell Letter, a Dear John Letter to Wales, the land of my birth. I was born in the South, reared in the North and am now living mostly in the middle with occasional sojourns to Das Kapital! I made a chart a few year back with all the years I have been on't planet starting with 1966. Up until aged 10 I suppose all was ticking along hunky-dory. I put one word next to the year to describe the overall general emotional well being of tut Shark Fisherman, Good, Bad, Ok! I look back over the years and I notice that my best years or when things were good were when I lived outside of Wales. The two years from 1983-1985 in Watford College. The four years from 2000 - 2004 when I was a Teacher in South East London. They were the interesting years even though I was undiagnosed at the time. Bipolar Disorder lest we forget! "So you dumb schmuck why don't you high tail it out of there?" Oh that it were so easy! I have invested a lot of time and effort in trying to understand this country, this principality of ours. I've gone through all the stages, from the rugby jersey wearing jerk to the card carrying member of Plaid Cymru. I am trying to evolve into a Multi-sensory being. The day of five sensory beings is coming to a close. What use Wales if the world is fucked would be my argument now? The Earth needs saving and then we can save Wales. I run on emotion and Wales is an emotional country with emotional people. I feel impotent! Unable to move or make a move! It's a good country to retreat too should the going get tough.  It would be so easy to move geographically but I feel that I have unfinished business but I don't know what that is. Watch this Space Shark Watchers and Followers!

5 Months Old Today!

Well it was five months ago on January 19th that my little baby shark blog was born and as you can see by the number of page views and the quality of advertising, it has quite literally gone from strength to strength. I don't particularly have anything of significance to say today but that doesn't normally stop bloggers (Ouch!) I've been doing a bit of forward planning today and am looking forward to visiting Liverpool in June just prior to my 6 month anniversary. I'm going to see a production of 'In Our Times' by Collective Encounters, Theatre for Social Change. It will be on at the Casa Bar, 29 Hope Street, Liverpool at 6.30pm. Then the following morning I catch a train to Darlington. I've never been there before and am looking forward to it. I hear it's very nice. I'm meeting up with a novelty double act called 'Spears and Green' and we're going to see if we can make theatre together because that's ostensibly what I am, a Theatre Maker! Does that sound pretentious? Good! I know I'm a good one when I get going, it's just that I get disillusioned rather quickly. We're hoping to bring in ideas and then bring them to their feet. It gets me out of the Diff! Anything to get me out of the Diff! Out of Wales! You've got to get out of Wales occasionally. I like the sound of the North! I like the Humour of Peter Kay, I like the music of the Smiths. I like the fact that they say Dinner for the meal that you have at midday. Only David Cameron does Lunch! If I meet a Northern personage who says Lunch,I shall be dissapointed. So folks,it's baby steps cos I'm a fragile middle aged male with more angst and neuroses than you can shake a stick at. I was called a Sioni Bob Ochr last week!     "Sioni bob ochr" (Lit: Johnny all sides) is someone who supports everything - or maybe just whoever's winning!  I think it's a little harsh but I can see where the observation comes from. I like to evaluate situations from all sides. Choosing sides is very difficult for me! There is defintely an element of a split personality to me! David or Dafydd? I call it tomato, you call it tomatoe, potato, potatoe, let's call the whole thing off. I definitely couldn't enter Politics. I couldn't make a decision to save my life.

Therapeutic Community 2

I have just re-read my previous blog post and if I didn't know myself, in other words, if I was you, I might think, well, this is all a bit far fetched. The Guy is Bi-Polar, he might be Hypo-Manic. He might be going high, getting enthusiastic. I am not. I am flat-lining.

The two major periods of employment that I had were as a Development Officer for the Young Farmers' Clubs of Wales and a Head of Drama. So I have worked with the youth of city and country.

My specific interest is in Mental Health because of my own experiences but because I have been given time to observe the machinations of Society rather than being forced to take part in something so unhealthy I feel there is an opportunity to create an environment of peace and sanctuary, of healing and repair.

What makes me think as a white guy that I can help or even understand the experience of Black and Minority Ethnic Young People. Well I've taught them in school and observed how creative and inventive they are. I feel that UK plc owes something to these young people specifically. Their grandparents and greatgrandparents were brought here to fulfill employment shortages!
What a cold and unwelcome environment they arrived in.

The Therapeutic Community could provide a variety of experiences. Horticulture and Animal Husbandry, working the land, Theatre, Therapy, lots and lots of therapy.

It's about getting a team together. Maybe this group won't be reached by what I have in mind but a specifically designed Therapeutic Community could help many.

Anyway, you gotta have a dream and this is my dream!

I am blogging for Mental Health!

Therapeutic Community

http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king

I have a dream that one day a Therapeutic Community will be established in the hills of Wales, in old abandoned farm buildings converted into a healing centre where the hurt of  their previous life will be integrated and accepted and individuals will be able to return to their communities and become leaders but not of gangs.

They will be able to emulate Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

They will return, not to the status quo! They will return as changemakers and bridge builders. The present way that society is being run is destroying the soul of those unable or unwilling to compete. Those who will have passed through the 'Underground Railroad' will show by example, a different way. This is 2012 and we cannot carry on this way. Those punished and sent to prison in the riots need to heal or they will exact revenge on others, or more likely on themselves. We must stop this avaricious, consuming and competing. Inequality in Society is all too evident and emotional abuse is endemic in families through poverty and lack of opportunity.

Is it really a surprise when people become Mentally Unwell? 

We must find a way to put an end to

'thwarted ambition'.

We must find a different way.

I am 46 now. I will die when I am 76. I have thirty years ahead of me to realise this dream.

I have wasted the past thirty years,
I'm not prepared to waste the next thirty.

In my role as Artistic Director of Red Button Theatre Co-operative and as a Freelance Mental Health Advocate I am declaring my intention in this Blog Post.

I want to realise this dream and I know the people on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere who I know will help this dream materialise.  

Spread the word peoples, we are going to create a Care Farm, a Therapeutic Community.

I'm Blogging for Mental Health here folks!

Liverpool: A New Capital City!

I have spent the last 25 years in the plastic capital city of wales.  Anecdotaly (On Twitter) I heard that Liverpool fans booed the English National Anthem  yesterday at Wembley "God save the Queen".  God Save the Queen  a)an entity whose existence has yet to be proved,  b)save an unelected head of state from a German family.
I am told that I still have a Scouse accent. As a teenager I lived, as the one-eyed crow flies, some 35 miles from Birkenhead, over the border in North Wales. The people of North Wales, consumers to a woman, would be pulled by the gravitational force of the shops of Chester and Liverpool. This was before Wrexham became such a capitalist centre. I remember all these places in the last double dip recession, 1981-83, under Herr Thatcher's dictatorship. I remember Miners on the streets of Lime St in 84/85 with their collecting buckets. I remember Holly Johnson singing 'The Power of Love' in a basement record department. The party hats and paraphenalia in 'Blackwells' but there was no party. I returned to the city recently for the first time since then, and sensed the economic poverty immediately but the Scouse Spirit was alive and well as it had ever been. A Karaoke on a Monday night was like a Saturday night in any other city.
This blog post proposes that Liverpool becomes the Capital of Wales & Ireland. Dublin has become as touristy and trashy as Boris Johnson's London, the gentleman who had to apologise to a city on Radio Merseyside in 2005. Accusing Liverpool of a 'Victim Mentality'. If this fine, historic, spiritual city became a Celtic Capital then it wouldn't have to suffer these gibes from the Garrick Club. I'll hold my tattooed arms up to the sky and admit to buying into the romance of Liverpool. I've got 'Boys from the Blackstuff' on repeat flickering like a Super 8mm in front of my eyelids. When I can no longer deal with this reality, I move my energy up to the Sixth Chakra and indulge my delusions that life could be oh so different to the communal reality that we have created. Liverpool will always be my Capital City. I'm not even biased or tainted by tribal loyalties. I love Everton and Liverpool FC equally and have a soft spot for Tranmere Rovers Why? Because I am the Artistic Director of Red Button Theatre Company and the economic policies pursued by a culture and class elite have contributed to poverty and a sense of alienation in a geographical area at the mouth of the Mersey. So even though the Scousers wouldn't want to associate with the 'Woollybacks' Liverpool has more in common with the Welsh and Irish than it has with 'God Save the Queen'.

"Go ed Chelski and your London Weighting Allowance, go ed and do one."