Shark Fishing in the North West of England

I was at University the first time round when Mike Leigh's 'Naked' was released. I thought at the time that it was a magnificent film and David Thewlis's performance was a tour de force! A Mancunian on the run in London similar to Renton's Glaswegian in Trainspotting.



I like people who escape or at least try and escape. I have been trying to escape all my life, mostly my own psyche and the monster that I have created in my mind called Wales. It is like one of Renton's heroin induced hallucinations. It involves a huge Rugby Ball with  Bad Teeth and it belches and sings 'Hen wlad fy Nhadau ' whilst chomping on leaks and daffodils.
 At the moment I am escaping up to Manchester for two days a week until I can work out a permanent, fool proof move! I've had enough of Wales and Wales has had enough of my whingeing. Manchester is a very impressive city. I thought I was in Europe and not in the United Kingdom when I arrived. Trams! Ting a ling Ting! I was back in the Dam.
I was familiar with Liverpool and the myth and romanticism of Liverpool when I lived in North Wales. I understand from a friend from Liverpool that the romanticism was not reciprocated. Residents had been to Llandudno or Rhyl on holiday but that was it. Woollybacks did not register on the Scousers' radar. The only two times I had visited Manchester before was for sport. I went with a friend who was a Man U supporter to see Ipswich when I think Dave Sexton was manager and in 1981 I went with my father to see a very boring 69 runs by Chris Tavare and Geoffrey Boycott for England at the Old Trafford Cricket ground. The following day Ian Botham scored 131 runs! We certainly picked our day.
I digress. I've come off the dole and signed up for an M.A in Playwriting at the University of Salford. The first year that the course has been run. I can see funds running out before long so I am going to have to secure some sort of employment. Scary!

On Wednesday of last week, we arrived in Bolton for a Tour of the Octagon Theatre and to watch J.B Priestley's An Inspector Calls. The first place I recognised was the steps to the Bolton Albert Hall as featured in Peter Kay's Video 'Live at the Albert Halls'. When I saw this video first I was struck by its theatricality. It was stand up comedy but it was also theatre because of the way Kay played with the emotions of the audience. Singing 'Danny Boy' with the audience at the end while his voice was as high as a Helium Balloon and leaving as the audience were still singing with their arms in the air.
Mike Leigh's 'Naked' was wonderfully sad and depressing. It confirmed my world view at the time which is still there and rises to the surface on occasion. Well, first week gone and so far so good. This Blog Post has just confirmed to me how important it is to have a good ending.

Take Me Back To Manchester When It's Raining

Damaged Goods

 

Perhaps by the time I had got to Voluntary Arts Wales, I was damaged goods. I had spent all my cartridges circum-navigating Wales in the name of the Federation of Young Farmers. I jumped ship. I got the job at VAW before 99 others or so I was told or was it nine. They shouldn't have employed me because I had smoked a big fat joint the night before and at the interview in Canton, just off the eponymous ley line of Cowbridge Rd East, I was just like Spud in his interview from Trainspotting. 

 

Needless to say, I got the job with my impressive insider knowledge of Wales and its different peoples. I span tall tales of the differences between Anglesey and Monmouth and that I held the key to opening up the people to their way of thinking. The fact that I spoke Welsh was going to be a help to the monoglot bosses. A Welsh donkey! A pack horse ready to carry the Anglo Saxon message to well meaning voluntary arty types. What I should have been doing instead of sitting for interview for these soppy sods was setting myself up in a cave somewhere in Eryri, setting myself up as a Welsh Speaking Hermit instead of doing the devil's dirty work. I was and am damaged goods. 

 

186th Post

This is my 186th post! I want you to cast your mind back to one of my earlier posts, before I got distracted
http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/bridge-building-at-builth.html
 They say a week is a long time in Politics, well it has taken a year and a half to get to the next part of my autobiographical blog. So from Bridge Building at Builth Wells, I went to work for an organisation called Voluntary Arts Wales with their headquarters in Welshpool, Powys so I moved from South Powys to North Powys but I was not to last in this post long. The remit was to help voluntary arts organisations to access sources of funding. I had even moved this time into a converted Mill House in the village of Meifod. I had started coughing quite badly and was feeling pain in my shoulder and out of breath. I was keeping myself so busy that I wasn't allowing myself to stop and reflect on my subconscious. What I remember about Welshpool and the area surrounding it especially to the hinterland was that it felt lovely, warm and welcoming. I have been there today. Travelling up from Aberystwyth to Machynlleth and then to Glantwymyn/Cemaes Rd up to Brigand's Inn and then on to Trallwng/Welshpool via Cann Office and Llanfair Caereinion. 

It was all change in Welshpool and not for the best, half the high street had been made one way and there was now a Tesco and a Sainsburys. We wanted to try the wonderful food at the Corn Store Restaurant and were now only able to cross the road as pedestrians if the road traffic had stopped at the Red Light. We managed it and it was well worth the effort but again towns and cities of the UK are set up for fast paced movement. Welshpool used to be a market town that you could saunter around with a straw in your mouth. Not any more! The town brought back memories of good food and friendly people 'Mwynder Maldwyn'. A whistle stop visit to the Mid Wales institution of Charlies and then stuck in Newtown traffic on the way home. We came back through Caersws, Llanbrymair and Carno. The empty Laura Ashley factory now casting a historical shadow over the village. My nostrils widened along this road because I knew from memory that it was along here somewhere that the leader of the BNP lived, Nick Griffin. I used to pass it on my journeys North as there was a Panzer Kampfwagen on his drive. It was here that he hosted Jean Marie Le Pen in a Marquee in a Field across the road to his home. The Farmers of Montgomeryshire are conservative with a small c as witnessed by their MP Glyn Davies. Previously they had been represented by the the Ego maniac Lembit Opik, the lover of weather girls and cheeky girls in that order. So a round robin journey today that reminded me of April 1999 when on a visit to Cardiff from Welshpool I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My workaholic lifestyle had taken its toll.    
It would be wrong to call Voluntary Arts Wales sharks.....but I will. I worked for them or shall I say bled for them from January till April 1999 when a fast thinking and acting GP in Cardiff sent me straight up to Llandough Hospital for X Ray. The scar still visible now where the Biopsy was done and the diagnosis of blood cancer was given. They were more concerned about when I would return to work. They stopped paying me. I wouldn't be returning to that work. Instead of bullshitting my way through funding applications I endured a course of six doses of chemotherapy with me thinking "What the Fuck have I done to deserve this?" before my hair fell out. The National Health Service looked after me which is more than can be said for Voluntary Arts Wales but it was a long time ago.  

Poetry regarding the Prism of Prison

Poetry regarding the Prism of Prison

 

Your first taste, the family or the orphanage

No escape possible here for blood is thicker than water

Bruv!

And unless you want to do another stretch for

 patricide, sororicide, matricide or fratricide

You’ll just have to put up with Christmas, alone or with others.

Perhaps in the Prism of Prison, the greatest incarceration of all is where you are sitting

Now

School, Schola, Ysgol = the ladder to success or failure, depending on how well you do in your exams

Do this, Don’t do that! The bell like siren, goes, for the next experiment.

You are lab rats to be nurtured, encouraged, destroyed by the neurosis of teachers

Who in turn are destroyed by the fear of the Institution, then

Work

As if you didn’t work hard enough in school at such a tender age, you’ve now got to do it

all again for something that they call ‘Money’

The money that your prison family strove so hard to earn from the benefits system.

Everywhere you turn, the bars are coming down on the bars.

This is your rights of passage.

So get wasted, get laid, get stoned or get God.

It’s all that there is in this prison that they call life.

Look, if it all gets too much, you can do time in a proper prison

Go up to Wrexham

They are building a super one up there!

This prism of prison is a test, yes another exam, well you should be used to it by now!

Of how well you can behave as prisoner or guard.

You know that there is no escape

You’ve done the crime of being born

Of being born, to love, lust or the bottle.

Now you got to do the time.  

Are you ready to imprison another generation?

Shark Fisherman

Writer's Room

I am writing this Blog Post in my Writer's Room. It consists of an ancient yellow kitchen table on which sits my net book and printer underneath an Ikea yellow bookcase which holds my journals, jottings and assorted writings over the years. It is a small second bedroom in a two bedroom terrace street which was built circa 1896 if the house on the end is anything to go by. They were built to house the workers of Building Firm Wilmott Dixon who had a Factory at the back in Havelock Place. The factory was still there when I moved here in October 1988. The Factory went on fire in the early 1990's and there now stands a Housing Association Complex. My blind is three quarters down and the sun beams through the bottom. I should be outside somewhere but I am sat here bashing the keyboards listening to Talk Sport. A recent addition to the writers' room is an ancient camp bed that dates back to the 1950's, greenish metal on wheels. This will be my bed when I entertain visitors and literary groupies when my writing really takes off. My aim to become a modern day Dramatic Bukowski with tea and coffee on tap. I have published my first book at the age of 47.

http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2437
I have also signed up to do an M.A in Playwriting at Salford University which will take me away from the plastic capital of Wales for two days a week. Plenty of travel unless I can secure part time employment and accommodation in the North West. I had a Mexican Stand off at the Canton Job Centre. I was told that there would be no benefit for the likes of me, someone who chooses full time education over a life on benefits. I was on the old Incapacity Benefit (due to my Mental Health Diagnosis) which turned into E.S.A whose ATOS work capability assessment I failed or passed dependent on which side of the desk you sit on. So I have been on J.S.A for 8 months and now I am on nothing bar a wing and a prayer but I am a free man. I don't have to turn up and sign every two weeks and pretend that I have been using the Universal Job Search Online with delicacies such as Avon Representative and Call Centre drone on offer.
So I am setting about the script that I always wanted to follow and that script is of being a writer. It won't pay but I don't care. It is the only thing that I enjoy doing...well no that's not true, I enjoy gardening, I enjoy eating, sleeping and twitter. 

Well it is here in my writers' room that I dwell mostly now away from other 'hooman beans'. They are ok and not a problem one on one or in a group of three but any more than that I start feeling self conscious, the frenzy of the crowd is out for the shark fisherman.

Hit and runs into the cauldron when necessity requires, but not out of choice anymore!
The M.A is the first year it has ever been run and what sold it to me is that every Wednesday we (aspiring playwrights dahling! puts back of wrist dramatically to forehead) will attend one of three producing theatres, the Bolton Octagon, The Liverpool Everyman Playhouse and the Manchester Exchange. I hope it comes off and I can negotiate the demands of travel by privatised over priced train travel cos at the end I should come out of it with an M.A which means then that my Mental Health Diagnosis will mean nothing because I will have Mastered the Art of Mental Health. I'm sure that being a Manic Depressive will be an actual benefit because I should be able to draw on all the dark places. Who knows I might even turn my true story of 'Psychosis' into a Theatre Piece. This would probably be a 'one man' show with yours truly as Protagonist. I hope to develop the art of dialogue, story and plotting should the M.A work out as planned. I know that there is no point a 'writer' having a room if that writer is not a reader. 'Readers rooms' are much more important.
You can read some of my work here! https://red-button.webs.com/

Huis Van Bewaring Havenstraat

 

In 2005 I spent 4 months in the above establishment from August 11th-December 9th.

 

All because of my Mental Health

 

You can read the story here

http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2437



Open Wound

 

I have an open emotional wound that when pressed causes me to react instantly. Over-react! I wonder if we are all a little like this. I have recently had cause to terminate friendships because I detected future problems or toxicity. I have become almost ruthless in this regard. The people present themselves in an intriguing manner and I am genuinely interested in them. Then it moves on to noticing character traits that are not compatible with mine or perhaps are too similar too mine. Making friends is historically more difficult as you get older but ending friendships it appears is something I have now evolved into an art form. If I feel slighted or wronged in some way then I enter caustic text mode immediately and despatch the send button. I receive a puzzled by return and then I end it. Now I am trying to figure out whether this is a character flaw or related to one of the many diagnoses that have floated like bad smells in my general direction. There are two types of people, the diagnosed and the undiagnosed. How well can we keep our sanity really when we all know that we ar going to die? When we are faced with all sorts of nonsense, obstacles and irritations it surprises me that more people do not publicly crack. Most people crack at home away from the glare of the CCTV camera. We appear quite happy to be picked up pissed as newts in the middle of town on camera because its socially acceptable but to lose it or crack when you are sober, oh no, it's just not done dear boy. A former friend prophesied many years ago "that I would lose my temper often, in the future, especially with women and children". I wondered how he had come to this conclusion. Maybe I am too much of a coward to lose it with Males! I tend to fester, resent and hold a grudge! Do you? In recent months and on the eve of the publication of my book which details my ascent/descent to madness I am questioning the diagnosis ascribed to me of Bipolar Disorder. Initially they thought that I had Borderline Personality Disorder. They appear to have similar symptoms. I know that I have suffered with distressing, intrusive thoughts since my teenage years and that they have been pretty constant throughout my life and to deal with these has been exhausting and I have had two psychotic breaks. I am un medicated and I spend my days avoiding stress, people and social situations because I know that I have an open wound. I don't want people to identify it and I don't want people to press it. My reactions are not nice and not pleasant. It is passive-aggressive. I wish I didn't have this open wound but maybe we all have one.