Sunny Manchester!

This week sees the last session of the scriptwriting course that I have been attending since October. With only a few minor alterations to see to and I will have completed the assignment. Here's to sending it off and seeing where it gets me.

With this in mind, I have been looking for other similar creative writing courses. I had previously been recommended one by a friend in Manchester calledPaper Planes. Other things had always got in the way of attending and this week was looking to follow a similar pattern. I woke up Saturday morning after a fitful sleepless night I was contemplating not going. Given that it was a lovely springlike day thankfully I overcame this feeling and got in the car and drove to Manchester.

It was a enjoyable and productive experience, I have a few ideas that can be polished into something more substantial in time. It was also good to meet other writers, as well as catch with a couple of people I had met on a similar course last year. The group meets on the second Saturday of each month, in the Fuel Cafebar, Withington - a venue in the heart of the student district of Manchester. I think I might be making this a regular event in my diary.

The play that I wrote

Having had the good fortune to work as a journalist, the discipline of writing is something that I am used to. Even now that I have moved from being a full-time practitioner to being a teacher I still enjoy the idea of writing (well more the completion of the task than actually sitting down to do it). The want to write is still there and to satisfy this desire the occasional freelance gig as a football reporter and the aborted attempts at blogging have had to suffice.

As the first post in my born again blog alluded to the last few years have been slightly frustrating in a creative sense as they have been taken up with having to complete a post-graduate qualification for my job – something that was a contractual obligation. This thankfully has now been completed and I can concentrate on the extra-curricular activities that I enjoy away from my job.

So since October, I have been attending a night school class at the University of Liverpool, the course has been for the Writing for the Stage and Radio course. Time has flown by and that sadly that has two more weeks to run after this week.

This course is organised by the Workers Education Association who have a long standing and good reputation for the many courses they run. I have previous experience of their courses, as I completed a songwriting course in 1997, which was fulfilling and enjoyable. So I had a good feeling that this course would also be of a similar standard, which has been the case.

I had never written a play before, but I have an interest in the theatre so this prompted me to sign up for it. I also thought the course would be a easier way of getting something completed (note when I say easier, I don’t mean easy). I, like many a journalist have a novel awaiting completion on my hard drive - the resolution for 2009 says that will be completed by the end of the year…hmmm we’ll see! But I thought a play should be manageable, which given that I'm on my way to completing the course I think is the case.

The assignment set was to write a 30 minute play for the stage, a draft had to be completed by the end of January on which feedback was given from the course tutors. This was great for a novice like myself and gave me a few pointers as to what I had to do to transform the first draft, which though it's a complete play, is in no shape completed.

Tonight saw the next stage in the assignment to have 5 minutes performed by a group of local actors. Previously in the sessions, the class had performed each other's works but tonight was great as we got to have our work professionally read. This was again a first for me, seeing my words performed before an audience. My intial embarassment subsided and I quite enjoyed the delivery of the performance. It also gave me a few pointers as to what I should change.

It was certainly a highlight in a course that has already delivered so many. Given the inspirational nature of the course I already have a few ideas for my next play - here's to finishing this one first.

Blog 2.0

So where was I? Having decided to set up a blog a few years ago, I then decided to take said blog down and join the ranks of the numerous ex-bloggers out there. Mainly because I was busy with extracurricular stuff in work (which I won’t bore anyone with, but that is now behind me).

Then feeling decidedly guilty (given that I talk about blogging in the course of my teaching), I have decided I should have some sort of blog presence. So the New Year resolution was to start blogging again. Being not one to rush things here we are some two months later - a post (well of sorts)!

So why have I started now? Given that I set out to write something else at my computer today (which I will explain in due course), it is obvious that the reason to do so this will be for the usual reasons of procrastination – to avoid doing the job at hand. I must admit I quite missed the inane jottings that tended to be posted here and part of me wishes I had kept it up given that last year would have been a good year to have a blog - especially with the events of Liverpool's City of Culture.

In due course, I will add more posts and try to add the old stuff that I had taken down.

Been a long time

It has been a while and it seems like every time that I post it is always by way of an apology for having not posted of late, though having been badgered by Chris I felt like I needed to break my duck for the year. Belated happy new year and all that!!

To be honest February should really be the first month of the year, well in my case at least it should be. January just felt like it never got going. What with being skint, in the post-Christmas belt tightening period, that seemingly hits everyone.

The first month was also spent getting over the flu that had laid me up over the Christmas period. The last month was also a time of groundhog Friday/Saturday, with three consecutive weekends given over to taking my car to the garage, first for an MOT, then to clear up a mystery fault. Thankfully it is now sorted but I still have a creeping fear that something is up with the car.

It’s been a long time away for something reason I have been suffering from a writers block – even emails have been hard work of late. The Facebook novelty has even passed and I can’t be bothered posting to that.

There has been so much going on in my life in the last few months (some good and some not so). There has been much to reflect upon, yet so little time to do so. Hopefully that will change in time. Work is still relentless…but I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just say the period of marking is upon us…joy!!!

I aim to be back here sometime soon…though I wouldn’t hold your breath!

Evidently Chickentown

The final series of the Sopranos is ticking along nicely and the episode just finished, has set it up for the remaining final episodes. Given my dependency on the internet I’m surprised I have not had the final plot spoiled – despite it being shown in the summer in the US. I will no doubt blog about the final episode in the fullness of time.

What was great about the episode tonight, not just the plot; was the tune they used for the closing credits, it was by Manchester poet John Cooper Clarke, a wonderful surprise, that I nearly missed in my rush to get to bed.

After a quick trawl of the internet (and avoiding spoilers) I have found this video of the tune ‘Evidently Chicken Town’ – the video is quite evocative as it recalls a journey that I was more than familiar with from my time working in Manchester, the packed train departing a wet and windy Oxford Street station. A journey that usually had my nose pressed up against the window or with someone’s armpit draped across my face.

Errr, happy days!!

Happy Birthday Liverpool

Happy Birthday to my home town - 800 years young today. Today's Liverpool Echo does a good job of encapsulating what it is about the city and what it is like to be from there. Especially evocative is this comment piece.
Proud of a city that has never stood still (Aug 28 2007 Liverpool Echo)

HAPPY 800th birthday, Liverpool! Which means happy birthday to each and every person who is proud to call themselves a Scouser – or proud to live in or around such a remarkable place.

The greeting is not just to those in our midst on this momentous day, but also for those joining us in their thoughts across oceans and continents in tribute to the most global and well-travelled of British communities: one which needs no passport to gain recognition anywhere on earth.

A lot can happen over eight centuries – and it has. Enough to provide a tale of two cities enjoying and enduring both the best and worst of times.

Between 1807 and 1907 Liverpool – per capita of population – was the most influential business centre in the world: the oft-acknowleged second city of the British Empire (with all its imperialistic excesses).

The port handled more than 50% of UK overseas trade. The procession of merchant princes, tireless entrepreneurs, inventors, adventurers, discoverers and innovators who lived, worked or played here, provided the most impressive list of “firsts” ever conjured in a single location.

When the ECHO presented the Capital of Culture judges with a supplement containing a mere 100 reasons why Liverpool should take the 2008 European title on behalf of the nation, chairman Sir Jeremy Isaacs now famously noted: “And, yes, you are the only place that could instantly produce another hundred.”

The more cause and effect there is to life, the more chaos, then the more energy is produced.

We are the city that has never stood still – even during the darkest days of war, or, even later, when a heady cocktail of changing trade practices and political turmoil conspired, during the three decades from 1960 to 1990, to produce the most meteoric plunge imaginable in economic fortunes.

Not even the heyday of The Beatles could fend off the oncoming cloud of record unemployment and industrial unrest.

It was Harold Wilson, MP for Huyton, who won four general elections as Labour leader during those often chaotic years, who said that the greatest qualification for any prime minister was a sense of history.

So it must be in assessing Liverpool’s roller-coaster ride down the centuries.

And the biggest lesson to be learned – whether fighting off invaders, plague or pestilence, or doing battle with zero-economics, bad housing, high unemployment or unjust criticism – is that Liverpudlians always, always fought back.

More to the point, they fought back and won.

And our greatest asset in all of this? The people.

We are chancers: Witness Meccano inventor Frank Hornby, one-time butcher’s assistant, becoming millionaire inventor and businessman.

We are rebels: Witness Robert Morris, son of a tobacco merchant, born in Dale Street, who financed the American civil war, personally giving George Washington a £10,000 loan.

We are comedians: Not for nothing did Ken Dodd break the world non-stop joke- telling record.

And what, as examples, do those three things together tell the world at large?

That we are no-nonsense go-getters who have got where we are today aided by the humour of survival.

The steady river – the greatest single force in the fortunes and lives of Liverpudlians ever since the days when monks founded ye first ferry across ye Mersey – is a physical and inspirational metaphor for Liverpudlian fortitude.

Its tides have been the pulse of Liverpool life; its waters, first clear, then muddied, and now restored, demonstrate like nothing else the cycle of the city’s transition, and its rightful claim to once more be the trans-Atlantic gateway to Britain.

For more than four centuries – half of the time since the original township charter was granted – Liverpool was the place of departure for those seeking a new life in the New World.

Now it is also a city of arrival, a multicultural place of destination.

If our great architecture, including the world’s finest neo-classical civic hall and largest Anglican cathedral, helps form the stage on which we live our lives, it is Liverpudlians themselves who continue to drive the plot.

That has always been the case, as with the pioneering canal, rail and shipping links which were the catalysts to our internationalism and cultural expansion.

In all this, adversity has often been transformed to advantage. Although the docks of old (the first lock-regulated enclosed sea docks in the world), have long emptied of their fleets of many-masted cargo ships, the present freeport containerisation at the Seaforth terminal actually handles more freight than ever before.

There are other positive trends in light industrial and service industries, and a new celebration of the city’s green assets – its parks and gardens and waterfront facilities.

The population decline has been reversed.

Regeneration has provided a renaissance for once-blighted places.

The future generally looks brighter, but, as ever, life is never going to be easy. It wasn't designed to be that way.

Liverpool, now at the epicentre of the second-biggest economic region of the UK, needs to continue to rekindle all those skills which brought about its original prominence.

There is a need to remember and learn from the mistakes as well as the triumphs of the past.

But our 800th birthday should be enjoyed purely in its own right.

A time of thanks, a time to remember our forebears, and a time to ponder and prepare an enduring legacy for our children.

The ECHO remains proud to be at the heart of Liverpool life.

Which is why we sign off our editorial on this most special of days with heartfelt good wishes to all our readers, their families and friends, wherever they may be.

It's been a while...

I have not been sat behind this computer screen to compose a blog for a good few months, to be honest, I just haven’t had the inclination to write. So here goes, by way of a catch up.

After nearly five weeks off work – typical really I haven’t really been bothered or had the time to update this here blog and suddenly I back at work with seemingly less time on my hands than before - I’m suddenly compelled to wax lyrical. Having lay awake in bed until after 3 am on Wednesday morning, it was back to work later that day and back into the routine.

To say the summer weather has been something of a disappointment is an understatement – though as someone who has probably spent most of my holiday indoors - I can’t say that I didn’t really worry that the weather was so poor.

The always ever-present list of jobs to do and things that I hoped to accomplish went out the window in the first couple of weeks. The joining of a gym and the purchase of a new bike has not happened.

Part of the planning was that the time was to be spent doing a number of routine DIY jobs that I had been planning to get around to over the last few months. This I hoped would only take a couple of weeks – leaving me with plenty of time to get on with the fore mentioned stuff.

No such luck I’m afraid, one job led to another and before I knew it – I’m back at work contemplating a long, long term and the next break, that will be at Christmas.

The plan with the DIY was to tile the kitchen floor and change the decor, as well as this I was planning to change the bathroom suite and fit an extractor fan in the bathroom. What I hadn’t planned was the fact that I had to get the floor leveled, the electrics rewired and the fact that the water stopcock hadn’t been set up properly – thus adding delays and further cost to my plans.

Also, just to stop me twiddling my thumbs, I decided to paint my bedroom too. I think I’m probably depicting this as some sort of heroic solo effort here – thankfully I had the help of my Mum and Dad to call on to help me with many of the jobs.

I do feel as though I’m imposing on them at times, but bizarrely they are always on at me, asking when I’m decorating, as they want something to do – there is never really a time when they aren’t tackling something like this at their own home. So this is probably like another extended project for them. So I’m back at work and the job is still unfinished. Thankfully they are on hand to help finish the job for me, all for the price of an endless supply of HobNobs, coffee and the occasional takeaway.

I did manage to leave the house for a reasonable amount of time; one of the highlights of the summer was going to London to catch up with friends Barry and Ann. I went down for a long weekend and had a great time. I was treated to a visit to a great pub not far from where they lived, as well as a visit to the numerous great sites that London has to offer. As well some great restaurants and bars too.

I managed to see a number of things while I was down there, there main thing I wanted to see was the Gormley exhibition at the Hayward - which was good. I also had the chance to visit the Tate for the first time – generally the weekend was spent drinking and eating too much - that’s normally a recipe for a good time in my books.



Speaking of the Tate, I went to the Liverpool version to see the Peter Blake exhibition, which was a little disappointing to say the least. For someone who was synonymous with the Beatles, this period of his career was strangely overlooked – especially considering that the exhibition was in Liverpool too.

I normally attend the Beatles festival every summer, this year I have decided to not bother (it is actually taking place this weekend) though I did managed to indulge in a bit Beatles related nostalgia last weekend when I gave a friend of mine from Stoke a tour of the Beatles Story and all the other haunts around the city.

A dream possibly came true for me over the summer, my obsession with all things Echo and the Bunnymen has been chronicled here and this obsession was satiated when St Helens third Eclectica festival had the Bunnymen as the headline act.




There was a double bonus was that John Power was also on the bill too. Both acts were on fine form – I missed the first bits of his set as I arrived late as I attended the first Everton game of the season – which wasn’t that great, though thankfully we won.




One down spot over the summer was the death of my neighbour Jim. He was in his late 70s and had been ill for some time. He had been fading for a while and the neighbours and I had rallied around to look after him – I even at one point had to get up and call an ambulance at 3 in the morning after he had a fall and I could here him calling through the walls.

He was a nice man but a bit of a stubborn bugger. He didn’t really have family that come to help him and he also refused to go in a home. This would have been better for him, as his quality of life would have been better for the last few months. Having lived in the same house for his 79 years he finally got his final wish, he said to me a few months before he died that: “There’s no bloody way I’m going in a home, they will have to carry me out in a box.” Which sadly what they did.

Another sad event this summer was the passing of Anthony H Wilson - a great man. Without his vision, mine and many others record collections would be devoid of the great bands he signed and nurtured. He was often regarded as someone who hated Liverpool, it was probably the case it was had a blinkered view of Manchester at the expense of all other places. It was telling that Liverpool bands who had met him came out with equally glowing tributes as those of the bands from Manchester. Ian McCulloch did so at the Eclectica festival.



I have also listened to a fair bit of music over the summer - catching up with old stuff that I seldom listen to and buying far too many Cds. I would have bought more if I didn’t have the afore mentioned DIY to worry about. Those that I listened to so far, I have enjoyed the Editors, The White Stripes, Feist, and The Coral – which is probably one of the best things released this year.

I managed to get through a good number of books over the summer mainly books that have gathered dust on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. I finally got around to finishing Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, which is great read, but it will make more sense when the other volumes are published. Volume one jumps from the early part of his career to 1967 - then on to a pint later on in his career.

Apart from the trials and tribulations listed it’s been a reasonably good summer – onwards and upwards to Christmas. I may even blog at some point before then.