How The Years Pass

I know I normally write about writing. Which is normal, I guess. Writing inspires, frustrates, clouds and expands my mind in equal measures, and those measures are doubles. But today, right out of the blue, my mind got distracted from thoughts about my wife, my baby girl or my writing, all of which vie for space in that Hampton Court maze.

I was busy, really busy. Rushing around, doing a million things at once, not even looking at the clock between hours. And then, all of a sudden, I went back three years. At the time, I thought it might be only two years, wasn’t sure if it was three or two, but then I thought that it simply couldn’t be two. I was back at my Nan’s bedside, holding her hand, feeling her paper-thin skin in my hand, not knowing what to say.

I’m known as someone who always has something to say; an opinion, a reaction, an idea (I hasten to add, not always something worth saying, but said it nonetheless is.) If I’m quiet, something is up. But the day my Nan died, I was stumped. It’s not a moment in one’s life that you can prepare for - saying goodbye to someone for the last time.

I think maybe my mind was triggered by the emotional and moving accounts of three wives whose husbands were killed in Afghanistan. None of them got the chance to say goodbye, but all three wanted to, it came through in their words. If you get a chance, listen again to it here, it’s just under an hour, but I promise you, five minutes and you’ll want to hear everything the three women have to say.

Anyway, back to the hospice, the empty room, the silence. I like silence most of the time, I spent six months talking for a job, I talk a lot. But not knowing what to say, I felt almost guilty. Like I was letting my Nan down. I am just by calling her that. She was never Nan, always Grandma, said grandly, but in a nice way. And there were a million stories, memories, reminiscences about her incredible life and the richness and jollity she brought to mine. Every game of cards we ever played when she visited she won. I’m not talking generically there, she won every single one. It was like she had a magnet. If she needed an ace, it found her. If you had two aces, she had three*. She once wrote me an account of her experiences in the war. It was to help me understand it, and then, in History class, I’d be ahead of the game. Well, I could hardly read it. Her writing was almost inscrutable. Perfectly legible to my Dad, whose own style has loops and curls that outwit but to my own young eyes, it took a lot of work to make sense of it. But eventually I did, and when I told her I enjoyed reading it - it was brilliant - she told me about a story she wrote when she was younger, called the Burrowers. It was about a group of animals who lived underground.

The silence was broken by a nurse who came in to change something, I forget what. I asked her whether my Grandma would wake up. None of the family who had been with me in the room until a few minutes earlier (rotation had been employed) had asked the question, I guess because we were all afraid of the answer, whichever way it was answered. I imagined the answer would be difficult to deliver, but the nurse kindly told me : No. Suddenly, I knew what to say, that made it easier somehow.

It’s not exactly three years, but today I missed my Grandma. She was a great woman.

*A harmless joke, Grandma.

Method in my Madness

Writing is something that a lot of people believe to be constant, unchanging. And to a great extent, they're right. Writing is essentially the conquering of the blank page, as it always has been. Whether that's for the purposes of wringing emotion, laughter, pathos or ethos from your reader, it's basically been the same forever. But the method to that writing has altered considerably, not just over the last century, but my own writing life, which loosely I credit with starting in earnest near the beginning of 1997.

I would have loved to have written in Victorian England. OK, there would be no Spellcheck, a very basic Thesaurus, and fewer opportunities for publication. But the idea of writing by Quill and Ink, of sealing letters with red wax stamps, candlelit writing at a bureau stocked to the gills with notepaper, random notes, research books, maps, the idea thrills me to even think of it. However, my own methods of writing have changed enormously, and looking into them, they're no less interesting in reality.

I began writing a novel, which is odd to me really, as that desire didn't resurface after that for a full six years. Aged 18, and mid-GCSE's, it seemed at the time like more of a distraction from tedious revision. I made no notes, I just started writing, and it was called Alert, and based on my favourite TV programme at the time, Red Dwarf. There were three parts to it, 'Blue' (Alert), Mauve (Alert) and Red...well, you see where my primitive style was going. It was fairly imaginative, but went nowhere, and was handwritten, on A4 lined paper.

My second foray into writing was scrawls. Those random Victorian notes I dreamed of I guess. What I wrote were jokes, often puns, or observations. I stuck them onto the fridge of the pub I was cooking in, being a chef at the time (it's still a four-letter word to me) and in the evenings, rehearsed the delivery of them until I made myself laugh. It wasn't easy. And whilst it led to performances alongside Ross Noble and Tim Vine on a few stages, it didn't lead to the fulfillment I was looking for.

Having changed locations a lot, my writing style changed to screenplays, two plays were started and the experience of writing these stood in me in good stead. Again these were handwritten, the year was 1998, but I had no computer. All my work was handwritten. This continued in my writing of short-storied, a short film, more performance stuff, audition pieces, etc. It continued all the way up to my debit novel. The original copy of Cats Don't Eat Pancakes was handwritten, all 367 pages of it, and edited by scrawls in the margin, on the page, everywhere. It was a mess. Such a mess in fact, that when Micaila persuaded me to type it up, turn it into something solid and do something with it, it was a huge amount of work. Editing on the computer was difficult, time-consuming, slow and uncomfortable.

I still make a lot of notes, little pieces of paper, that eventually get copied up into a book. Nowadays though, it's more about the surrounding environment - desk-space, soft-light, chapter plans or logistical guides to how I progress the script or book with each chapter or scene. All those things are important, and yet the desire to make notes and develop these into chapters, scenes, whatever. My writing method is making a note, copying it, typing in a peaceful environment, printing it out and tearing it apart so that the person I give that work to (long-game, the reader) doesn't tear it up also!

Back To The Writing Board

It's an odd feeling; the idea of returning to something that is such a constant. But writing a new project, any new foray into creative pursuits of writing always brings twin senses to my mind. Excitement and fear.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." A powerful quote, attributed to Franklyn D. Roosevelt, but adopted forever after by U.S. Presidents, Prime Ministers from any country going, and anyone who steels themselves against what is to come. I think what we also fear at times is the successes we have disappearing. They say rich people only fear the loss of their money; that's what makes them greedy, stingy and mean. Well the creative mind fears the lack of imagination, the possibility that the inspiration will dry up or the ideas will cease to come. I know I do, even if at present I have two ideas to work on.

Returning to script-work whilst writing a third novel is daunting, but challenging. That kinda goes without saying, I know, but balancing those twin emotions is what keeps me going. It's all about learning to love the blank page, not fear it. Each page gives me the chance to write something that will thrill people, bring them to the edge of their seat, not think of switching over. Writing for television has its additional thrills and demands, of course. The script essentially needs page-turning moments regularly.

Where a novel (my novel, I hope...) can come together slowly, building the imagination of the reader, the viewer is a different beast, and requires a very different kind of feeding. Action, drama, plot and suspense, all in three separate hours (at least until I pick up my editing scalpel!) - it's going to be juggling I've not done since March, when I wrote a screenplay that is currently in production. I'd be dishonest not to admit that payment for that project is an inspiration for new material, but not the financial aspect, more the feeling of earning my way in life through work that is close to my heart. It's an amazing feeling, and one worth going after with all of my effort.

To that, and the possibilities of another week at the desk of choice...

24 vs Josef Fritzel - Don't Have Nightmares...

Last night’s schedule on Sky One was textbook. They don’t muck about with news and cookery programmes on Sky. Oh no. It’s two hours of The Simpsons to soften you up, then it’s a double bill of scary programming to keep you shuddering into the small hours (where they hope you’ll eventually stumble blindly towards the Sky Poker channel).

24 (Sky One, 9pm) and Josef Fritzel - Story of a Monster (Sky One, 10pm) were a less-than-jovial return to the kind of horror double-bill that forced teenagers out of cinemas in the 1970’s, blinking and shaking into the night, terrified by their own shadow. But which was most scary?

Imagine the sky filled with explosions. And bodies. And guns. You’re not even close to 24 : Series 7. I say the following as a fan, but after six full series of 24, and a writer’s strike delay, America’s most iconic export in terms of television drama returned in January with so much hype piled up behind it, any feint dabbing of the brakes would result in the whole structure crashing down around its ears. So the pace gets faster and faster year after year, and this series has not been a disappointment.

Explosions? They don’t cut it after 6 years. New President? We’ve had one every year since 2000 - it’s almost expected. You’ve got to up the ante. We’ve had so many returning characters, I almost expected Jack’s wife to turn up in the form of a ghost, floating behind Jack as he careers around corners, slamming vehicles left, right and centre, to remind him that his daughter doesn’t speak to him any more but when she can, she’ll email him. Tony’s already returned, which was fine, but he was joined by everyone from Chloe ‘invincible yet spiky’ O’Brien, via the now-white-haired Bill Buchanan to Chloe’s brilliantly bonkers husband Morris O’Brien, whose beard is threatening to swallow his face whole. Everyone’s onboard, that is, apart from Elisha Cuthbert, who one imagines is casting anxious glimpses at the programme from her trailer on whichever crud movie she is starring in next.

The 7th series of 24 has already fought a raft of controversy from commentators across the pond, who have accused it being neo-Con, which basically translates to it favouring the use of torture of held terrorists, i.e.the sort of thing that was demonstrated in Bush’s Guatanamo Bay, as opposed to the now-elected Obama’s stance, that being to burn Guatanamo to the ground as quickly as possible. 24’s producer, Joel Surnow has defended the early episodes of series seven, saying it was never in favour of torture, merely that it wanted to display the problems agents face when a lack of time and a resistant captive could be prescient to an impending disaster. Of course, this makes sense (to a degree) in the fictional world of 24, and Jack Bauer ably brings this scenario to the fore when after vital information. But it’s certainly interesting that, with Obama coming to power a third of the way through the series, this thinking is reversed - or at least the other side of the argument is portrayed - after Obama’s inauguration.

Anyway, politics is not the core of this series. It’s big bangs, gunfights, violent fighting, the whole kit and caboodle. The President has been slapped about like a marinated cod, Jack has undergone more physical pain than a Guatanamo resident himself, and the whole world’s about to end. Everything is an Nth more attention-grabbing than the series before, to such a degree that the next series will probably centre around a squiggly virus that inspires such levels of psychotic rage and destruction that the entire cast will be wiped out by episode three.

With barely time to make a cuppa and exhale, Josef Fritzel : Story Of A Monster (10pm) was Sky One’s attempt to beat Panorama to the punch of a documentary around the mad Austrian, following his lifetime incarceration in a psychiatric hospital last week (on my birthday - thanks Fritz). The problem with rushing old footage together, and cramming interviews from all and sundry into a documentary before anyone else has the chance, is that the whole programme had the feeling of something that isn’t quite ready yet. Fritzel was seen looking maniacal snarfing back a rack of beef or some such meat. In slow-motion. With darkly menacing music behind it. Come on, Sky One, doesn’t anyone look slightly ghastly slobbering on a meat joint in slo-mo? Sixth formers are less obvious in their HD-digicam-ready performances of Romeo ‘N’ Juliet these days. We get it, he was a monster.

Opinions on Fritzel were predictably varied, with him being described as, at turns, “a despot” and others, “a good natured man”. What struck me as unusual about the case as it was re-traced with all the delicacy of a 5-year boy making his first tree-rubbing, was quite how stark and obvious the tragedy that was about to unfold before us must have been to those closest to it.
Remember how you felt when you discovered that Ian Huntley had a record as long as your arm about preying on young girls in previous counties, following his conviction in the Holly and Jessica tragedy? That sense of shock and disgust at the glaringly awful disaster that was waiting to happen, and how it could have been prevented. This sense was magnified exponentially in Fritzel’s case. Here was a man who had previously kept his daughter inside to prevent her socialising with her friends to such a degree she fled her family home in an escape-attempt with her friend. Fritzel was had - incredibly - already been convicted of rape on a previous occasion too. His wife, who took him back after this ‘misdemeanour’ (he only served one year of an 18-month sentencefor the rape) was portrayed as a weak, servile cretin, who pandered to the maniacal Fritzel’s every insane whim. Make of that what you will (they said the same about Rose West in the early reports)

But the story’s sense of disbelief didn’t stop there. I had read the headlines and listened to the news bulletin leaders thinking that the ‘family home’ they spoke of was just that. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Over a HUNDRED lodgers lived in the same building over the 24 years poor Elisabeth Fritzel remained a prisoner of her deranged and disturbed father. One told of partying in the flat above her cellar with no knowledge of her existance - footage was grainily but chilling, the merriment above mayhem making for an abhorrent spectacle. Another lodger told of how his dog used to snarl at the floor of his apartment in the silent hours of early morning. How tragic that the dog’s insight was never followed up, only the victims could relay, and one was left with a sense of loss just by watching the story unfold.

Fritzel, it was revealed, released three babies from the underground cellar under the pretence that the supposed runaway daughter returned them (no doubt near-blind from never having seen natural light) by dropping them off on the family home’s doorstep. No-one but Fritzel was allowed into the cellar (”Don’t go in there, the handle might electrocute you.” ). This was taken as read by those around Fritzel, and the clues kept racking up. Fritzel was seen on a friend’s camera footgae on holiday buying a dress which didn’t fit his wife, but would have been a perfect fit for his ‘missing’ daughter. The friend’s mortified disbelief at the monster who stayed hidden under the cloak of friendship for so many years was galling. But there again was that sense whilst watching that the programme had been thrown together - other players in the sad history of Elisabeth’s life foresaw a degree of what happened, but it seemed all too familiar that those around him took Fritzel’s word as the law, and more importantly, the truth.

Shocking, and yet presented in a glossy, OK-Magazine run by stoners kind of way, the Fritzel documentary prompted me to exclaim “But how could that happen?!” an incredible number of times. Indeed, it would have been a record, if I hadn’t watched 24 first.