When I was asked to do another speech I said ‘Yeah, no problem’ and then I thought about what I might say – and had a complete meltdown. I mean – can you tell these people in just a few minutes something that might help them – you know – get through life?

 And I thought … No.

Can you tell me how to get through life?

 So (like any sane person) I went to YouTube.

Man was that a bad idea. I discovered I’m not Tom Hanks, or Denzel Washington, or Batman (you can look those up) and so I asked chat gpt.

Man was that a bad idea. It wrote a grandly inspirational speech – worthy of a movie, but to say it on a stage? I’d have to be Tom Hanks, or Denzel Washington or Batman. So I asked the Head Teacher what she wanted me to talk about and she said ‘Next steps’.

Next steps – into the world beyond school. Or as some people would have it ‘The real world’. I know I was always told ‘You’ll know all about it when you have to survive in the real world.’ Yep. It’s all different out there in the real world’.

Now a clear-minded thinker might ask ‘Well if the real world is so different and I’m not ready for it, then what the hell have you been teaching me all this time?’ And that’s a fair question.

But an even clearer-minded thinker would say ‘Define real’.

There’s fake news, adverts and scams – there are politicians on one side telling you one thing whilst there are other politicians telling you another thing. There’s AI and deepfakes and on top of that there’s just the common or garden idiot telling you the wrong thing because they either don’t know any better or they’re trying to look good or they’re just an idiot. Outside of science and maths what’s true for you might not be true for me.

Other advice you might get is ‘Try your best, live your best life, be the best version of you’. And I had a think about that. I think the best version of me is the writer in me. The guy who sits and stares into space and makes up imaginary stories in imaginary places with imaginary people.

My wife thinks the best version of me is the me that does the laundry.

As I total it up the best version of me would:

Make more money, but work away less and be at home more.

Whilst at the same time getting out more and doing a bit of exercise,

And

Being more relaxed whilst getting some of the jobs done around the house and thinking about the future.

I should communicate more and listen,

And if I could be funny but not so much of a smart arse that would be great.

Hmmm… is it possible, just possible, that there is no ‘best version of me’? There’s just me. And, to be honest, it’s not always the same me.

You’re not the same person you are with your parents that you are with your teachers and I know you’re not the same person with your friends that you are with your boyfriend or girlfriend. And there are good reasons for all of that.

But, here’s the real news. You aren’t the same person now that you will be in the future. I look back at my younger self and think ‘What an idiot he was’. Older generations are fond of saying ‘Ach, if I knew then what I know now’.

But you can’t. That’s the whole point of it all. Your current ‘real’ isn’t your final or only ‘real’.

If there is one constant in life it’s change. And that includes you. Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne (I’m a nerd) is credited with saying .

 I knew things at 18 that I do not know now.

And he wasn’t talking about Taylor Swift lyrics. He was talking about the certainties you have in your head right now that you cannot imagine ever changing. But they do and thank heaven for that.

Of all the things people say in grandiose speeches I think the worst one has to be ‘You have one life, make the best of it.’

No you don’t. That’s a nonsense.

A few years ago I was talking to a mate in a pub (at least one of us was hammered) and for some reason the idea of reincarnation came up. And my mate said ‘I already feel like I’ve been reincarnated’.

And because of the hour or the drinks or whatever I knew immediately what he meant. Not that he’d lived and died before then come back as him, but that there had already been more than one life in this life.

American Poet Stanley Kunitz said;

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

Now, I am a leader of a national charity, I get to work in film and I get to make films with young people all the time. I don’t have a boss and the person who runs the charity with me is my business partner. Who also happens to be my best mate and I’ve known him since we were younger than you are now. (Very young, with more and better hair).

That’s not what I started out to be. Because when I was your age I had a head full of dreams and nonsense and great big plans. But I am not who I was.

I reckon I have been at least five fully different people since then – all the while being my true self. The truth is you will have many different lives. Work life, home life, your young years and (if you are lucky like me) your middle age and on. Me? I have been a comic, a writer, a lover, a student, a father… I have been an inspiration and, I have no doubt, a disappointment. The place I am now is the best place I have ever been, the job I do now is the best job I have ever had.

How did I get that job? I made it up. Before this there was no one doing exactly what I do and to be honest there aren’t that many who would want to or could. And that doesn’t matter to me. As Oscar Wilde said:

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

How you live all of those lives is a matter of trial and error. I have made many mistakes, but they have been mine. I’m not going to start singing My Way or anything but if you are going to make all the mistakes anyway they might as well be your own, no? I’m certainly not going to pay the price for other peoples.

This is getting long so I’ll finish back at the start. People will tell you that it’s a struggle to survive in the real world. And for the more unfortunate it is. For most of us though, well, it can be boring at times but it’s not Mad Max, it’s not The Hunger Games out there.

Take the best advice you can, make all the mistakes you need to and for God’s sake don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s another life around the corner.

To the surprise of many who know me there are occasions when I am asked to speak publicly. In an attempt to inspire others… or at least to entertain them for a while as they go through some excruciating ritual. I have recently been asked to do an awards ceremony and graduation for High School students and in the absence of having anything else to say (and fully aware of my lack of posts these busy years) I present my last speech to these poor unfortunates. Please read in a Scottish accent to get the full effect.

ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES

Well here we are at the annual awards and prize giving for St Margaret’s so well done one and all. Congratulations to everyone here and I hope you take a moment to reflect on the success. Enjoy it. Take it in.

Everyone likes a prize don’t they?

No.

You have to turn up at school with your parents, you had to bring your brother or sister with you who is just a complete embarrassment and it might be your idea of a living hell to walk across this stage and shake someone’s hand – utterly terrified of stumbling, or falling off the edge – thinking all the way through that you have forgotten how to walk anyway. Is this funny? Is this how I normally walk? Do I always swing my arms like that?

And now there’s someone in the second row thinking ‘Thanks. That hadn’t even occurred to me and now I can’t think of anything else’.

Sorry about that.

But never mind. It’s awards night! And just as Lewis Carroll wrote ‘All must have prizes!’

Except all don’t get prizes. The people who are being celebrated tonight have done things to deserve their prizes. And no, not all the prizes are the same. They aren’t all for doing the same thing or for the same amount of work.

You might be thinking – it’s just a certificate, it doesn’t matter –  but those certificates are the slightest signal, a nod, a tip of the hat saying ‘well done’. And you don’t know this yet but it might be the last one you ever get.

Seriously, whole years can go by in adult life with no one (and I mean no one) saying well done. Except maybe in a sarcastic tone. Like, ‘Oh well done. I’ll have to wash that now’. Or ‘Well done, you’ve deleted it.’

Yep, sorry to put a downer on it but the years ahead hold precious few ‘well dones’. – Ask your elders – might be parent,  might be an older sibling or a grandparent, carer whatever – when was the last time someone gave them a prize, an award – even just a well done.

Even now they are sitting there thinking ‘Dammit! He’s right – I deserve a well done’ And then they get back home and some unsuspecting soul gets a slap upside the head ‘Why don’t you ever tell me well done?!’.

You know how your parents and older folks are always banging on about how it was better back then. The music was better, the fashion was better, we didn’t have all these gadgets and x boxes and that – we played outside for 26 hours a day and weekends were four days long. It was just better.

Well, for you, this is back then. This is your ‘it was better in my day’. In years to come you’ll be sitting with your kids and there’ll be a cover version of ‘Shake it off’ playing. And you’ll find yourself saying the words ‘You call that music? Taylor’s version was better!’ At which point you are officially past it.

How many of you have been told that these are the best days of your life? Well I’d just like to say that they don’t have to be. In fact I really hope they aren’t. And you don’t want them to be that either. Ask your parents on the way home if it was better in their day, because if their best days are behind them, when did they peak?

95% of the people you see going about their daily lives peaked years ago. Some of them peaked in high school, some of them peaked in primary school and for some of them there has never been a thought of peaking. Of being the best them.

But no one wants to admit that. No matter what they achieved or experienced in the past.

We’ve just had the Olympics in France. Can you imagine? 26-year-old swimmer wins gold. And that’s it. It’s all downhill from there. 30-year-old swimmers don’t even exist in the olympics. You are too old, past it and so those 26 years olds have peaked, they are looking forward to another sixty years of saying ‘want to see my medal’?

But I bet if you asked them, they would still  say their best years are ahead of them.

All you have to do is remember that there is still a hill to climb. And the bad news is that there is never an end to the climbing.

There’s an old musician joke that I just learned a little while ago. It’s not a great joke but it makes my point. There’s a 90 year old guy who plays the violin and he’s pretty good. And a virtuoso violinist hears him and asks ‘You are really good, tell me, do you practice?’

‘Of course’ the old man replies

‘Oh, how much do you practice?’

‘Four hours every day’

‘4 hours?! Why? I mean at your age’

And the old man looks at him and says ‘Because I think I’m getting somewhere’.

Yes, it is good occasionally to pause as you climb and look at the view. Be satisfied with what you have done and how far you have come. And then cast your eyes upwards again. And should anyone suggest going back down then you know what to do. Let them go back down. As you carry on upwards.

You may indeed come across older types who point out that not everyone wins the gold medal, not everyone lives the dream. Not everyone can reach the summit of the mountain. It’s just not reasonable.

At which point I always like to quote the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (you can look him up) when he wrote along the lines of:

There are two types of people in the world, reasonable people and unreasonable people.

All progress depends upon the unreasonable people.

I urge you to be unreasonable. To expect more. Not from life, but from yourself.

Do not be satisfied with tonight’s prize or indeed any prize. Do not ignore it, appreciate the work you did and the effort you made.

I did that. I deserve this.

And that applies to everyone here; young and older. When you go home. Take a moment to reflect on all that you’ve put in. Give yourself a silent well done and just before you go to sleep, cast that aside and tell yourself.

I’m just getting started

Been a long time since I posted – sorry about that but I have been very busy dodging Covid, catching Covid, recovering from Covid and now dodging the new Covid. In between those there has been a mountain of work involving film festivals, COP 26 and rock concerts among other things. For a man who has been locked in the house a lot I sure have been busy.

But now I ain’t and that means I can watch stuff – actually it means that I need to watch stuff because if I don’t then I would just find some way to get myself into trouble. As a person who ostensibly takes an interest in the media I tend to have most of the channels, apps. services and what have you – and that includes Apple TV and Amazon.

First up: Amazon and their new series The Wheel of Time.

Confession – even though I was a die-hard fantasy fan in my youth I kinda gave up reading the books after a while and so I have not managed to catch up with the Robert Jordan novels that form the basis of this series. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be good.

Only it isn’t – and not (I suspect) because the source material isn’t up to it.

This series tends to suffer from algorithmia – a disease whereby studios apply algorithms to creative material to such an extent that the subject dies of asphyxiation. They simply refuse to let it breathe in an effort to make it fit into so many small boxes. But that’s enough typing… here’s my review. It’s a bit long at just under 9 minutes but I had a lot to moan about.

Now that you’ve watched that I should say that there are a couple of things in The Wheel of Time that are good.

No, not the effects, they are fairly blah in this modern age, but there are a couple of points where they do actually subvert expectations – in an early episode (won’t spoil it) there is scene with Nynaeve and two trollocks in the woods that turns truly horrific for just a second.

If they would allow themselves the time (and trust the audience to stick with it) then I think they could make a decent go of this.

Next up: Foundation – an adaptation that really needed to be an adaptation. Only they didn’t get me to adapt it – and they shoulda.

Merry Xmas folks. Let me know what you’ve watched that’s good and if you don’t watch anything else watch Arcane (on netflix I think it is).

Well today I feel terrible – and I really do appreciate it. Seriously, this has to be my most welcome hangover ever. I had been feeling rotten every day for the last month – this would be varying degrees of rotten you understand – I caught the Covid and for a few days I felt utterly deathly but then that passed and now I have the recovery covid. For those that haven’t had the pleasure this particular form of recovery takes fecking ages and looks like nothing at all. Basically I look completely normal (and I feel fine) when I get up and this continues until 3 o’clock or so when I don’t look completely normal because I am in my bed.

Wappit.

To an external observer I just look like a lazy waster – and given my natural predilection for being lazy this is a completely understandable assumption on their part. Unfortunately for me I am not being lazy, I am just bone weary. I am also brain weary. Never has there been so much of my brain obfuscated. Ask me anything and all you will get is a blank look.

What’s your name?

Zzzzzz……

Walking up a flight of stairs, lifting the big frying pan out of the cupboard, taking laundry out of the washing machine and hanging it on the whirligig… all of these will have me sitting down for 10 mins. Although I am not going to lie, I don’t need much of an excuse to avoid doing the laundry. It is how I imagine I will be if I make it to my late 70s. Just… knackered. To the point where opening a jar counts as ‘something I did today’. So, given my poor state of energy it was with some trepidation that I accepted an invitation to go next door to a barbecue. I know what you are thinking. How tiring can a BBQ be?

You have to understand our next door neighbours. They’re from up north. Highlanders kinda.

And that means Highland Hospitality (capitals are deliberate). These people are generous to a near fatal degree. Food is free and drinks are… endless. You know when you go to a restaurant with the kids and you get the option to have eternal refills? Well this is like that. Only with booze. The lovely wife of this deadly pairing is a ninja host and when you find yourself talking to someone for any length of time you will turn back to your glass to find that it has somehow refilled itself. Almost as if some alum of Hogwarts had waved a wand from across the room.

It was knowing all this that inspired the trepidation. The last time I drank alcohol was with the same people – a month ago at the Scotland v England game. Football aficionados among you will recall that the result was actually a cause for celebration north of the border and a celebration is what it became – until the early hours. It took me a good couple of days to recover and I had not touched a drop since. The mere prospect of a hangover on top of your covid was just inconceivable.

But when you gotta go you gotta go. And it went just as it always does when we visit the highlanders…

And so today I am suffering and the beauty of it is that I don’t mind a bit. I’ve got up feeling poorly and had to take paracetamol to get myself capable of making coffee. But every day this last month has been like that so nothing new there. And I also got to have a social life.

Did we talk shit? Hell yeah. Did we set the world to rights? Absolutely. And technically you should be able to do these things online. But you can’t. Last night went as it always does. After about ten o’clock (or ten drinks) another neighbour simply has to have a go at Nicola Sturgeon because I am there. He knows I’m a fan and he isn’t particularly. On social media it would descend quickly into an all caps shouting match. In a social setting? It just doesn’t. For some reason we can see the whole person. He’s more than just that opinion. I am allowed to disagree with him, laugh and move on to the next subject. Is the next subject serious? Might be. We talked a lot about covid and a lot about climate change (and we agreed on much more than we disagreed I can tell you) but we also talked football and cars and kids. Conversation is organic in real life, I was reminded.

And I bloody loved it.

I also got to meet somebody new and he asked me a question which kinda encapsulated the whole thing for me. He asked me ‘Do you like your job?’

And it had been so long since I was out in the world I had actually forgotten that there were people who don’t. I love what I do – I run a charity, I get to work with my best mate every day near enough. People smile when we turn up and it’s always different. Sure, there’s paperwork sometimes (and I HATE paperwork) but that is generally me raising money to do more work. So yeah, I love my job. But it’s not just what I do, it’s why I do it.

He doesn’t love his job. For reasons of his privacy I won’t go in to what he does for a living but the long and the short of why he doesn’t change things is financial. It’s a shit job but it has a great pension. Which means he will be fairly comfortable when he stops working at 60 (or 68 maybe, it’s up in the air). And that’s all very sensible I guess. But I couldn’t do that. I’ve been doing a lot of research and reading lately and have come to the conclusion that being happy is a process only really brought on (for me) by doing something for others. It has been hard to be separated from that, to be kept apart from others and to have that fundamental reason removed or made distant. So as much as we got hammered at the BBQ (so hammered) I don’t think I’ve done anything as healthy as that in ages. Social media is all very well (no it isn’t but I will share this on social media) but actual socialising simply can’t be beat. I am off to enjoy my wonderful hangover and watch the British Grand Prix. A covid spreader event if ever there was one – I totally get why the fans went though.

Haven’t written for a while because… well, I have been learning Gaelic and writing films and scripts and then just generally mooching around in a funk due to being cooped up most of the time but now it looks like I might have to leave the house. The lockdown is easing off – as if it were a bout of sciatica – and in some respects we are heading back to a form of normality.

And that’s a bad thing.

I’m not just talking about the Covid, obviously. Anything that means fewer people are falling ill and dying is good by definition. No, as far as Covid goes I have not really changed my mindset there. I swing between being relaxed and optimistic or panicked and angry. There are less than 1000 cases in Scotland currently and 600 of them are in the hospital. At time of writing there are about 6 people in intensive care and for all I know they were all in the same 7 seater coming back from a barbecue – the chances of me actually meeting someone with coronavirus is quite slim. Of course if I do then I’m dead but hey ho.

That tension has not changed. What has changed is the rest of the world. Coronavirus might be under control in Scotland but a brief look at the news or the numbers on the internet tells you that we aren’t anywhere near the end. These are the numbers for Scotland. Look at the red line.

The shape is very familiar to us now and it is seen throughout the world where the virus has been brought under control. I speak only as a normal civilian, no expert on stats or epidemiology (not even sure I have spelled it right) but does that red line look like this one?

No. It doesn’t. The graph above is the number of cases in the world at the moment and if the shape of the graph is anything to go by then we are only just starting. If you take the world as one place (and despite what the politicians say, it absolutely is one place, I checked) then we are still at the start. That graph in blue does resemble one part of the previous one.

If it resembles anything it resembles the start. It’s just about to take off… just about to… I don’t even want to think about it.

As I said, I am not expert but the shape of that curve doesn’t fill me with hope. Just in case you think the graph I have picked is exceptional this is New Zealand.

And this is the United States…

You can think that the progression from here will somehow be different (and I hope someone can tell me how it might be) but every time a country has decided that they can deal with this thing differently the virus has quickly taught them otherwise. It’s not gambling and it’s not luck. The virus moves in mathematical fashion. At this point there are a little over half a million dead across the world with over 12 million cases. The humanitarian disaster ahead is something we haven’t seen in decades, if ever.

And it was only last night that I realised the truth. Yes this is a public health issue. Yes this is an economic issue. But when you get right down to it – this is (and is going to be) a political issue.

I always knew the system was less than optimal. I knew it was less than moral, but it has taken the coronavirus to show us just how bad our system is. The graphs are all the same shape in the developed west but now the virus has reached the developing countries…

That’s Peru. It’s the same all over the world and it is just beginning. Do we imagine that these street vendors are protesting a lockdown for reasons of ideology? Do they have some credo that requires constant work in a dangerous environment?

Or do they need to eat?

You don’t need to watch the entire video. It has faith workers trying to heal through prayer, there are right wing gun nuts who believe that the media is inflating the scale of the problem by associating every death with coronovirus and it has mass graves… so many graves. But what I see is the poverty. They can’t run away. They can’t socially distance because the living spaces are so cramped. They can’t not work because that just means hunger or homelessness or both. For billions and billions of people their normal lives mean they risk death and bereavement. Watching the news (and it is easy to find these videos, it took seconds and I couldn’t possibly watch them all) I am struck by how poorly humanity has done.

Yes, we have the internet and satellites and we can criss-cross the globe. In some countries we have an astonishing amount of wealth. But that’s not the ‘normal’ for a great many people. Even in rich countries like the USA normal can be poverty and insecurity and grief.

So, yes. I do want the virus to go away but no, I don’t want everything going back to normal.

Normal sucks.

No. Not that lockdown…

You’ll need your eighties soundtrack for this…

Continuing my theme lately of ‘No good intention goes unpunished’ I have actually managed to find something even more uncomfortable than riding a bicycle. You would not have thought it possible, but it is true.

Lockdown has tended to mean the family splits up. The girls spend too long in their rooms either alone, or just on endless video calls to friends whilst playing Roblox – count yourself lucky if you have never encountered Roblox. It’s a virtual world that looks a bit like Minecraft but where you don’t build things – you buy things. With Robux.

And yes, you guessed it, Robux are purchased with real money. So I decided to entice the girls downstairs with movies and snacks so that we could all sit in front of the TV together. This is lockdown life so that’s what counts as family activities of an evening. And, oh did it backfire on me.

The girls are ten and twelve. Those of you familiar with my facebook page will know that I relished showing them Jaws. I watched the damn thing in the cinema when I was about eight or nine. I was kinda on my own as well because I went with my next door neighbour and his Dad – so he had someone to cling on to and I had no one at all. A reasonable person would be more cautious with his own children one would think — but it seems not. I even filmed them when Ben Garner’s head pops out of the bottom of the boat.

And I am currently being repaid for that in spades.

The initial selection started in the 1990s but it just seemed easier to move backwards into the seventies and eighties. The next one up was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark – which they liked less than Jaws to be honest, but I started to get cocky. I had a list of classics that I was going to use to connect with my daughters in this lockdown period. We would have common history, a shared knowledge that would provide them a more rounded (better because I picked it) film vocabulary.

Better yet, I could use my superior knowledge of superior film to help them develop and become more rounded individuals. Can you feel the hubris? Can you sense the fall that is inevitably about to occur following this owerweening pride?

I would love to say that I was thinking about themes. I would love to say that I was looking for an symbol of lockdown, of teens in lockdown. I would love to say that my fantastic knowledge of film guided me to the next possible film because it is a coming-of-age piece that combines those elements. I had no such conscious thoughts – all I thought was…

Maybe my eldest would benefit from watching… The Breakfast Club! Of course! Teens in lockdown come to terms with their identities through an extended and enforced period of isolation. It’s even got a Simple Minds track right up front and a bit of rebellion does you good after all. This would be perfect for the eldest although possibly not both. The youngest still tends to go “Eurrrggghhh” when boys and girls kiss on screen. But I ain’t as stupid as I look (nearly, but not quite) so I floated the notion with my teen girl expert. My pal Nerys.

Nerys is the person I go to when checking my male privilege and she also kept a diary when she was a teen herself – so not only can she remember what happened she can also remember how she felt – this is invaluable because I was never a teenage girl and my middle-aged brain can’t hardly remember anything these days. I couldn’t really remember the whole film you see but I had a recollection that there was something a bit Me-too-ey in one of those John Hughes films.

As luck would have it she was saving it to watch for this weekend – she would check it out and then report back.

Had I left it at that then I would have been fine. But then, just as Indiana Jones ended and the Ark was being stowed away in a warehouse, we had a quick look at the program guide. There it was!. The Breakfast Club. Brilliant! I’ll just have a quick look to see if I can get a +1 channel and I can record it. Only I actually had it on whilst I was looking for the +1 channel didn’t I? And what part of the film was it? As I sat there with my 12 year old daughter sitting next to me? Only this bit.

This is Judd Nelson and he’s an intense individual from another age. This is approaching half an hour into the film and just as the sound comes on his character Bender asks Clare (Molly Ringwald -who ruled the eighties)

“Are you a virgin?”

Oh FFS! I thought. Typical. I’ll just get this done and switch the damn thing off and wait for Nerys’ report on the whole movie.

But I couldn’t find the +1 channel quick enough and I had forgotten just what an asshole Bender is at this point. He is just going to town on Clare.

“Have you ever been felt up? Over the bra, under the blouse…”

Gimme me a break Judd. My 12 year old is sitting right there. And at this point I’m not sure who is the more uncomfortable. My 12 year old daughter (I’m not even looking at her to find out), Clare in the film or me, sat on the couch and desperately trying to find a channel that might not exist.

As I spin through channels on the program guide my wife starts to question what I am doing by asking…

What are you doing?

Which is, quite frankly, just bringing more attention to the fact that I don’t really know what I am doing and I am currently in full panic to be honest. Then Judd chimes in again – not helping the situation at all.

“Over the panties, no bra, blouse unbuttoned…”

Right! That’s enough of that. Thank you so very much.

In the film Emilio Estevez (who we saw last week in The Mighty Ducks) comes along and saves the day but I didn’t even wait for him. I just picked a channel – I saw Guitar Heroes on BBC 4 and thought – ‘you’ll do’.

I then had to sit there and pretend to be really interested in Tom Petty (was never a fan) , Nazareth and some spanish classical guitarist I have never even heard of. Luckily for me my twelve year old daughter and wife took this as a comedy interlude as they commented on 70s hairstyles.

I will still wait on Nerys’ report on The Breakfast Club. I am not ruling out letting my eldest daughter watch it but I do know one thing – she’ll be watching it on her own. She might be mature enough to deal with the issues. I don’t think I am.

Just to cap it off I went to bed and had a dream about my ten year old driving a toy pedal car through some traffic lights and crashing into an idiot that I had to have a fight with. I might survive Covid-19 but not sure I am going to make it through their teens.

Short post today. Mainly because I am knackered. The planets finally fell into alignment you see. Normally I am stuck in my shed, beavering away on videos and scripts and funding applications for SYFF and I am frequently pointed towards my woeful lack of anything resembling exercise.

Sure, I do a few press ups but nothing that any self-respecting human would call P.E.

Call in the excuses!

1. The Weather – my go-to excuse. This is Scotland after all. Hardly ever lets me down. And it doesn’t have to be really bad either. I ride a bike so the slightest wind will provide cover for a call off. I’ve seen me get away with ‘It’s miserable outside’ – which is true of Scotland ninety six percent of the time.

2. I’m busy – Oh yes. I’m a writer. Me at work looks exactly like me doing fuck all. I’m thinking you see.

3. Injured – I can’t often use this one to be honest but if I have a sore knee then what’s a man to do? Of course now we live in the world of Covid-19 and NHS heroes. I can’t exactly grumble at a bit of a scrape or sniffle.

So it finally happened – I finally had no excuses. It is currently scorchio in Scotland. The bike is in good repair and, worst of all, I have taken time off and announced same.

On yer bike Bolt!

Out I went. I travelled to a distant reservoir called Hillend. Here’s the proof.

I say distant. It isn’t that far as humans go. Around 6 or 7 miles away. There are a few mountains en route (bumps) and the traffic isn’t all that dangerous (it’s a cycle path). But to hell with the dangers, when my mind’s made up and all that…

And damned if there weren’t some other unfortunate souls who had been forced into the same kind of thing. I saw poor gents struggling along with bald heads under a blazing sun. I saw women dragging their children on migrations of unendurable torure and can only guess at what privations led them to leave their homelands. I had sympathy for all of them. Well, nearly all.

The MAMILs (Middle Aged Men In Lycra) I have no sympathy for at all. Except for perhaps the fact that they all seem to be forced to shop in the same store. I have never seen so many black and red lycra tops. it became so prevalent that I thought it must be a law of some kind. Or at least I did until I saw one wearing black and yellow. I imagine he thought he looked like… But in actual fact he was more of a…

I’m not saying anything against the man, by the time I got back my face was so red that I looked the world’s fattest matchstick and that was according to a neighbour who professes to like me.

And how I looked upon my return wasn’t even the worst bit. I cycled seven miles (we’ll round up) and when I stopped I took my tiny backpack from my back.

(Backpack provided by ten year old daughter.)

Within its cool environs I had stashed a snack, a pen and a notebook. All were returned to tbe bag. Too tired to think let alone write and since I had cycled all those miles gasping for air and with my mouth hanging open as if I was suffering from some form of seizure there was no need for food. I had swallowed every fly that crossed my path and was no longer even slightly peckish.

After sitting there for an inordinate length of time to regain my breath I then indulged in the greatest folly of all – which was to turn around and cycle all the way back again.

Humans. It’s no wonder we are being out-thought by a virus.

Anyway, that wasn’t the worst bit either.

The worst bit was getting off the bike at the end. As has been established I am not professional cyclist and so I have had no need to invest in a professional cycling seat. The one I currently have is… a sadist’s device.

Seriously, I got off the bike thinking ‘Who’s riding who here?’

I felt like the most popular chap at an orgy in a gentlemen-only club, but without the added pleasure of someone verbally checking whether ‘I liked that’ or even informing me that I did like it, didn’t I.

I might not walk right for a week but to all those MAMILs currently sweating in the same black and red lycra bought at the same store this is what I’ll be wearing next time …

Or ‘How I learned to stop worrying and (not quite) love the corona virus’

Chances are that you are reading this from lockdown somewhere in the world (I have little clue about how the internet works but most people who read what I write, read it on the day it was written) and no matter where you are I appreciate the fact that you are reading it at all.

Of course, it meant more back in the olden days, when we were allowed to do things and go places but hey, I’ll take it. You might be berating the fact that all you have available to you currently is this crummy blog and I feel your pain, as they say. All I have available is to sit here and write the thing.

Life is… different now. It is constricted, oppressive… limited.

Or is it? If you look at my google activity map for March you will find a marked difference to any other period in my life. I drove for a total of 7.2 miles in the whole month and that was one trip. So I have become limited in my travel but… I have also become freer to do other things. This lockdown has not been uniformly negative for me.

Make no mistake. I wish it had never happened. As an asthmatic with poor lungs I am fully aware of what it is like to be struggling for breath inside in an oxygen mask and you don’t get to my age without experiencing grief. Although I cannot possibly conceive of the agony suffered by those families who have lost young people. 13 year old boys… five year olds. This is a horror.

For those who are self-employed or struggling financially I totally get it – this is a disaster and don’t imagine for a second that I won’t be harangueing all and sundry when this is over. Equally there are some people who can’t stop working because they are fighting the damn virus – and life has changed for them only in bad ways. I won’t be forgetting Priti Patel’s non-apology either.

It is easy to highlight the things that we have lost and easier still to blame the people in charge for their failures – that is what the press is for. But I didn’t want to write about what I thought and felt right away because my first thoughts were Fuck! Shit! and my first feeling was terror. Which is no good to anyone.

And even weeks into this thing, that feeling has not entirely gone away. It’s like a fairground ride or a pendulum. It’s like trying to stand up in a small boat as the waves toss you up and down. Just when you reach some kind of equilibrium another piece of news appears either at home or abroad; or another wave of deaths is broadcast, so you lurch into a nauseous spin as your mind tries to grapple with both the existential terror and the sunshine in the garden at the same time.

If there were sirens going off and drone strikes then perhaps we would become acclimatised, but there aren’t. There are stereos playing in the back garden and the sound of lawnmowers. It feels like a long weekend, where there’s not enough time to go anywhere but no work to do. Until you remember there is work to do and, oh yeah, your chances of survival if intubated are about fifty percent – the toss of a coin.

That confusion you feel is the combination of fight-or-flight adrenaline mixed with boredom. And what we are living through is the most intense and mundane thing that will likely ever happen to any of us. For those of us not suffering the immediate trauma of loss, or the exhaustion of the battle in the hospitals this is a lens through which we can see our lives a little differently – and like all lenses, it tends to change your focus.

For me, this is bringing great clarity in certain areas. If, for example, you focus that lens on …

The Big Stuff

Margaret Thatcher once said ‘There is no such thing as society’ and that turns out to be about as right as you think it is. Her idea was that although there were things like family units there was no underlying structure or greater altruism. People didn’t really care about the big picture, they cared only about themselves. Turns out that was a pile of shite.

And it sucks to be poor, or worse, poor and in an ethnic minority. Both groups being disproportionately hit by this pandemic. I’m going to check my privilege right here and leave that subject to people better qualified/justified in their protests. The corona lens also brings into the spotlight things like the importance of normal working folk – nurses, yes, but also the delivery drivers, the supermarket workers and the tradesmen like plumbers and electricians. Turns out everyone is important – guess that’ll get forgotten immediately when this is all over.

The Little Things

And just as it is the ‘little’ people who turn out to be vital so it is the little things that are teaching us the greatest lessons. Some things we thought were vital turn out not to be. For example… I can’t go to the shops.

No shit? I live seven or eight miles from the nearest real shopping centre place and guess what? I’m lucky if I can find the time to get up there four times a year. Sure, I have the weekends but between ferrying the kids to lessons and clubs and getting the grocery shopping done I can easily go three months without hitting the mall in search of something I don’t need. If I actually do need a new pair of Adidas that can be a six month project. I don’t like shopping and I won’t miss it.

I can’t get out and exercise

I’ll leave those who know me in the flesh to fill in the punchline of that particular joke. Although I am trying to do some press-ups, squats and the like.

I can’t have friends to the house for a BBQ

Okay, I’ll give you that one. Not being able to see friends has actually been really painful. I only have about two BBQs a year because we live in Scotland but the (in)ability to see friends has been a big effect.

The other day we took our daily family walk and just went to people’s houses to play the dumbest game of chap-door-run ever. We knocked on the door and then stood a good fifteen feet away so that we could talk to them across the width of their garden. We went to my sister’s house just so we could see her and clap the dog (The spaniel knows nothing about anything and less than that about the corona virus).

Did we talk about anything important? Hell no. How can you when you are standing on the street and nearly shouting across the lawn?

It didn’t matter though. I called my father the other day because I was standing within eyesight of a petrol station and the price of petrol is ridiculously low and I thought I would share that information. We got 5 minutes chat out of that. It genuinely feels like being thrown back in time. When someone comes to visit the whole fucking family has to come down and see what all the fuss is about. We’re the 21st century equivalent of those kids at the beginning of the 20th century who would run after cars because who knows when you’ll ever see another one?

I now have an appreciation of small talk. I used to hate it (and likely will again) but for now I understand why it exists and I need it just as much as anyone. The sheer joy I get in seeing other people’s faces and knowing that they are there… it’s a big change from a small thing.

But not the biggest.

No. It’s work that has seen the biggest effects. And I’m not just talking about financially. Of course, everyone is different…

I know people who work for large corporations and they are reporting actual financial benefits in some cases – there is no travel to pay for, fuel costs have all but vanished and hotel bills are non-existent.

Perhaps you work in London and now find that the morning commute was not really necessary – only to discover that you do miss leaving your house each morning and going to a place that has people in it. Even if two months ago you would happily have gone postal on most of them.

It’s the going to work that has changed and that’s why I am not sure life has been made measurably worse for us. For me the difference really lies in how defined I had become by my work. I spend a lot of time in classrooms, or in meetings. If you look at me as an educator or a film maker or even as a writer then my job is a people job. Take that aspect away and… what is left?

I now have to work remotely. There are fewer meetings and exactly no trips to London (which I had been looking forward to) for useless film industry encounters that, actually, mean the whole world to me.

I should be moaning. And those who know me could tell you how much I love a good moan. But I ain’t. Not because this isn’t going to hurt financially – it will – but because the corona lens has shown me what is important in my life and I am (a little) grateful for that.

I am terrified of this thing. Not just because it could kill me but because it could leave my children without a father. I realised quite quickly that there are things I have to do that I have not yet done. I have stories that lie unfinished, including my own.

So thank you corona. I wish I had never heard of you but in the last three weeks I have done more work not less -whilst at the same time (hopefully) retaining a sense of perspective on what is important. Whilst a great many of you might be out there and hating every second of this unfair incarceration (and rightly so) I have listened to (and appreciated) more music than I normally would in a year; I’ve retreated into reading… and research… and writing.

So, I have run to my favourite place – a world of my own creation where I move the characters around and summon events at will. This pandemic has only really shown me that I should have been doing this more all along. It has focused me… like any good lens would.

Perhaps this is just me but I suspect not. I suspect that the corona lens has had a similar effect on other people and brought into pinpoint sharpness what is most important to all of us.

All of us.