Today has been one of those days, no work on, looking after kids, your mind just goes into neutral. Mostly I have been doing impressions of the granny from the Dolmio Ads and imagining, what if she were in a scenario where she had been kidnapped by South Sudanese rebels. "Stand back, stand back Janjiweed, it'sa ready, don't a kill me av a baked a lasagne". 


I think there is a similar scenario for captain Birdseye and the Somali pirates, but I haven't quite worked out the fine detail yet.
So I've been doing that and teaching the dogs french. "Ou est la balle, la balle et ici. voulez-vous aller pour une promenade. Bon Garcon, bon garcon. I don't know the dogs very well that's why I used the formal vous rather than the familiar tu. One of them licked his balls, close but no cigar, the other gave a gallic shrug of indifference, him I like.


Tonight watching Frozen Planet my 10 year old son wouldn't shut up so I threatened to throw him outside with the foxes. He looked concerned, I told him not to be as they were Fleet Foxes and he would be raised swaythed in aran and playing folky rock on his acoustic guitar.


I do hope the Janiweed don't kill that nice mrs Dolmio.

Dumbledore you maniac

Here's my take on the famous. I was the location manager on a film called My Kingdom which starred the late great Richard Harris. He was then also playing the kindly paternal wizard Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies. "My Kingdom" was essentially Shakespeare's King Lear set in Liverpool's underworld and Harris played the lead. I had hired a trendy city centre bar as a location on the film and the art department had turned it into an up market Brothel, it was that type of picture. Anyway the location was costing a fortune because I had effectively closed a working bar, so I was concerned when I got a phone call from the office asking how many days we had the location for as there had been a delay with filming. We were on nights, shooting in November and I just remembered it rained for the whole shoot. Anyway I got to the location, it was a square in the city centre, the pavement was slick with rain that reflected the seedy neon; there were extras dressed as prostitutes shivering and smoking in the rain watching whilst the kindly and avuncular Dumbledore twated the director with a furled up copy of the script screaming abuse at him. I've never been able to watch the first two Harry Potters with a straight face since.

Never get out of the boat, absolutely Goddamed right not unless you were going all the way. Bye old lady, bye

I was ..... working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, no but seriously, I was doing a medical drama in Manchester and had an assistant who was on his first job. The series shot it's exteriors on location and interiors in the studio. Me and the assistant headed over to the hospital to finalise the deal with the hospital administrator. We pulled up in the near empty car park (the hospital was being redeveloped and most of it was closed down) next to a solitary car. I got out and asked the assistant to stay with the vehicle as that particular area of Manchester was notorious for car crime and we had cameras and waterproofs in the back.   He said "no problem" and I headed for the admin building. 


The meeting went well, I got the location for a good price and for the dates I needed, so I headed back to the car with a spring in my step. Upon my return the assistant came barreling towards me running his hands through his hair in a blind panic, 'you've got to help me find the old woman', he roared desperately, "you've gotta help me find her. "what old woman", I enquired quite reasonably given the surreal nature of the situation. It turned out that in the car next to us was a little old lady who had become distressed and was having difficulty opening the car door, my colleague, being a good natured and helpful chap, had come to her assistance. The old lady had promptly wandered off and my assistant settled into the car seat a satisfied smile on his face content in the knowledge that he had done his good deed for the day.


Unfortunately the old ladies in-laws did not share his sentiments, when they returned to the car to discover their 80 year old mother missing. The assistant had tried to explain himself, ventured that he was only trying to help and assured them that she would return soon, however he was cowed by the knowledge that the old lady suffered from dementia and struggled to remember who she was never mind where she was and that her chances of finding her way back to the car were about as high as a vicar on sunday.


And the moral of this story: never let the old lady out of the car, absolutely goddamed right, not unless you follow her all the way Bye old lady..... bye.

The minutiae of cheese

There is a tension within social networking. A duality. It is at once public and private, serious and trivial. The writer Nicholson Barker is the best precursor to the medium I can think of. His novels prescribe the minutiae of the trivial and inconsequential, whilst implying that the sum of the minutiae is profound. I predict that in the very near future the rich and inconsequential will have social networking publicists, people employed to make their facebook & twitter posts witty and profound. We are all legends in our own lunchtimes now.

Hence the title of this blog. One of my first posts on Twitter was, "I am not currently eating a cheese sandwich, but when I do you'll be the first to know".

It's a an oh so clever comment on the triviality and self regarding nature of the medium. at the same time I'm using the medium. Ultimately I'm just as self regarding as everyone else, probably more so.

So what I wanted to do was encourage people to illustrate the profound with the trivial. I'll give you some examples from my own experience.

Today I was driving through Ordsall in Manchester looking for a location next to the ship canal. Through a wire mesh fence across a  concrete poured waste ground I watched a heron glide in to land. I know herons are territorial and solitary, but this one flew in to meet a group of 10. I saw 10 Herons on a derelict concrete waste land next to the ship canal in Manchester.

Not long ago I was working on a tv programme. I was waiting for the crew to move from one location to another and had some down time. The crew were due to park up next to a little known train station just outside of Manchester City Centre. I used the time to go to a nearby petrol station and fill up. I was just about to pay when I heard a beautiful voice singing. The streets were grey and quite and slick with rain. I heard the voice again and saw a young woman in a grey dress rolling along the street not 100 yards from where I stood. She was louche, raw kneed and swaying. She ducked in to the car park of a van hire place across the road  and momentarily the singing stopped. Then she emerged from behind a white transit adjusting herself having taken a piss. The singing started again, like a sirens song it echoed off the walls of the over pass as she weaved away from me and out of sight but strangely not out of mind.

Lastly,  The sun shone and the fat lazy dog lay in the long grass.

Embrace the cheese