Ali and the Five Thieves
Ali and the Five Thieves was my second play. Like the first (Something's Going Down in Dalgarno) it was commissioned by the Dalgarno Neighbourhood Trust (www.dalgarnotrust.org.uk) Ali is really just an old fashioned Christmas pantomime based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - which went on in March 2013, was set in London not China, Ali was a girl who lived in a cardboard box not a boy, the treasures were in a lockup and the gang was seriously understaffed. And since when did a self-respecting panto stick to the story, I ask you? Seeing the production of this script I learnt a lot but most of all it was that what you see in your head is not what you will see on stage because with luck the actors will take ownership of the script. Then it will evolve and eventually morph into something new. That is what happened and it's a good feeling. More>>
Dalgarno Trust Intergenerational Play 2013 - Image Gallery
Something's going down in Dalgarno
In the summer of 2012 I had a piece old fashioned good luck. Being in the right place at the right time meant turning up to teach at the Positive Age Centre (it’s on a Peabody estate at the unglamorous end of Kensington, close to Wormwood Scrubs) to teach my Wednesday afternoon writing class. Jane, my boss, was talking to a tall woman in high heels who was introduced to me as Tara. Apparently she worked up the road for something called the Dalgarno Youth Project. I shook her hand and wondered what it had to do with me. All my students are over the age of 50.
Tara explained that they were readying their inter-generational summer production. They had a story outline, a synopsis, character studies and at one point they had even had a writer but for him real life got in the way of making up stories. Could I? Would I? Personally, I would always rather hate myself for saying `yes’ than for saying `No.’ I said `Yes.’
What made Something’s Going Down in Dalgarno different for me was the way I, or rather we, worked. As a freelancer I deliver copy, to length and on time and that’s the extent of my involvement. On this occasion I was part of the process. Every so often my mobile would ping and a text would come through: someone had left the cast, a boy had become a girl or `we’ve found another rat. Can he have some more lines?’ So the script built, coming together piece by piece and I discovered for the first time the pleasures of being part of a community project. More>>
R.17.54
I wrote R.17.54 a little while ago but reading it again I think it still works. It was prompted by the conversation I had with my wife, DD, about buying a biker jacket. As you will see she was against the idea. Then there was the thought I have often had over the years: what would my seventeen year old self make of the person I’ve become? It’s not always a comfortable thought although there are a few things we could be guaranteed to agree on. More>>
The Grey Zone
There was a time when airports were portals to romance and adventure. At least that’s what I like to think. But not now. Now they are grey places to be got through as quickly as possible. They are the kinds of places travel writers don’t write about, the largely unrecorded beginnings and ends of journeys. The Grey Zone was an attempt to write about these places, to find a way of expressing my feelings about them. More>>
Hitch
Hitch is based on a story told to me by a friend. She was the daughter in the story and should stand as a warning to all men who pick up hitchhiking girls. More>>
Black Magic
I really enjoyed being a freelance journalist. Mostly I was reporting on what other people thought or did. I was lucky. An editor would ring, we’d chat and he or she would commission an article. I was paid to do a good job and to know what I was talking about. Only very rarely was I asked to go and play with some ideas. Usually editors keep that kind of fun for themselves. But in 1999 Aidan Walker was editing FX, which had a different theme every month. The August issue was Night and Day. Why my article headed the Hotel and Leisure section I do not know. What I do know is that I wrote fast, in case he changed his mind. He didn’t. More>>
How it happened
When teaching my writing students we always discuss the difference between first and third person narration. At school they tell you that it’s the difference between saying `I did it’ or `he did it.’ In reality it’s to do with how much the story teller knows and how much distance there is between the teller and the action. Try rewriting something if you don’t believe me. I had a go at Genesis. I like the original better. More>>
India 2009
I teach writing at Open Age and New Horizons. That means I’m always telling my students to keep notebooks and journals, to make records and to value experiences. `If you don’t you will regret it,’ I confidently predict. I can do this because I never do it myself. Then in 2009 my wife and I travelled to Darjeeling to meet up with our daughter. I quickly decided that I didn’t like writing a `today we went to a tea plantation diary’ so I took to writing about themes: transport, food, people, making and mending things or whatever. What follows was written then. More>>
Tick Box
Tick Box is about the clichés of love notes. The idea comes from all those letters written in to radio programs proclaiming undying love. But all you now have to do is tick boxes at random and you can create your own love poem. Perhaps one of the reasons for writing this was that I rather like those letters – a guilty secret if ever there was one. More>>
Touched
Like most fiction Touched has its roots in the possible, possibly even the probable. On this occasion the roots tap back to an occasion when I was working with the learning disabled and was asked if I would be prepared to take an adult with a mild learning disability to Amsterdam... I said yes but for whatever reason it never happened. This story, which I co-wrote with my friend Kate Grey, is one hundred percent fiction. More>>