The Girl In The Box

There was a news story today that was deeply disturbing, citing that there are thousands of children being abused by gangs and groups in England every year.  The Office of Children's Commissioner study says there were 2,409 victims in the 14 months to October 2011, but the true number is likely to be far higher.  This report doesn't surprise me at all; I've been exploring these issues for a while for a play I wrote last year for East 15 drama school called The Girl In The Box.  Following that of course there came the horrific revelations about the Rochdale girls who were groomed, raped and abused by a Pakistani gang.  But it's all sorts of gangs that are involved in this sort of thing, and more often than not it can actually be teenage gangs that are exploiting very young girls too.

Some years ago I was paid to research a play that was commissioned for The Fetch Theatre Company about drug use in rural counties, and before long I was meeting users, carers, gang members and prostitutes.  The stories of the people I met were sad, moving and sometimes brutal.  But above all one person left a lasting impression on me; a young woman who had been groomed, hooked on heroin, and subjected to sexual acts that I couldn't quite comprehend.  Of course in city and urban towns, these problems are even greater and after seeing a documentary concerning the abuse of young girls by gangs, I knew it was a subject (as dark as it was) that I had to tackle, and so I began to investigate it as best I could.  It is worrying enough to even acknowledge that young girls could be subjected to such hellish ordeals, but this stuff really is happening all around us and we can't afford to turn our backs on it.  I hope my play in some small way shines a light on these significant issues and highlights a problem that we can no longer afford to ignore.  It's a dark play; even darker than my play Noise, and there is one particular event that has never been portrayed on stage before, but it's something that really happened to someone.  Sometimes the truth can be truly shocking, and for that reason alone we can't afford to ignore it; particularly when it affects the vulnerable and abused in our society.  I hope I can get a company to produce the play sometime, because it's an honest portrayal of something that our theatres should be addressing.  Below is a short description of what the play is about:

Monique sees X-Factor as an escape route from a life 'in care'; her best friend, Mel is keeping her options open and is seriously considering 6th form.  But Monique's ex boyfriend, gang member, Sam has other plans for them; unleashing a sequence of disturbing events that lead all the way to the girl in the box - A modern day parable tackling the worrying trend of sexual exploitation of vulnerable girls by gangs, and the dark consequences of drug crime.

Goodbye Mum

Today is the anniversary of my mum's death.  She died of cancer a few years ago, and boy do I miss her still.  I couldn't get over to the cemetery in the Black Country where she is buried, so I thought I would post this poem that I wrote about her as a kind of tribute, I guess.  I was there with her at the end of her life, and although she was amazingly brave, it was tough - how can those last moments be anything else?  The poem is called, Goodbye Mum.

GOODBYE MUM

The morphine kicks in,

Liquid lull of warm blood, mixing, melding,

Rinsing those last corpuscles of thought.

You are drifting away from me,

Bleary eyed,

Scared,

Tired and weary...

You are drifting away from me.

I hold your hand,

Knowing that I'll never be able to do this again,

Because you are drifting away,

And love and memory hammers at my heart and brain

As I feel the tremble of life in your fingers, fade...

Goodbye Mum,

God bless

And great big hugs.

It's the ecology, stupid!

On the eve of the American election, I'm hoping that Obama gets another term, because the thought of Mitt Romney as the next President is just too dreadful to contemplate; his acerbic rhetoric when talking about issues such as Iran sounds so much like Bush that alarm bells are ringing for me; frankly he sounds plain stupid.  The fact that there have been so many stupid American Presidents before him leads me to wonder how the American public can be so gullible when picking their prospective candidates, but I guess the fact that money plays such an important part in the race to the White House means that a person's intellectual attributes aren't particularly what is going to help them get elected - money talks, and in America it seems you need an awful lot of money behind you if you want to be President, not leaving American citizens with much of a choice.  I don't think Obama has been a great President though; in fact his term has been rather disappointing.  We all believed that the first black President might actually herald a new approach to American policy throughout the world, but he didn't close Guantanamo as he had promised, and he increased military capacity in many areas of the planet; including Afghanistan, a war that we hoped he might bring to a speedy conclusion.  Also his health reforms have failed miserably, but I do appreciate this is also because he is penned in somewhat by a hostile congress.  But for me the single most important issue that any American President should be focussed on is the environment, and I've yet to hear either candidate discuss this matter.  America and China are the two big superpowers that are most guilty of polluting the planet, but they both obstinately refuse to take responsibility for their actions, which have massive implications, especially for drought-stricken areas of the Third World.  The fact that extreme weather patterns are affecting all of us now in very significant and disturbing ways makes me wonder why the environment isn't right at the very top of every political agenda; but anything that might affect the economy of a country as powerful as the US just isn't going to make it on to the list of 'things to do'.  Rather disturbingly one of Obama's spokesmen announced that climate change would not be a major campaigning issue for Democrats, and this was while the US was recovering from the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy; an extreme weather event that scientists agree is a direct result of carbon emissions affecting the planet's eco-system.  But right from the very beginning of his Presidency, Obama steadfastly refused to commit to any reduction in emissions, and along with China were the only two countries that did not sign up to the Copenhagen agreement just after his election.  I think it's wonderful for the American people that they have a black President at last; it was a significant moment in the history of that country, and an example to the world that they had overcome their own prejudices, thanks in no small part to the struggles of the civil rights movement; but I do believe he was awarded the Nobel Prize a little prematurely; surely it was incumbent on those involved in the selection process to wait a while to see exactly what he might actually achieve in a job where he wielded so much power, and what he might contribute in the way of world peace.  He definitely in my opinion let us down with regards to the environment, and at the time of the Copenhagen summit I was concerned enough to write a letter to The Guardian newspaper titled - 'It's the environment stupid!'  It was never printed, but here it is anyway...

'Prime Minister Brown, President Obama and rest of our world leaders are obsessed with saving the global economic system, when what they should be focusing their energies on is saving the globe itself.  The reason our planet is facing a potential catastrophe is a direct result of market economies, which by their very structure have no interest in the future results of global warming, as there is no short-term financial benefit to be made from investing in something which has no instant return.  Surely this is a perfect moment in our history for the whole planet to pause and consider why we are where we are, and not how do we get to where we were before.  It's time for a change and to seriously debate the whole structure of commerce and technology; radical ideas such as doing away with personal transport all together, and actually paying third world countries to maintain the great rainforests that we all depend on for the very air we breathe.  Radical ideas for radical times, but I think its time to face the truth - President Clinton was wrong: it's not the economy - it's the ecology, stupid!'

50 Shades Of Black

I have a play on in London that is doing rather well.  A couple of months ago I was contacted out of the blue by the producer of the 'Terror Season' at Soho Theatre to contribute something for the event.  It turned out that he had heard about from me my association with the 'In Yer Face' group of writers and from my play Noise which was a big hit at Soho some years ago.  Terror is the UK's only annual festival of horror theatre and they have had some great writers contribute, so it was good to be asked.  The idea I came up was 50 Shades Of Black, a dark comic satire on that book - 50 Shades Of Grey.  Sarah and Lucy and I went down to London to see it together with some friends and made a weekend of it, taking in a few exhibitions too, including the Pre Raphaelite exhibition at Tate Modern; but I discovered that I had pretty much seen most of the paintings there previously, which were loaned from Birmingham and other galleries I had visited quite a lot.  It was interesting to see them all together in one complete collection though; it gave a good perspective of the whole movement I suppose; Millais still stands out for me as being the definitive painter amongst them; amazing visual technique and vivid use of colours.  This year's 'Terror Season' as a whole has had mixed reviews, but my play seems to have been singled out by some of the critics as worthy of mention, including a particularly good review in 'The Telegraph'.  It's good to have a play of mine out there again, particularly in London, and more particularly at Soho the scene of past triumphs.  I think there was some merit in parodying that book as well; it's baffling to me how something like that has become so popular - a soft porn world wide publishing sensation about S&M that's not even well written; and I'll bet if you haven't read it yourself you know someone who has.  So even though the brief was to write a short play that was essentially about scaring the audience in an entertaining way, I also saw it as an opportunity to take a pop at something I think is culturally rather dubious at the same time.  Other good news - recent blood tests were normal, so I can relax now for another 6 months!