Close Call

 

Just recovering from a very close call.  I have been very near to dying it seems and am so grateful to still be here; especially for my wife and daughter’s sake.  I had been feeling unwell for quite some time and eventually was consumed by pain in my kidneys and other symptoms.  I eventually tried to get a doctor’s appointment, but as things are now regarding NHS, I just had a phone appointment where I was indeed diagnosed as having a kidney infection and antibiotics were prescribed.  But things didn’t improve and as the pain got steadily worse I found I couldn’t eat either and then began to vomit black bile.  I did then get an appointment to see a doctor face-to-face and within a few minutes she told me to go home, pack a bag and go straight to hospital as I wouldn’t be coming home for a while.  Following a long wait in A&E, I finally had a CT scan and was visited by a consultant who told me I was hours away from death; many things were going wrong, but most worryingly my kidney function was down to 7% and there was some irreparable damage there.  Emergency care followed and the next day I was visited by another consultant who confirmed what I was still trying to process – I was indeed very lucky to be alive and I had left it a day longer sepsis would undoubtedly have occurred and there would be no chance of saving my life. 

So I’m back home now and back to work, but still receiving treatment and will be for some time.  But I’m slowly getting better; although I have lost a lot of weight and at the moment weigh only nine stone.  This near death event has spurred me on to write again as I have found the process quite demoralising of late as it seems so much more difficult to engage with a theatre director or company.  I’ve even tried mailing scripts together with a SAE ‘old school’, and more recently even posted my play Canned Peaches in Syrup to a hero of mine, Terry Gilliam when he was directing a play at Theatre Royal Bath, but no reply and no return SAE with my bloody script either!

But for some reason I can’t seem to stop writing, and at the moment feeling I’ve been granted some extra time I’m scribbling away again and am still trying to prise a response (or even an acknowledgement) from an industry I still love and miss.  The idea of death really does have a way of focussing you on life, and if you’ve read earlier posts you will know that this isn’t the first time I’ve faced it.  So back to my current job in mental health support and looking forward to a holiday and some scenic walking with my wonderfully supportive wife, seeing friends and my lovely daughter... I’m still here and very, very grateful for all those hospital staff that made it possible... life is so, so precious.

Mothers Day Poems

 

On Mothering Sunday, a couple of poems for all of us orphans.  My mother passed some time ago, long before she should have, and I still think about her almost every day and visit her grave from time to time... An inspirational, kind-hearted soul and my 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.

 

 

GRAVE FLOWERS

 

Wet flowers

Melting in my fingers,

Slimy stems

Disintegrating

As I pull them from the brass containers

Set in marble stone

At your grave.

 

I replace the flowers with new ones,

Bright yellow blooms shining brightly in the sun.

I know you can't see them,

But I wish you could.

 

Afghanistan

 

“It took 20 years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.”

 

You can’t make this stuff up... it seems to me this planet is governed by imbeciles with no regard for the common people.  It’s unbelievable what is now happening to Afghanistan.  It was obvious to me, a regular Joe, what would occur when America pulled out: they have abandoned a whole country to the rapacious whims of merciless religious terrorists, and every female citizen to a life devoid of education, self-will and a living hell where they are hardly allowed to see the light of day; virtual slaves terrified into subjugation by a regime where women are regarded as chattels and whose safety is a daily trial.  What is more, Biden has now made the world a very dangerous and different place for all of us, because now they see how easily they have taken power, the Taliban and IS will now also be seeking to inflict their terror on the West wherever and whenever they can... it makes you want to weep; just when we thought we had replaced a dangerous, bigoted, crass idiot of a President with someone whom we thought would steer politics in a very different direction, I see together with the oncoming climate crisis that it is becoming increasingly apparent that our world leaders are incompetent bumbling idiots who have little care for this fragile blue stone we call home.

David

 

I’m finding it hard to face the regular passing away of residents I have got to know and have grown fond of.  After a little break where I managed to have a holiday with friends in Wales I returned to work a shift in the care home and was informed that David had sadly died the previous night, and I couldn’t help but well up.  He was a great guy and a wonderful character; a proper London cockney from Crouch End who loved telling me of his life growing up in the East End and his job as an engineer working on Tube Trains.  He also played the piano really well and sang too and his presence kind of lit up the home; everyone liked him... I miss him and I know that all too soon some other resident will pass away too.  It’s very strange working so closely with people who are so near the end of their lives, but it’s also somewhat life-affirming to make a connection with individuals who rely on your care and commitment to their welfare.  Bridget, a lady who until recently was very active and always first up to read the papers in our library has succumbed to the pernicious grip of oncoming dementia and has taken to her bed, scared and somewhat confused, asking me continually where she is and asserting that she doesn’t think she should be here and would like me to drive her home as her mother will be missing her.  I took her breakfast in on a tray this morning and she was crying; I asked her what was wrong and she said “I feel sad”.  I sat with her and held her hands for a short while and told her everything was going to be okay and the kind people here were looking after her.  I left her looking settled and managing a little smile, but later that day when I took her a mug of tea she was crying again. 

Pointless?

 

I have been wondering recently if there is any point writing anymore.  My last few plays have garnered great responses and have made the long-list in various writing schemes, but nothing further has happened.  And now I’m finding I don’t even get acknowledgements when I forward a script, let alone a response, positive or not.  Whilst I was touring with the RSC I wrote a play I had sketched out many years ago, and as it featured a Shakespearean theme I thought this was the obvious time to complete it... it even featured a pandemic, which actually occurred shortly after I had completed the play.  One of the reasons I took the job with the RSC was because they announced that they were interested in actors other talents, so I took the opportunity to pitch the idea in a meeting to their artistic director, and set up a reading of the first few scenes with some of the actors of the company, and although everyone involved loved it and laughed their socks off, no one from the literary team bothered to turn up.  Since I’ve finished the play I sent it to pretty much everyone I thought might be interested in the company and again I haven’t even received a single acknowledgement.  But I have to admit this counts for every other theatre I’ve contacted too... no response whatever.  I wonder if anyone has even bothered to take a look at the script at all.  I reckon I have a pretty good writing CV; my plays have a long list of great reviews and have been produced at wonderful theatres all over the world, so this kind of negativity puzzles me.  I wonder also if it may have had something to do with the spat I had with Ayckbourn some years ago, and had been warned that some kind of unofficial black list might be linked to my name, but I don’t regret standing up for my work as more than once I have suffered from others taking from me and it hurts.  So now I’m thinking is it all a bit pointless... and I love the writing process and creating a new piece of work, and I’m often inspired by injustices and want to represent the ‘little man’ (or woman for that instance) whose stories are often ignored, but are important, and of course I have been writing about the environment and climate change for as long as I can remember.  But if no one out there can even be bothered to respond to my voice... well what’s the point?  I’m still working in the care home, and believe me its hard work, so I do have a regular income thank God and I do feel I’m doing something important in a small way, but boy do I miss being involved in theatre and having a voice out there.  Anyway just for the record here’s the synopsis of my latest play.  I love it!

 

THE PARAGON OF ANIMALS

 

A life-affirming inter-galactic love story.

 

Climate change and a global pandemic have left small communities, regulated by NHS death squads desperately isolated.  At the top of the bleak Yorkshire Moors, Victoria, the beautiful daughter of the landlord of the last working pub in England is struggling to find meaning in her lonely existence... until Pip; an alien being that looks very much like a young William Shakespeare comes crashing into her life.  But when Robert, a jealous government inspector turns up too, it triggers a deadly battle for the very soul of humanity, where the cumulative history of planet Earth may be forever lost.

Covid Poem

 

You are 13.8 billion years away

Stars have come and gone

Galaxies collided

Since I last saw you.

 

The big bang saw the nativity of our universe

And I have been waiting that long to see you again.

Time is ticking the stars away

Time is tediously erasing its memory of us and all that came before.

 

But I defy time and atoms and the definitive click of the quantum clock

And demand that you and I will meet again

I demand once again

That fingers touch fingers

That lips touch lips

That hugs will embrace hugs

And we will see each other again.

Saints

 

Working loads of shifts in the care home as they always seem to be short staffed, but the truth is most of us are on minimum age and it doesn’t really reflect the work we have to do, so it’s hardly surprising.  I’m mostly working in the kitchen now; dishwashing and taking breakfast trays to the resident’s rooms; sometimes having to feed the ones who are very weak and I guess facing their final days.  So – dishwashing, some cooking, preparing and serving suppers, laying tables, pouring drinks, cleaning rooms and bathrooms, collecting trays on a trolley from the various floors.  But the most difficult aspect of the job is seeing the gradual decline of the people I’ve got to know very well, and witness their vulnerability and dependence increase as they slowly find their bodies and mental faculties wither and begin to fail them.  It’s a hard lesson of mortality and me and the other carers see it every day.  And of course now and then someone will die and it’s hard not to feel their loss, even though it’s part of the job; ‘end-of-life-care’, and during the pandemic we’ve been the only people they’ve been able to communicate with mostly and they really miss their family, their children and grandchildren.  Consequently I do chat quite a lot with them and on the whole they have some incredible life stories; for instance, one lady who is 100 years old was a volunteer driver during the second world war, ferrying troops and personnel around during the blitz, and for a while she was a driver for Eisenhower, who was a five star general at the time and then became the 34^th President of America.  So – ups and downs I suppose; grim-faced individuals living with the pain and distress of old age, but still smiling and making the best of things.  But as I said it is a place for end-of-life-care, and during my second week I took a breakfast tray up to one resident and when I opened the door I thought ‘Christ, you don’t look well!’  I spoke her name a few times, but it soon became apparent that she had passed away during the night.  A shocking moment for me, but a well-worn ritual for the main carers who are generally there, holding hands and speaking soothing words as they gently help someone face their final journey.  The staff there are incredible and I have nothing but respect for the dignity they show the residents and the small kindnesses they administer daily... all for minimum wage.  They are saints.

Risky Jobs

 

Since the theatres have closed I still have to pull in a wage and it’s been proving to be a bit of a risky enterprise.  I returned to my job as a carer in children’s homes, putting in a few shifts for a while.  However, the kids who are in ordinary times a bit of a handful, are responding to the pandemic with even more challenging behaviour; no longer allowed to go to the cinema, go shopping, can’t  see friends or even family (which is really important for them) on supervised contact; a lot of them are finding it all too much; confined to a place they don’t want to be and with other kids they don’t particularly want to be with either, violent outbursts born of frustration and hopelessness are almost a daily occurrence and staff are getting injured, sometimes quite badly.  I myself have taken a few hits from kids in the past and spitting at staff too is something that happens a lot.  After coming home after a really challenging shift where the whole day and night was spent restraining young people who were hell bent on destroying the home and each other, Sarah persuaded me to take a break and try and find something else a little less hazardous for a while.  And so I got a job under the ‘Pick for Britain’ scheme picking beans on a farm in nearby Mathon; back-breaking work in all weathers , but particularly in the heat wave we were going through at that time.  We were soon joined by workers from Romania and Slovakia who were staying in caravans supplied by the farmer, and boy they could pick!  As it was piece work, they worked relentlessly all through the heat of the day and the pouring rain too, and I guess they had to because I was appalled to discover that they had to pay for their meagre lodgings from the wages they earned.  They were great people, and in spite of our language differences we all got on really well and I did in fact enjoy the job: the physical labour outdoors, the camaraderie of the workforce and the feeling of doing something useful to help the country and farmers, who apparently were short of labour to harvest their crops.  But I felt there was a degree of exploitation happening and the conditions were far from adequate, with only one portaloo to service the whole field of over 60 pickers.  And so it was inevitable I guess that one Sunday on my day off I got a call from one of my fellow pickers to check the news headlines and discovered that the farm we were working at had a major covid outbreak and 200 workers were self-isolating.  That was the first we had heard of it; the farm never contacted one of us ‘Pick for Britain’ crew through our whatsap group or message or phone or anything.  Sarah and I immediately got a test and fortunately we were clear... that was the end of that particular job!  So now I’m working in a care home for the elderly, and it happens that one third of all covid deaths are in care homes!  But there really ain’t much work out there at the moment, and because I’m a registered care worker it wasn’t difficult to find a job there.  I’ve never worked with old people before and it is really hard work and long shifts too, but the residents are lovely and the staff are great; a real close team who do really care.  I’ve recently had the vaccine too because of my job, so that’s one good thing I suppose. Missing loads of regular normal things of course: theatre, pubs, my gym, seeing friends and most of all I’m missing my daughter who I’ve only seen a couple of times all last year...  Just getting on with life at the moment and hoping that Sarah gets the vaccine too soon as she had heart surgery a year ago and is consequently at risk.  But we’re out walking, socially distancing meeting up with a few local mates when we can, watching loads of Netflix and stuff like that, but God do I want things to get back to normal and I would love to b able to hug my little girl again.

RSC and then Covid

I have been touring with the RSC performing in As You Like It and Taming Of The Shrew, a dream job for me, since it was a trip to the RSC that first sparked my interest in theatre and inspired me to get to drama school and become an actor and writer.  But sadly the tour was cut short when the covid virus struck.  We had just reached the end of our National tour and were about to embark on the International leg to Chicago, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo when theatres around the world suddenly went dark, and who knows when they will open again?  All very sad, but I must confess that I was somewhat concerned about the environmental impact, which I think would have been substantial, given the huge cast, crew, band, set etc.  I have been even more involved with green issues of late and attended a few Extinction Rebellion protests and rallies, and wonder now that we are in lock down we should assess what’s really important in our lives, and I think top of the list is our planet; we owe it to the next generation to try our best to save it because ‘tipping point’ is very nearly here.  And so while I am sad to have lost a job I have really enjoyed and longed for, I wonder if it was really necessary to travel so far for the sake of art.  During the tour the RSC were also pressured to abandon their sponsorship with BP.  Times are changing and times have been very dark lately; this pandemic has left its mark on humanity in a very profound way; so many have died, so many infected, so many lives ruined, and it may possibly be because of the selfish wish in so-called ‘wet markets’ to eat strange, exotic animals like bats or the endangered pangolin.  All of these ideas are inspiring me and my writing at the moment; I feel this could be a moment when the world might be able to press the ‘reset’ button and do things differently, more compassionately, especially following Greta Thunberg’s worldwide movement to save the planet and the inspirational ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign, but sadly headline news still speak of war, unrest, famine and oppression.  Strange unparalleled times... who knows what will happen next?

As You Like It, RSC:

Big Baby Trump

As President Trump is soon to be gracing our shores I thought I’d post this...  Together with my band - Dirty Harry Band, we have recorded two new songs (both of which I am the singer): 'Stupid' - our response to President Trump and '50 Shades of Black' a musical send up of 'that book'.  Please download them and listen and if you like, please share the link; especially 'Stupid', as (given the message) we'd love this song to reach as many people as possible.  'Stupid' can be found on itunes, spotify, facebook, etc.  

Best Wishes

Alex Jones.

https://www.facebook.com/The-Dirty-Harry-Band-103732226415757/

STUPID

Stupid -

You’re so stupid,

You’re dangerous and stupid

Big baby stamp your feet

If you don’t get your way

And you can’t take the heat.

Stupid -

You’re so stupid.

Disgusting -

You’re so disgusting,

You’re so skin-crawlingly, disgusting.

Pussy-grabbing bar room bore

Locker room morals

Rotten to the core.

Disgusting -

You’re so disgusting.

Chorus:

We need to build bridges

But you wanna build walls

Big-mouth bigot

But you ain’t got no balls

The fake news media

Got you sweating at night

Ranting and raving

‘Cos you know that they’re right

Twitting and a-tweeting

Like a teenage nerd

Desperate for approval

You so wanna be heard.

Guitar break

Hateful -

You’re so hateful,

It’s disturbing how anyone can be that hateful.

History taught  

Foreigners to be aware

Of psychopathic fascists with dodgy hair,

Chorus:

We need to build bridges

But you wanna build walls

Big-mouth bigot

But you ain’t got no balls

The fake news media

Got you sweating at night

Ranting and raving

‘Cos you know that they’re right

Tiny little hands

Tiny little brain

Ego like a planet,

You’re so vain...

Spoken:

Crass -

You’re so crass,

You’re a blundering, idiotic ass.

And you’re stupid!

Yeah, you’re stupid -

Look in the mirror, dope -

See how stupid you look -

And we’re all laughing at you!

Cathy - final outing

Ali Taylor’s wonderful play ‘Cathy’ has been touring yet again!  This time playing for three weeks at Soho Theatre before heading off for Cornwall, the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, theatres in Wales and a final week in London at the Albany Theatre.  It’s been a privilege to be a part of such an amazing production and to perform with such a talented cast; especially Cathy Owen who plays the title role, every night embarking on an emotional journey that generally leaves the audience in tears.  The play has been pretty much sold out and we’ve often received standing ovations at the end of performances.  I shared my latest play with Soho and had a meeting with the artistic team there.  It would be great to see it performed at Soho, especially as my play ‘Noise’ was one of the plays that opened their theatre at Dean Street to great acclaim when I was one of the latest movement of playwrights then known as ‘In Yer Face Playwrights’.  We’ll see...

In the meantime I’ve enjoyed performing as an actor again in a very relevant play which is still garnering fantastic reviews, including this one from the Independent...

There but for the grace of God: this update of Ken Loach’s seminal 1966 drama is as powerful as its forbear Pamela Raith

In 1966, the BBC broadcast Ken Loach's seminal Cathy Come Home, a drama that shook the nation, altering people's perceptions of homelessness. More than fifty years on, Ali Taylor's powerful play Cathy reminds us that the state of housing is still a very sore issue and it draws on deeply researched real-life experience to imagine how a modern Cathy would fare in the current climate.  

The piece was commissioned by Cardboard Citizens, the company that makes theatre with and for homeless people, and it is one of their most galvanising shows. I have never felt so viscerally how easy it can be for people to fall into the homeless trap. 

In Adrian Jackson's excellent production, this insecurity is symbolised by a large jenga block. As well as providing a screen for the interview footage of up-to-the-minute testimonies, this structure shows how something that seems so solid can in fact be highly precarious. It doesn't take the removal of many pieces for the whole edifice to fall in on itself.    

Cathy Owen gives a stunningly good performance as Cathy. Humorous, nobody's fool, and proud of the fact that she has always been able to pay her way, she juggles three jobs as a cleaner. Her 15-year-old daughter Danielle (spot-on Hayley Wareham) is only months away from GCSEs and her confused father is in a nursing home round the corner. But now she's on zero hours contracts and when gets a few weeks behind with the rent, the new landlord – the nephew of the friendly old lady with whom she's dealt before – sees it as the perfect opportunity to evict Cathy from her longstanding East End flat and move in considerably more profitable tenants. 

Mother and daughter are then pitched into a bewildering tangle of impersonal officialdom, the short, sharp scenes heightened by the fact that Amy Loughton and Alex Jones pungently play all the other characters. This is a crusading piece and does not pretend to be even-handed but the opposition, though presented as cold, is never crudely caricatured. No emergency accommodation can be found for them within the borough, so the pair are relocated to a bedsit in a dismal property in Luton where the local girls bully Hayley for being, as they take it, one of the “scrounging” immigrants they associate with the house. The two of them are stuck there for months. 

It's as if the intricate support groups that make life feasible, and the fact that people have dependents, no longer carries any weight for the geniuses who think that a two-bedroom maisonette in Newcastle will be the solution to Cathy's problem. There's a terrible catch in all this: if you refuse an offer, you can be deemed  “intentionally homeless” and the council will relinquish its duty of care. But if there is a minor involved, as there is in Cathy's case, then there is perceived obligation to pass the file on to Social Services. “We cannot allow a 15-year-old to sleep rough on the streets,” one official observes.

  Owen movingly suggests the central character's fierce love for her daughter, her pride in the girl's schooling and her determined, heartbreaking hope. The strains in the mother-daughter relationship are achingly signalled by the actresses, especially when desperation reduces her to making an appeal to the girl's feckless gambler father who has reluctant temporary room for one of them. Every setback feels like a body blow. The descent is utterly convincing and with no trace of melodrama.

At Soho Theatre, Cathy is being performed as a standalone piece. It then goes on tour to Glasgow Cardiff, Milford Haven, Aberyswyth and the Albany, London, when the proceedings will continue after an interval with the cast improvising on audience suggestions as to how the characters might have dealt with the situation differently. But however experienced, this excellent show leaves you buzzing with thoughts about how a terrible system can be improved

Farewell to some old friends

2017 saw a good few friends of mine pass away, sadly long before they really should have, all of cancer and all much too young.  Among them, Sue Edmonds who was in her late forties; she died of breast cancer, which she thought she had beat.  She was diagnosed about the same time as me so we used to swap notes regarding our treatment whenever we bumped into each other.  We both had operations, and Sue had extensive chemotherapy too, but sadly her cancer came back a few years ago and pretty soon it was clear that it was terminal this time.  A few months before she passed we were invited to her birthday party and it was clear when we got there it was her way of saying goodbye to us all.  She had endured a lot of surgery in the previous few months, and it was upsetting to see a massive patch over her eye which had been removed as the cancer was now in her face; she was also having trouble eating and swallowing food too, but somehow she seemed in high spirits and laughed and joked with us all and the evening in spite of her obvious suffering was wonderfully touching and enjoyable; her children and husband Paul were there of course and they made sure the evening was a success and that Sue had a good time.  It’s amazing how people cope with life’s inevitable tragedy; I’ve seen it so often now, and seen many of my friends and relatives face the end of their existence with courage, stoicism and love for those around them, concerned also for their feelings at the loss of someone close and important... themselves.  I also lost a mate from drama school, ‘Adrian’, who was one of the funniest people I have ever met.  We were always together because we both seemed to have the same mad sense of humour, but we lost touch over the years, so when I heard that he had suffered from long term mental health problems and struggled with life’s hardships for a long, long time I found it really upsetting.  It’s strange how some people just seem to suffer; life just seems to constantly kick them in the face for no rhyme or reason, and it seemed that Adrian really did suffer and struggle with addiction, loneliness and a very cruel cancer that resulted in him having his tongue cut away.  I will always remember him as a funny, intelligent guy, concerned about the injustices of the world and passionately involved with theatre, the great love of his life.  It seems however that theatre let him down; he didn’t get on in the profession, and like many of my contemporaries eventually gave up trying to find work in an industry that can be so indifferent to great talent.  I don’t know if that rejection in some way contributed to his mental decline, but one suspects it may have been a factor.  I am also mourning the loss of our good friend’s young daughter, ‘India’.  She was only nineteen years old and died just before Christmas and in spite of her youth was an incredibly inspirational individual.  She had complained of severe headaches on New Year’s day two years ago and was taken to A&E where she had a scan which revealed an embedded tumour in her brain.  To her parent’s horror the medical staff informed them that it was inoperable.  Nevertheless, she was operated on – again and again, and each operation seemed to go wrong resulting in some speech loss, mobility and meningitis.  Her family still battled on to try and save their precious daughter; (because that’s what you do when you have a precious daughter), even raising money to take her to America to have proton beam treatment.  Eventually India declared that she had had enough of hospital and wanted to make the best of her last moments on earth.  She began her bucket list, writing letters (no messaging or emailing for her), working for a printing company and doing a parachute jump too.  The family had booked a trip to Sweden to try and see the Northern Lights; her final wish, but sadly the day before they were to travel she had a bleed on the brain and instead of catching a plane, she instead travelled to a hospice in Worcester.  A few weeks later she passed away and in those precious last days she planned her funeral, wrote an elegy about her personal beliefs and even made a video.  Her funeral was of course heartbreaking for her family, her friends and everyone who knew her – a seventeen year old girl who was looking forward to going on to University at St Andrews had endured two years of pain and suffering in a desperate quest to beat cancer and live as long as possible, but in those last few years she had achieved so much, and has left behind a legacy of memories and words which we experienced on that day, including the video in which she spoke with a slow, slightly slurred voice about the wonders around us all and how we should all enjoy and make the most of every moment we have.  There was no coffin at the funeral because as she could not donate her organs and be a donor, she instead left her body to medical science; and I think ‘what an extraordinary gesture from such a young and extraordinarily exemplary young woman.’  I myself as you can see am still around and kicking and have recently had more hospital checks, and indeed last year I had two endoscopies and a CT scan as well as various blood tests – all so far clear, thank God!  I endeavour to follow India’s advice and example and try and make the most of every moment I have, and indeed once you have experienced cancer you really do have a fresh perspective on life, but life constantly throws up its challenges, both financial and emotionally and so of course it is not always that easy to live up so such a unique person’s philosophical advice, but I am going to give it my best shot.  Life really is precious and it’s such an incredible accident of fate that we exist at all: our lives were forged in the furnace of the big bang 18.5 billion years ago and millions of years of evolutionary chance had finally given us conscious thought so that we can experience the amazing world we live in.  We really are, all of us, stardust.  Life is a beautiful gift; we shouldn’t squander it.

India as I said planned her funeral, and as science was always her touchstone and made sense of life and existence for her, one of the readings she asked for was ‘You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral’. By Aaron Freeman.  Here it is...

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.

Amen. 

Take a Minute - Save a Life

I had a commission from Cardboard Citizens and the MIND in Harringey charity to write a play about the important issue of male suicide to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day.  Having worked some time ago as a Samaritan volunteer I was delighted to be able to take part in such a vital project and contribute to awareness of such an important and neglected issue.  Suicide is seems is still something of a taboo subject, but the sad truth is that the number of men who took their own lives last year in the UK was 4,287.  I worked with the director, Stuart Mullins and a cast of actors and used research from the MIND charity and the Samaritans organisation to write a play on the subject.  I spent a short week writing the play in London, but the following week during rehearsals I had a call from Stuart saying one of the actors had had to pull out, so I had to travel to London again the next day and take his part.  The play was performed to a sell out audience at the Pleasance Theatre in London.  Below is some information and responses...

Posted on: 17 October 2017

Written by: Vicky Ream

Last week’s scratch performance with MIND in Harringey was a huge success, with the audience packing out the Pleasance Theatre to see the first performance of Take A Minute.

The show was based on a series of interviews and workshops facilitated by Cardboard Citizens with people affected by suicide. This was the first stage in the process to see how Forum Theatre can help to explore and raise awareness of mental health issues. The audience were invited to give suggestions on how we could take this model forwards and their thoughts on the content. We were overwhelmed by the positive and constructive audience feedback we received both through the discussion, Forum, feedback forms and social media.

Audience feedback included - 

“It made me more sure that every single thing helps no matter how ‘small’ it might be.”

“Notice more, talk more, listen more.”

“I was already aware of male suicide affecting a huge percentage of our population, but it has made me more aware of specific signs and issues and possible ways of approaching people who may be suffering.”

The evening ended with a panel discussion with Lynette Charles (CEO of MIND in Harringey), Stuart Mullins (Associate Director of Cardboard Citizens), Andre Skeete (Actor and Cardboard Citizens Member), Alex Jones (Writer and Actor) and Professor David Mosse (Chair of Haringey Suicide Prevention Group).

Cathy at Edinburgh Festival

Been touring in Cathy for some time, and the play has gone from strength to strength.  We took it to Edinburgh for the festival where it played for four weeks to pretty much sold out houses at the Dome Pleasance theatre.  Saw some great theatre while I was there too, including ‘The Nature of Forgetting’, a physical theatre piece by Theatre Re, punctuated with beautiful live music, about early onset dementia, which was easily the best show of the fringe and one of the most compelling and moving theatre I have ever seen.  We performed a few more venues in London and finished in Brighton, having been invited by the Labour Party to perform it at their conference.  The venue was packed and it felt kind of weird performing in front of famous faces you see daily on TV and in the media.  There followed an inspirational speech by Andy Burnham about how the Labour Party might tackle the housing crisis and what his council is trying to achieve in Manchester.  Later we were eating fish and chips in a nearby restaurant and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell spotted us and came over to our table for a chat; he had seen the play in Edinburgh and was really congratulatory, stating how important the play’s message was and how housing would be top of the agenda should Labour be elected again... had a bit of a chat about Brexit too; he ensured me Labour would be challenging the Brexit bill in its various stages.  The play does seem to be touching nerves everywhere its performed, and I myself have a greater insight into what it is to be homeless through outreach work I have participated in with Cardboard Citizens, and working with and meeting their members too; who are truly inspirational people having suffered the indignities of homelessness and extreme poverty.  I have at one time in my life done quite a bit of sofa surfing in London and even lived for a while in a squat in Peckham, but I have never suffered the privations and despair that some of the desperate people I have met recently, and consider it shocking that families have to endure such terrible circumstances in modern day Britain.  But the bedroom tax, housing policy, greedy landlords and a seemingly uncaring government whose recent changes to the benefit system seem to me to be aimed primarily at those in society who are poor and dispossessed seem to my mind to make life even more difficult and challenging for those among us who are at the very brink of despair.  I have now begun to write a play inspired by things I have learnt whilst working on Cathy and inspired by the amazing people I have met along the way.  I think it’s an important modern day dilemma that deserves our attention.  Of course Ali Taylor’s fantastic play addresses some of these issues wonderfully, so I am approaching it from a different point of view; but it’s a massive subject with many, many disparate stories, and one I feel obliged to tackle.

Manchester bombing atrocity

The Manchester bombing, deliberately targeting young children innocently enjoying themselves at a concert is shocking beyond words.  I can’t comprehend how or why someone could be so cruel and callous, but I was distressed also to hear that Dr. Naveed Yasin, an orthopaedic surgeon who had spent 48 hours operating on the injured from that despicable crime was later racially abused in the street, called a ‘Paki bastard’ and told to go home.  While it is natural to be angry and even furious about what happened on that tragic day, we should remember that the person who committed this horrific crime was not a Muslim, but a terrorist, and the majority of Muslim citizens in this country are as equally appalled by what he did as are the rest of us.  I think on the whole the UK is a tolerant place to live and work, but sadly there are those among us who when events like this occur will use the occasion to voice their own hateful prejudices...  We are all human beings made of the same clay, bound on the same journey together, sharing the same planet; no single act, however horrifying and terrible should stand in the way of our unity; together we are strong, no matter what God we choose to worship or the colour of our skin.  Dr. Yasin was a hero who relentlessly battled to save the life of those injured on that fateful day, and Manchester is his home, England his country. 

Cathy at the House of Lords

Cathy tour is now over, and it’s been quite an experience as we performed not only in theatres, but homeless hostels and many prisons too, including Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville and the inmates there were amazing; wonderfully welcoming and keen to share their own life experiences with us.  The very last gig a few weeks ago I think reflects the diverse venues we have been touring to, as we were invited to perform the play at the House of Lords as part of an evening reception for the ‘Homes for Cathy’ charity.  Again the people there were moved by the play and we were made very welcome by the Lords and MP’s who had attended the event, and were later invited to ‘Strangers Bar’ for a few late drinks by the labour shadow housing minister, John Healey.  Can’t believe it’s all over; it was difficult to say goodbye to the cast and crew after so long, but a fantastic final outing for Cathy, and what a privilege to have been a part of it all.   Here’s some picture of the event – the cast and crew and John Healey too!

A couple of breaks!

There was a break in the tour of ‘Cathy’ during December when I unfortunately had a second break!  During a drunken moment at a local party I accepted a challenge to arm wrestle; something I’ve done a few times with varying success... however this time things didn’t go quite as planned and I ended up with a rather nasty broken arm – see picture!  Well of course it was my own stupid fault for taking part in the first place, but also rather stupidly I was kneeling at the table, so my opponent had a bit of an advantage and was always gonna beat me.  I felt things weren’t going well and was just about to call time on the whole endeavour when I heard a sickening crack and my arm was suddenly limp and was dangling in a pretty alarming manner.  The pain was excruciating, so an ambulance was called and off I went to hospital.  My first thought was ‘will I still be able to perform in the show in a few weeks time’, and with the aid of a sling which I wore for the first scene, thankfully the tour carried on and I didn’t let anyone down.  However, a few weeks later we were visiting a night club in Manchester after a late show and it had been snowing and the steps down to the entrance were wet and I slipped and fell on my arm and broke it again!  My arm is on the mend though now, but not quite so well knit together as I would have hoped.  But as you can see from the picture there is evidence of another break from some years previous – a metal plate, seven screws and six pieces of wire in my elbow from an injury on a building site where I was labouring.  I’m always doing stuff like this and Sarah remarked that life with me is never dull... Got to be more sensible in future though... but I did arm wrestle in my local pub with my left arm recently and won too!

Acting again!

I’m treading the boards again!  Touring in Cardboard Citizens production of Cathy.  Been a while, but auditioned a month or so ago for this wonderfully powerful play by Ali Taylor which addresses many current issues regarding homelessness.  I’m playing five different roles and had a week to learn them before opening at the Pleasance Theatre in London as the previous actor had fallen ill and was unable to carry on...  A bit nerve-wracking the first few nights, but all is going well and I’m really enjoying acting once more.  We have also been playing at hostels and a woman’s prison, meeting some incredible people whose lives are sometimes sadly mirrored somewhat in the play.  We do a thing called ‘forum theatre’ afterwards involving the audience directly in decisions which the main character may have made to change her history; a unique theatrical technique I have never done before, but which really gets ideas and passions flowing.  Below are links to Cardboard Citizens and ‘Cathy’.  It’s quite an extensive tour if you can catch it...

CARDBOARD CITIZENS TOUR CATHY FROM OCT – BOOK TICKETS NOW  

Book now for our brand new Forum Theatre piece Cathy, on tour until Feb 2017. Written by award-winning playwright Ali Taylor and directed by Adrian Jackson, this powerful, interactive piece explores resonances with Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home to offer a timely reflection on the impact of spiralling housing costs, gentrification and the challenges of the forced relocation away from London.

 

Click here to book now and join the conversation on Twitter using

The tragic case of Ellie Butler

The recent traumatic and devastating case of Ellie Butler, a six year old girl who was murdered by her father is something I find very disturbing; particularly as the trial judge exonerated him from a previous offence of shaking and injuring her as a small baby, and then after spending most of her life in the tender care of her grandparents she was handed over to a man and woman she barely knew.  I work as a carer in children’s homes with kids some who have been physically and sexually abused, and at the moment I am working with a very challenging ten year old girl whose parents were nothing short of monsters; the abuse she and her nine siblings suffered at the hands of their parents is something that will probably scar them emotionally for the rest of their lives, and the thought of this poor girl being sent back to the very people who did such terrible things to her fills me with horror.  Yet this is exactly what happened to Ellie.  Her grandfather has been speaking in the media about it recently, of how he and his late wife fought tooth and nail to keep her with them, but were basically told they were interfering with judicial procedures and warned to back off.  At the end of her life when her grandfather last saw her, Ellie was covered in bruises and was withdrawn and quiet... a few days later she was dead, and Ellie’s own mother colluded to cover up the murder.  We are only carers, but the work we do is the stuff no one really hears about, and believe me life in a children’s home is nothing like Tracy Beaker.  We work for minimum wage with complex kids who for various reasons cannot be fostered or adopted, and sometimes I do feel their needs are not properly supported by the agencies and social workers who should have their best interests at heart... a point sadly proved by Ellie Butler’s tragic story. 

BBC Audio Drama Award

Last year I was involved as an actor in an online drama called The Kindness of Time, which recently won BBC Audio Drama Award 2016.  If you’d like to listen, here’s a link to the site: http://www.rosieboulton.co.uk/