The continuing story of how I ended up a storyliner on A Top Soap...
I ask around. Nearly everyone feels I should make the leap from my comfort zone. People talk about Jimmy McGovern, Paul Abbott, Alan Bleasdale... A couple of people - my closest friends - do say 'But Steve, you don't like TV. You don't even have a TV.' But most people don't feel that not watching television is any impediment to success in the medium. And I get the impression that several people always thought my not having a TV was kind of an affectation anyway...
I swear that's not the case. The reason I don't have a Tv is not snobbery, it's a combination of ADD and laziness. I never have the patience to sit through a whole programme. I'm always wandering off to read or listen to music, or phoning people, or doodling. I can't concentrate on watching anything for more than ten minutes at a time. That's the ADD... and the laziness is that we moved house, the new house didn't have an aeriel and we couldn't be arsed to organise a new one. And these days you don't really need a telly. There's the iplayer and if something's really good you buy the boxset for xmas and spend the whole of January watching it.
The really interesting thing is that our kids aren't bothered about TV either.
I never watched much Tv growing either. My Dad had complicated rules about what could or couldn't be watched. These boiled down to things he liked - good. Things he didn't - not only bad but forbidden. These rules extended to times when he wasn't even in the house. And my Dad's taste meant we couldn't watch anything American, anything violent, anything ecessively maudlin. We also couldn't watch gameshows, or Top of the Pops. A few things were practically compulsory (Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads; Yes, Minister, Steptoe and Son; Dad's Army) but still this regime meant that 80% of everyday playground chat was mystifying to me. Starsky and who? The Generation What? The Sweeney is a police unit? What does it stand for?
One lingering consequence of this regime has meant that a lot of 90s and noughties television has meant little to me too. Life on Mars makes no sense if you didn't get The Sweeney, any panel show where comedians get an easy laughs imitating Mr T (basically all of them) is spoken in a foreign language.
Nevertheless despite this draconian domestic government even my dad never went so far as to ever suggest that we got rid of the telly. And I don't think we would have stood for it if he had. The masses in number 75 Curlew Crescent would have been provoked beyond endurance and surelyrevolted... but our kids don't seem to care.
No, the truth is even teenagers don't need TV now. And for them it's not just the iplayer and the DVD boxset. The also have msn messanger and Rome Total War. They have 24 hour talk and retail opportunities. They have their own arcades in their bedrooms. TV is the past... talking bollocks in hyperspace and endless wasting of aliens, that's the future...
Of course I should have taken the hint from this. If the kids aren't bothered about TV, then it's a dying thing and bound to go the way of county cricket and riding tandems. A marginal activity for the eccentric middle aged.
Here's something I notice in TV owning households. The TV is always on, but no-one is taking any notice. Certainly the kids aren't watching it. It chirrups away in the corner of every room like a cheerful but demented relative. Someone who is easily ignored. It's only the middle-aged who care about TV.
Which is, perhaps, why people thought it might be a good move for me.
Anyway, anyway... I askaround, tot up the responses, do a swot analysis, write lists of pros and cons. Think hard about it. And, after days and weeks of careful debate. I do the wrong thing. I take the job.
I phone Redford. 'That storyliner job? Is it still going?'
'Yeah. I guess.'
'Cool. I'll take it.'
Somewhere of course the descants of Carmen Burana were swelling ominously in the background. I wasn't listening.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Friday, 9 October 2009
Should I Stay or Should I go?
Been away a lot... apologies for that... Suffolk, Stroud, and working and trying to find work... and writing... and reading...
Anyway, I think we're about done with the interview process... Redford came back from the bar. We had more drinks and cheesy snack and then I weaved my way home...
In the morning I was too embarrassed - and too hungover - to ring Redford and ask him directly whether what I thought had happened really had... Did he offer me a job or what?Did I dream it? Was it a drunken misunderstanding? And what if he had offered me a job, but only because he was a bit pissed and was now regretting it? And if he had offered me a job... had I accepted it or what?
It's a terrible thing being English... these are questions that Americans would have sorted in one five second phone call. But then, Americans probably wouldn't have done TV business in a boozer. And if they had done it a boozer there would have been at least one note-taking participant who would have stuck to mineral water...
Anyway, I don't call... and Redford doesn't call. And I'm quite relieved because I'm not sure what I will say if he does call...
Thing is I already have my perfect day-job. I divide my time between writing novels and plays and programming, organising and running courses for aspriring writers at Ted Hughes old manor in West Yorkshire. (This is a literal old manor - not just a mockney geezerism). The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre comes complete with the best view in England. As the man himself called it 'That beautiful little kingdom, that eyrie above the crevasse of trees and water...'
More important than the view is the fact that it's that rarest of things a day-job that dove-tails perfectly with my own writing. The students go into a workshop and I go into the library. They emerge a couple of hours later for coffee, so do I. they come out for lunch, so do I. In the afternoon they go off to write or to talk through their work with the tutors, and then I start my actual work... liaising with potential tutors, or, more often, talking to plumbers, gardeners, dry stone walling experts, roofers, IT specialists, cleaners and suppliers of bog-roll. Ialso spend some time mucking about with the people who do the real work. Caron and Ilona. And it's a laugh, with just enough annoyances to have the illusion of being a proper job. Many of these annoyances are helpfully supplied by head office in London who sit in the Ministry of Literature, working out how to corral creativity so it fits this framework and that strategy and answers to Arts Council memorandum 576a sub-section c. Or hassling us about Health and Safety leaflets.
(Note to the tories: If you get in - abolish the arts council. See what artists not only survive the three years post abolition, but continue to make creative work. Fund those. And have a directly elected Arts Supremo in charge. Only Don't call her or him an arts czar though, please. There are enough Czars. Call him or her an Arts Chef. Or something.)
It's a good job. Not brilliantly paid, but it's Ok. Couldn't be more congenial. Plus I've learned loads. About writing, about publishing, about human nature... Because each week sixteen students rock up and they are all ages, all beckgrounds... I've met lesbian strippers. I've met priests and doctors and lawyers and journalists (lots of journos, lots of teachers...) and actors and unapologetic housewifes and very apologetic soldiers. I've met call girls and politicians and PR gurus and eco-warriors. And not only that but I've met them in the context of all of them meeting each other. And not just meeting each other, but living together, eating together, cooking together, working together.
The Arvon Foundation courses are like week long communes. A hang over of the sixties that provides a space where aspiring writers work intensively, guided by professionals, without the distractions of the modern world. There's no internet, no Tv, no fuss and no bother. And freed from the shackles buzz and bleep of the day-to-day world, people becaome their best selves. they return to the state of energy and hope that they lived in before the demands of work and family kicked in. They come alive again. It's an ordinary miracle that is in itself energising to be around.
It's a great, great job. Lovely people in a lovely place, talking about lovely things. What could be better than that? Why would I give that up for a TV soap?
Well, there is the money I suppose. There's always the money. Of which more anon...
Anyway, I think we're about done with the interview process... Redford came back from the bar. We had more drinks and cheesy snack and then I weaved my way home...
In the morning I was too embarrassed - and too hungover - to ring Redford and ask him directly whether what I thought had happened really had... Did he offer me a job or what?Did I dream it? Was it a drunken misunderstanding? And what if he had offered me a job, but only because he was a bit pissed and was now regretting it? And if he had offered me a job... had I accepted it or what?
It's a terrible thing being English... these are questions that Americans would have sorted in one five second phone call. But then, Americans probably wouldn't have done TV business in a boozer. And if they had done it a boozer there would have been at least one note-taking participant who would have stuck to mineral water...
Anyway, I don't call... and Redford doesn't call. And I'm quite relieved because I'm not sure what I will say if he does call...
Thing is I already have my perfect day-job. I divide my time between writing novels and plays and programming, organising and running courses for aspriring writers at Ted Hughes old manor in West Yorkshire. (This is a literal old manor - not just a mockney geezerism). The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre comes complete with the best view in England. As the man himself called it 'That beautiful little kingdom, that eyrie above the crevasse of trees and water...'
More important than the view is the fact that it's that rarest of things a day-job that dove-tails perfectly with my own writing. The students go into a workshop and I go into the library. They emerge a couple of hours later for coffee, so do I. they come out for lunch, so do I. In the afternoon they go off to write or to talk through their work with the tutors, and then I start my actual work... liaising with potential tutors, or, more often, talking to plumbers, gardeners, dry stone walling experts, roofers, IT specialists, cleaners and suppliers of bog-roll. Ialso spend some time mucking about with the people who do the real work. Caron and Ilona. And it's a laugh, with just enough annoyances to have the illusion of being a proper job. Many of these annoyances are helpfully supplied by head office in London who sit in the Ministry of Literature, working out how to corral creativity so it fits this framework and that strategy and answers to Arts Council memorandum 576a sub-section c. Or hassling us about Health and Safety leaflets.
(Note to the tories: If you get in - abolish the arts council. See what artists not only survive the three years post abolition, but continue to make creative work. Fund those. And have a directly elected Arts Supremo in charge. Only Don't call her or him an arts czar though, please. There are enough Czars. Call him or her an Arts Chef. Or something.)
It's a good job. Not brilliantly paid, but it's Ok. Couldn't be more congenial. Plus I've learned loads. About writing, about publishing, about human nature... Because each week sixteen students rock up and they are all ages, all beckgrounds... I've met lesbian strippers. I've met priests and doctors and lawyers and journalists (lots of journos, lots of teachers...) and actors and unapologetic housewifes and very apologetic soldiers. I've met call girls and politicians and PR gurus and eco-warriors. And not only that but I've met them in the context of all of them meeting each other. And not just meeting each other, but living together, eating together, cooking together, working together.
The Arvon Foundation courses are like week long communes. A hang over of the sixties that provides a space where aspiring writers work intensively, guided by professionals, without the distractions of the modern world. There's no internet, no Tv, no fuss and no bother. And freed from the shackles buzz and bleep of the day-to-day world, people becaome their best selves. they return to the state of energy and hope that they lived in before the demands of work and family kicked in. They come alive again. It's an ordinary miracle that is in itself energising to be around.
It's a great, great job. Lovely people in a lovely place, talking about lovely things. What could be better than that? Why would I give that up for a TV soap?
Well, there is the money I suppose. There's always the money. Of which more anon...
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