Castaway

Those who have read my blog since its early days will know that I often reference movies when talking about my own life and experiences… What do you want from me? I make films for crying out loud!

Anyway, today will be another of those, and probably a little less light-hearted than normal, but yes; the title does refer to the movie of the same name (The Tom Hanks one… not that Oliver Reed fiasco), and if you’ll bear with me I’ll explain why.

A couple of days ago we had a glorious, warm, sunny day here in England; very unusual for February. At any rate, I was so determined not to waste it indoors that I decided to go for a long walk and do some thinking. This turned out to be a very bad idea, because I was in a very good mood and the more time I spend thinking the greater the odds that I will think myself into a dark corner, and my mood (for reasons I am at something of a loss to explain) has been up and down like a Grasshopper listening to an REM mix tape this past month or two. Perhaps it’s a combination of extremely happy circumstances in one part of my life and depressingly frustrating ones in the other. Whenever you get a high, natural or otherwise, there inevitably follows an extreme low. What goes up must come down. Anyway, that’s beside the point.

The point is that I ended up thinking myself into one of those corners on a day which is normally my highest point of the year. Don’t believe me? Check this post from last year.

For most of my life I have been a victim of what my sister colourfully refers to as “The luck of the seven blind bastards”. This, as you have no doubt gathered, is not the good kind of luck. Rather, it is the kind that makes you the last one out of the bingo hall, and first away from the poker table; the kind that makes you a target for diarrhoetic Seagulls and vomiting toddlers. It is more or less the kind of luck that people in the middle tend to have. To give you a few examples: I was always “OK” at sports; never a “Jock” but also not quite bad enough at sports, or smart enough at anything else to be a nerd. I was never a gorgeous hunk, nor was I an especially ugly duckling. I’m a writer, but I am neither a blockbuster writing, Stephen King type nor intellectual enough to be a brilliant but struggling poet. One has money and success, the other, while never likely to set the world on fire, can at least touch the fluttering hearts of the opposite sex and move people to tears. No… I resort to comedy, and I’m not especially good at that, as this post will no doubt demonstrate as clearly as though I had written misspelled knock-knock jokes in 20ft high neon letters and then forgotten the punchline. So… I am an Antonio Sallieri. I’m perfectly ok with that; I mean the guy was a teacher to Beethoven so he wasn’t entirely un-influential.  The problem came when I realised my better half is a Mozart.

Now, before you start thinking I’ve gone all “Emo” on you, allow me to continue… because if there’s one thing I can do, given enough time, it is to find the silver lining around every single cloud. So, here is the point (I really mean it this time):

For the second time in 10 years I have left the comparative safety of the island on which I was marooned and, as I head into the mighty, unforgiving ocean and the tiny island disappears into the mist, I know I am now in very dangerous waters. I’m clinging to my makeshift raft, with a Portaloo for a sail, a dark ocean of uncertainty before me, and nothing to stop me from going mad except a punctured volleyball with a bloody handprint on it. From here on, I either make it back home or I perish at sea.

The problem with this analogy is that it rather depends on knowing where home is. You might not know how to get there, but at least you know what you’re looking for, and I suppose I failed so spectacularly, so many times before because I didn’t really know what I was setting out to sea in search of. Now, a few weeks ago I had the experience of feeling at home for the first time since I was a kid, but then something happened that made me question that, and this worried me. But now I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, being tossed about by storms and exposed to the relentless sun doesn’t have to be the death of you. Sure, I might be on a raft made of lollipop sticks and chewing gum, and I might not know where I’m headed… but maybe that isn’t so bad if there is someone on that death-trap with you; a companion on the stormy ocean. Maybe you’ll drown (or more likely be pushed overboard), or maybe you’ll avoid the shark attacks for long enough to find land. Whatever happens, the journey will not be short of adventure, and the night sky will be the most beautiful you’ve ever seen.

The reason I’m being optimistic about these things today is that, whilst reading my girlfriend’s latest blog post, I noticed something that made me look back at a much earlier post. I won’t explain what it was because that would detract from what she was actually trying to say (which was much more interesting to the reader), but it made me smile to myself and think Huh! Life really is strange and completely unpredictable. And no matter how dark things may seem “Who knows what the tide could bring?”

Assuming you didn’t kill yourself before reading through to the relatively happy ending of this post (and if you did that instead of simply closing the page, I’d say you had issues that I can’t be entirely to blame for), then I’ll see you next week.

I’m going now.

Begin Again

Firstly I must apologise for my absence from this blog. I have been busy living. Andy Dufresne would be very proud. It has been a hectic couple of weeks for me; many things to reflect upon and to smile about, but I’ll get to those in just a minute.

One year ago today, I wrote my very first WordPress blog post. If you’re curious, or simply feeling the suffocating pillow of nostalgia, that first post can be found here. Still… it’s been quite a year for me. A year ago I had no film crew, an unpublished novel, an unsuccessful YouTube channel, and an unfinished website. Now, one year later, I have a film crew! OK… so those were bad examples, but there really have been some very interesting changes in my life, and I would like to talk about one in particular for just a minute because, not only do I have this blog to thank for it but, ironically, it is also partly responsible for my recent absence from it.

I have met many wonderful bloggers through WordPress, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to meet people like Heather at Prawn & Quartered, The Wuc, and Jackie from…erm… The Jackie Blog. Still, there is one that spoke to me and my peculiar brain much more so than the others. So much so in fact, that I began to think this woman was living in my mind. As we commented back and forth, it became clear to both of us that each understood the other in some really quite remarkable ways, and we quickly became good friends. I won’t bore you with too many details but our friendship slowly graduated from the blog to social networking, and then to online chat, then telephone, then webcam conversations… and then finally, a few weeks ago, to four of the happiest and most joyful days I have ever spent in the company of another human being.

Yes folks… it sounds like a dreadful article from HEAT magazine but… I found love on WordPress.

So thanks for that, WP! Our ride hasn’t been without its bumps so far, but I hope it will continue for some time to come.

For those who hadn’t guessed, the lady in question is The Swedish Flowerpot, and if there are any of you who have never seen her blog, I strongly recommend you check it out. She is a supremely talented writer with a fantastically complex mind, and if you factor in that she writes that impressively in a second language, I’m sure you’ll agree that she has a very bright future.

OK… now that I’ve finished my Scandinavian sales pitch, let’s get on with other news.

Sleepless Knight did get some filming done before I disappeared but the weather conspired to stop us from completing it. Still… Kitty got to slap Farnsworth (again) after he descended from half-an-hour atop a freezing pile of rubble (he gets all the fun jobs), Winston the dog ran off into the woods, covered in a paint-stained bed sheet, and the universe almost imploded when myself, Farnsworth, and Richard, all appeared in the same place for the first time since May. A good day was had by all, and the best thing was… we were all there! Everybody turned up at the same time! Let no-one say we don’t have ambition.

It's not a pretty sight, I grant you... but it was fun.

Speaking of filming… that video that should have been completed in January… The footage is all there, and mostly edited. It just needs polishing. But, to say I’m lacking motivation for this first video is an understatement of “Space is big!” proportions. The problem is not a complex one… the footage is simply shit! We can’t film it again because the location is no longer available to us, so I have to make my peace with it, but I really just want to lie on the carpet kicking and screaming. It really is that bad folks. But, it’s part one of three, and filming is almost complete on part two so I just have to get through it. It’s a bit like having to remove a 9 week old Rhino corpse from the kitchen table before you can sit down and enjoy a really good meal. Sure, you could simply burn down the kitchen and spend the next year eating Chinese food off the living room carpet, but sooner or later someone is going to ask what happened to Reginald the oversized house-pet, and why we don’t go in the kitchen anymore. Besides… I really like that kitchen table.

*No Rhinos were harmed in the making of this analogy. It serves to illustrate a point in manner the reader will not forget, and any similarity to Rhinos living or dead is purely coincidental.

It is possible that I occasionally allow myself to get a little carried away with these analogies, but it keeps me off the streets.

At any rate… Sleepless Knight will certainly continue into 2013. With a Sleepless Wedding at the end of the year (Richard’s, not mine), countless amusing pearls of wisdom from Farnsworth, such as “I’m sorry, I don’t believe in time” (said to a Jehovah’s witness) and “If I was a giraffe and she was a giraffe… she’d be a really pretty giraffe!” how could I give up now and deprive you of all we may yet achieve together.

I hope your February has been as good as mine has so far, but it’s really hard to care when you’re this happy! I know that’s a rotten thing to say, but if you let me be smug about these sorts of things, then you can take a leaf out of The Swedish Flowerpot’s book and simply laugh extra hard when Jimbot hurts himself.

I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, take care and don’t bend over for the soap.