Lights, Camera...

The Boy is making his first proper short film as a writer and director and I've been roped in to co-ordinate the fight scene.

It is 11 years since I have directed anything and now I have a couple of recent drama school graduates to put through their paces and block in a fight scene I plotted out with the Boy the night before.

Several of the Boy's friends have also been drafted in as film crew members so I have the double pressure of not making a tit of myself in front of them and embarassing him and, more importantly, remembering how to break down an action sequence into its component parts then put it together so it functions as a coherent whole.

And to put it frankly I am bricking myself.

Surprisingly, though, it actually goes OK and I remember that I can actually still do this, expecially when the two guys involved turn out to be really up for it. It almost makes me nostalgic for the life of play directing and producing I was once part of instead of the somewhat lonely path of writing I have now embarked on.

Once I've done my bit I fade into the background and watch the Boy do his stuff. He works well with the actors and he knows what he is doing and what he wants.

But then I remember he is now no longer the Boy. He is 18 and hungry to achieve and he has that confidence of youth where absolutely anything is possible.

I watch him work and although the child is still very much there he's also a grown-up and all sorts of worries and worst-case-scenario anxieties about him heading off to university fade away.

I now know he'll be OK when he leaves home in a few months to study film production, both on the course and off it. He's gonna be just fine...

Happiness...

I look in the mirror
Big nose, thick specs
And now
sporting sideburns.

In looks at least
I am
every inch
my father’s child.

I remember
when he looked
pretty much
like I do now.

I have an image of him,
still on the docks
and playing football,
though not semi-pro any more.

I often wonder
did he ever regret
not taking the chance
to play the game he loved as a pro?

Was he really
happy enough
with a marriage
and us?

I smile and realise
That I am now
the same age
as he was then.

And rather
than just accepting
this happiness
I feel my ambition kicking in.

But maybe he knew that
failing at something you want
is more painful than succeeding
at the less you accept.

True Romance...

Me and the Missus are relaxing at home. She is talking:
'You're an utter lunatic and you can be a real spastic... but I do quite like you at times.'

After 12 and a half years together she is finally mellowing towards me.

Who says romance is dead?

Black Belt...

I passed my last grading for my red belt, black stripe last year and it's taken me a good six months to revisit all my old techniques and reach a decent enough standard to enable me to start learning new techniques for my black belt grading (expected some time in late 2010).

There are 20 black belt techniques to learn in all, which then combine with the other 90-odd techniques that I've learnt for all my previous belts, plus the 10 forms and all the hand strikes and kicks and knees and elbow strikes and special hand techniques and punching combinations and board breaking and sparring...

If I think about it to much it can all seem quite a long way off and quite daunting. But then I remember I can actually do some of this stuff and some of it I'm even quite good at. And the stuff I'm less good at I need to tackle like I tackle everything else: dismantle it, understand it, repeat it and learnt it.

I did this with my hand strikes at the start of last year. They weren't good enough so I went off to box and I'm now quite confident, sometimes over-confident, when it comes to using my hands. And that's because I dismantled it, understood it, repeated it and learnt it.

I'm now doing a similar thing with my kicking on my weak left side. I've added a sidekick drill to my weekly routine and soon I'll add a roundhouse kick drill to that. Then I'll do the same with my forms and anything else I'm weak on.

I finally feel like I'm seeing faint glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel on this black belt lark and I'm starting to feel like I'm going to get it rather than hoping I may get it.

Application beats talent every time. I need to remember that – in hapkido and in many other things...

Not OK!

I've just chanced upon a copy of celeb-trash magazine OK! For those who have not had the pleasure of OK! it's like a poor man's Hello! which obviously makes it very poor indeed.

But what do you expect. It's published by Richard Desmond, the same bloke who publishes the now lamentably awful Daily Express and the shockingly poor Daily Star and who also owns a veritable gamut of porn channels such as Red Hot 40+ Wives and Red Hot All Girl.

So essentially we know it can only be barrel-scrapingly awful. So barrel-scrapingly awful in fact that if I ate nothing but prunes and dried fruit for a week then sprayed the contents of my arse over an empty sheet of newsprint it would probably look better and be a more interesting read than OK!

But today's copy of OK! reached a new low in bad taste. Under the banner headline 'World Exclusive: The Last Picture' was a half-page shot of the dying Michael Jackson with an oxygen mask attached to his face obviously breathing his last. Then on the side of the page the masthead read 'OK! With all out love and prayers. The official tribute issue. Michael Jackson. In loving memory.'

Now I have little interest in defending the alleged multi-kiddy-fiddling pop star but for once I actually felt sorry for him. His life was a bizarre circus and now, thanks to OK!, his fans can see him breathing his last on their front page.

To quote the now-dead prince of pop. 'Who’s bad?' Clue: OK!

Victory!

The search to find the perfect cue is finally over and, post willing, my new but very old Riley Tombstone cue will be arriving next week.

I chanced upon it on ebay but I'm somewhat sceptical about buying cues on ebay after I bought a similar cue and it wasn't quite as advertised.

Fortunately – and by total coincidence – I know the guy I'm buying it from and, even better, he is a former cuemaker who originally learnt his trade at Rileys so he knows what he's talking about and is also a straight-up bloke to deal with.

I tried to explain how excited I was by this purchase to a work colleague who happened to around at the time. I tried to explain why it was so important to me and enthused about how it was something with a bit of history and... to be quite frank she just looked blank.

Maybe I need to keep my obsessions to myself in the workplace. Having said that she should thank her lucky stars I didn't start talking about 1970s pornography or Victorian erotica.

But who knows? She may have liked that...

Stock...

I am in rewrite land for my current play, Stock.

It's an odd time because it's like the first day of the football season where everything is possible and this could be the breakthrough script...

But it also depends on how much work I put in on it because it's important I learn lessons from previous drafts of previous plays and work hard to try to get this one as right as I can before I send it off to my usual list of potential theatres.

I'm aiming to send it out by the end of July. So here's hoping...