Old...

I turned 44 a few weeks ago. Fortunately I'm probably in the best health of my life and have so far avoided the family triple whammy of dementia, piles and baldness that seems to strike many men in my family.

Even so, the one fate I cannot seem to avoid is joining a certain marketing demographic as, one week after my birthday, I was invited to book a cruise on some Saga-type holiday. 

I'm expecting the advertising flyers for rubber sheets, bath chairs, care homes and natural Viagra courtesy of Pele any day now. 

I couldn't be less impressed. Innit.

Thrown...

In hapkido, each belt has a separate set of skills attached and I struggled through every single set of skills I had to learn on my way to black belt. At times it was a tortuous process, probably more so for my long-suffering instructor and fellow students, and even today I still find myself making basic errors on things I should know.

The only time this didn't happen, though, was on a set of skills called Yew Sool, which are the Korean equivalent of judo throws. In doing Yew Sool, I suddenly found something I could do and understood almost automatically. Suddenly my off-balancing, timing, momentum and foot movement were all happening in the correct sequence and I could throw people bigger and heavier than me.

These skills also opened up a lot of other hapkido techniques because through understanding these skills I suddenly understood what was happening with other skills and I started to realise what I'd been doing wrong and how to correct that.

Sadly, I've recently returned to these skills after not doing them for a while and suddenly I really suck at quite a few of them. And one of them in particular, which in judo is called ashi guruma or leg wheel.

I've spent a bit of time in class on this recently and I'm really struggling to collapse my opponent by dragging his right elbow across his body to collapse his hip and knee with my left lower grip, while at the same time hook punching my right arm with my higher grip to get his shoulder turning and complete the off-balancing. 

I'm starting to sort it out but it's a salutary reminder that if you don't use it (or at least practice it) then you do lose it.

Marathon Man…

The Missus has a friend running in the 2013 London Marathon so we head into town on Sunday to offer our support.

The friend expects to be at Blackfriars Bridge by about 2pm and the Missus tells me she's wearing a blue shirt and a white cap with red shorts. So we arrive at 1.30pm and jostle to get a good spot, then duly spend the next three hours waiting in the crowd as the runners go past but fail to spot the friend.

We do, however, see everyone else and really enjoy the afternoon. We then hear we missed the friend and she's finished the race is a none-too-shoddy five hours.

Running a marathon is an extraordinary achievement and I’m well impressed with the friend for doing it. It’s one of those challenges where it’s your will against your limitations and as a martial artist I can absolutely see how this form of masochism has its own peculiar pleasure.

Another friend who runs marathons took a picture of a sign at the end of the Dublin Marathon, which read: ‘On some days you’ll feel like you can never run a marathon again, but you now have a lifetime knowing that you’ve run this one…’ 

And I buy into that. I found the whole thing quite inspiring and started making the calculations of how long it would take me to train and be able to enter one.

I explained this thought process to the Missus. She sighed and rolled her eyes. She’s clearly not a convert to the idea…

PS. It turns out the friend was actually wearing a red top with a blue cap and white shorts but somebody apparently got the information wrong. But it's probably my fault...

Happy Birthday...

Today I am 44 but the Missus is ill so it's been quite a low-key affair.

I was also at a big pool tournament yesterday, playing my final high-level, competitive games for some time, but as soon as my team was knocked out of the event, I decided to make the five-hour journey back home rather than enjoy our customary Saturday night out in Great Yarmouth.

A decade ago, such nights out were usually brilliant but also very messy affairs. And waking up in a freezing cold caravan with a raging hangover was quite simply the price you paid for letting rip when you were away on a boys weekend. But the thought of repeating that particular bit of history has become less appealing every year...

I was also talking to several of my pool-playing peers at the weekend and many were discussing families and kids and setting a good example to the younger players... and I suddenly realised it wasn't just me. We've all grown up. Even the most unlikely candidates.

We had a good run as party animals, though. And we have some crazy times to look back on. Not to mention some very successful tournaments. And they are times I'll genuinely cherish.

But waking up next to the Missus, coughing and all, this morning was well worth the very steep fare and five hours on various trains and Tubes to come home from the event a night early.

And I even did some gardening when I got home, too. And house-cleaning. And cooking. I am clearly now a domestic goddess. And a fortysomething one...

On Hating Margaret Thatcher...

I grew up in a largely working-class town in East Yorkshire in the 1980s.

For pretty much all of this time, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain and under her leadership I saw pretty much every industry in my home town, such as the shipyard, the docks and many light industries, close. Then the nearby mines started to shut and we slowly but surely became a country that no longer had much of any homegrown industry left.

Instead, we effectively became a fluffer for the financial services industries. Throw in the Poll Tax and the ever-increasing numbers of jobless among the working class, and it seemed like the poor were becoming even poorer.

Then I went to college in Winchester, an astonishingly wealthy Hampshire commuter town, and I realised the rich were also getting richer. The financial disparity and inequality between my northern home and my new southern base was stunning.

Her defenders always claimed Thatcher was a champion of free enterprise... but her legacy of free enterprise has left the UK with an underclass of families who have never worked and probably will never work. Her true legacy can be seen in impoverished housing estates up and down the country, in privately owned utility companies who continue to hike up prices to deliver profits for shareholders, in subsequent governments being too scared to move too far to the left after her rule effectively shifted the political landscape to the centre right for good.

For a long time, I despised Thatcher for everything she did to the UK and large numbers of its population but now she's finally dead I cannot celebrate the news.

And that's because her greatest legacy is that she demonstrated a stunning lack of compassion for the vulnerable and the poor and those most in need. And if I celebrated her death, I'd simply be proving the ruthless, uncaring, greed-is-good, I'm-alright-Jack, lack-of-compassion society she created is a lasting legacy and I've become part of it.

So I'm sorry a frail old lady who was clearly losing or had lost her mind is dead. And I hope her death offers her the type of merciful release and peace that she never allowed whole sections of society that she victimised while she was in power.

Because compassion is something we should practise every day, particularly as the barbaric acts of her successors Cameron and Osbourne continue to victimise the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Short of riots or armed insurrection it's one of the few tools we have...

Not Good People...

I'm setting up a new theatre company to do my own small-scale plays and large-scale projects and I'm on something of a roll.

I've packed my cue away, and I'm starting to focus on my writing, and trying to sell work, as well as get an agent, and kickstart the new company... and it's exciting stuff. I've realised I can do all of this again and I'm going for it. 

This enthusiasm has also seen a very fertile period of writing with three new plays under way and the research for a large-scale project next year. 

So below is an early extract from an idea called Not Good People. It's about a group of dispossessed and disenfranchised people who kidnap a low-ranking Tory MP. His Tory MP wife is determined to get him back - but then has second thoughts when her star starts to rise on the back of public sympathy for him...

The following scene is early on in the play and features two of the kidnappers with the kidnapped MP tied to a chair.

*****************************************************

SCENE

An abandoned warehouse. Rabies is sharpening a knife. Fletcher is tied to a chair. He is also blindfolded.

RABIES

This was my grandad’s knife. Took it when he used to go hunting… I say hunting. It was poaching if I’m talking right. Loved his little ‘hunting’ trips. Started taking me when I was a teenager and I loved them, too. I was his lookout, then when me little brother joined us, he was lookout and I was promoted to… don’t know what you’d call it… assistant poacher. Is that a proper title? But we were a good team and we used to catch plenty of rabbits. In tough times we’d sometimes pay a local farmer a sneak visit and have a few of his chickens. Once we even caught a baby deer. I say we caught it… in truth it was caught in somebody else’s trap and in a lot of pain. Me and my brother wanted to free it, but Grandad said it’d be kinder to kill it outright than free it and let it die slowly. Deer knew what was coming but it must’ve realised it was better than what it was suffering. It just lay there and let Grandad kill it. And he did. He took this knife and slit its throat. Quickly and silently. Legs kicked for a bit but then it just went limp. And that was that. Every time I see a deer now, I always think of that. How something so beautiful and full of life and grace, I suppose, ended up messy and bloody and in pain. Just because some greedy fucker wanted something bigger and better than rabbits or chickens for themselves…

Enter Blake.

BLAKE

What are you doing?

RABIES

I’m gonna slice and dice this fuck animal.

BLAKE

Are you really?

RABIES

No. Just fucking with him…

BLAKE

Why?

RABIES

Well he’s a cunt, innit?

BLAKE

‘A cunt, innit?’

RABIES

Yeah.

BLAKE

And do you know what a cunt is?

RABIES

It’s… well… it’s… lady parts.

BLAKE

And is that the best description you can come up with? ‘Lady parts’?

RABIES

I’m not good with words…

BLAKE

Shall I help?

RABIES

You pissed?

BLAKE

In your extensive experience are ‘lady parts’ horrible things?

RABIES

Fuck… No!

BLAKE

Yet you use the term as an insult? 

RABIES

I’m riffing. It’s just a fucking word.

BLAKE

There’s no such thing as ‘just a fucking word’. Words have power. The reason he got where he got and you got where you got is because he understands and commands the words and you don’t. Do you get that? Do you see it? So think of all the things that ‘lady parts’ mean. Go on…

RABIES

Fucking…

BLAKE

Yes.

RABIES

Babies…

BLAKE

Very good…

RABIES

More fucking…

BLAKE

And those are good things?

RABIES

Yeah… They’re brilliant.

BLAKE

Is he brilliant?

RABIES

No…

BLAKE

So what should you never ever call people like him?

RABIES

A cunt?

BLAKE

Because?

RABIES

They’re brilliant and he’s not.

BLAKE

So come on… What can we call him? Be more accurate… Give me an alternative…

Pause. Rabies thinks.

RABIES

He’s a non-cunt.

BLAKE

Just apologise to our guest…

Rabies approaches Fletcher.

RABIES

I’m sorry. You non-cunt.

BLAKE

On your way. I’m on watch now.

Rabies exits. Blake approaches Fletcher.

BLAKE

My apologies, Mr Fletcher. I don’t think he would kill you. Unless he was provoked. He’s actually quite soft-hearted. Don’t make that mistake about me, though. I’ll stick a bullet through your skull at a second’s notice if I think you’re planning any form of escape or if you become any form of threat or annoyance to me or mine. You understand that?

Fletcher nods.

BLAKE

Good. It’s important we understand one another. Clarity in communication and understanding the reasons behind that communication is one of the key areas I believe we need to address in the new Albion. No more of this double-speak and deliberate obfuscation. Words will mean what they are meant to mean and not bent out of shape. (Laughs) ‘Non-cunt’! It’s the most accurate term I’ve come across. I may adopt it…

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