The downstairs cupboard
Digging around in the downstairs cupboard at the weekend, I was surprised to put my hand on an old bag of photos, folders, videos and notebooks from back in the day, that I thought I’d either lost forever or at the very least thrown out with the trash during a previous spring clean. It was a melancholy delight, like so many things in life, to rediscover and revisit some old memories.
How organised I must have been. I’d carefully sorted and labelled items in order, resplendent in cardboard files and for the most part clipped together with aging, rusty bulldogs which had started to turn the paper yellow. They had lost none of their bite, though, and pages were still neatly arranged and none had made bid for freedom over the forgotten years hiding in the downstairs cupboard.
Photographs, from a pre-digital age, were collected together in wallets, glossy prints having lost none of their sparkle, and, flicking through, I noticed how composed and considered the shots were – not like today when every photo is instantly disposable, deleteable, edited and uploaded onto Facebook. These were no displays of nightclub tomfoolery or bleary eyed hangovers; these were the best of us, always seemingly shot in glorious sunshine, beaming smiles, head and shoulders neatly composed in the frame, each photo having enjoyed a momentary consideration that only having a role of film with twenty-one pictures can impose. And look how young we all looked. Glorious.
I emptied the box. Here was a selection that I’d obviously deemed important enough to save from house-moves and midnight flits during the last twenty years. People who have known me for a long time will know that I’ve always had a tendency, either imposed or otherwise, to move around. Seven new houses in twelve years (I forget the exact ratio) was a feature of my childhood, while later moves were imposed either by family break-ups or entry into higher education. Following settlement in Manchester (and my defection to the red rose of Lancashire), I must have lived at least one year in every district in the south of the city, save for the big expenses of Didsbury or the city centre. So there were plenty of clearouts, plenty of bin bags for the charity shop, plenty of opportunities to wipe the slate clean and start again. I’ve certainly done that on more than one occasion.
So what remains is incomplete. Here, a few photos from the mid nineties, from my teenage years, focus on various drama-related activities. There, bright and bold costumes from “The Picnic”, a short VHS film we once made on a seemingly endless summer day. Unlike the photos, the finished video, with its crappy black and white, photocopied cover, and its out dated (even for the time) low-band format, only manages to glimmer dully. Regardless, I pop the video into the player. The most ludicrous story ever - a village fete in the 1930’s menaced by a couple of gothic vampires playing out some sort of revenge fantasy, while the women of the village try to outdo themselves by flirting and snogging their way round the male cast (who are all under the age of 16, some almost pre-pubescent) – is conducted as a cod-hammer horror pastiche with some shockingly contrived incident and moments of pure hilarity. How many sixteen year olds can claim to have spent the summer holidays dressed as a dandy in a boater pretending to save the world from the Goths and the Flirts? And my god that’s a lot of teenage hormone action going on right there. Although the finished product will forever be a source of embarrassment, and to be fair it’s not very good, the whole thing has a confident air about it. We must have been insulated from real criticism, preferring instead to indulge our every dramatic cliche and sexual urge. I wonder what happened to that confident lad who made films on a whim and managed to persuade every girl he knew to fondle his upper leg seductively, engage in full on snogging action, slap him about, strip him to the waist (in a woodland dream sequence), and bite him on the neck, and that’s nothing on the homoerotic content! I’m sure Freud had a word for that somewhere.
These were the deep, dark ages of the teenager. I don’t think I was a very good teenager. In fact, I think my refusal to grow up in my twenties was as a direct result of being a crap teenager. Where was the rebellion? Where was the rock music? Where was the bad hair? Well, OK, there’s plenty of evidence of that, but it was just bad, not “cool” bad like you might hope. And ginger. You’d think that plonking about at drama club might have got the juices flowing, and I do remember being introduced to Nirvana by someone there, and The Doors (and that was a good spot), but I guess it wasn’t enough. We had to wait for the advent of Britpop before I really got into music. (I suppose thanks to the Gallagher brothers should be offered– their first and last mention on this blog).
Digging in further, the post University years began to manifest themselves. These were the days when I thought it would be a good idea to try and become a screen writer. Oh the folly of youth! Or should I say “young adulthood”!
Actually, the collection of half finished scripts and short stories made for interesting reading. Some of the ideas still have legs. I don’t think the realisation was up to much – the plotting needs a radical rethink in everything – but I’d correctly identified the rise of the terrorist two years early in one script (in a “London underground terrorist attack with nerve gas story”), and amazingly started a eco-drama set on a desert island a few years before climate change became daily news (although I assume climate change must have been on the radar somewhere at the turn of the century) about poachers. Yes, I think I shall revisit that, maybe they were good ideas after all.
And then I dig deeper – dozens of rejection letters from various agents, production companies and script editors. My female characters don’t have much of a voice, one reads. Hardly surprising, I think. I wouldn’t feel confident working the market with this script, says another. Oh well. At least they were read.
My mood clouds, so I get a pile of stuff together to throw out. I don’t hesitate. Some of the stuff I really don’t need. Then I come across a file with about 50 pages of a novel I’d once tried to write. My God, where did I find the time to do all this stuff! It was a Doctor Who related effort. I’d called it “Vengeance of the Cybermen” – what a title! God knows when I put pen to paper on this, but I looked closely at the typeface I realised it was the old typewriter that got nicked when we got burgled in Longsight – it was an easy steal, one of our number left a back window open - so that dates the text to the mid to late nineties. I’d even drawn a nice cover with the “New Adventures” logo on it and a picture of the Cyberleader. Again, the details of the plot leave a little bit to be desired, but the prose is OK, the characters ring true and there’s some lovely exchanges between the Doctor and his companions. Yes, not too bad at all. Maybe I should start writing again.
As I ponder this revelation, the phone rings and I am distracted. Back to the present.
Well, the present is potentially very nice as I’m off down to Glastonbury tomorrow for this year’s mud-inspection committee with additional rain and poo. And hopefully some great music. Well, Blur are playing so that should be good. Another trip down memory lane right there. Bring it on.
http://www.youtube.com/v/OaBUrknjDKE&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true">http://www.youtube.com/v/OaBUrknjDKE&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344">
Comments