Writer's Block

I'm on holiday now and I think we can all agree that's very exciting. There are precious few victories in this life. In mine, anyway. I celebrated by returning to Sunday Special to see two more Edinburgh previews. Sarah Kendall's was a warm, engaging look on the subject of luck, incorporating musings on her family and how her experiences as a child inform her life now as a mother of two. She reveals that she cried when her son was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, which I thought was a brave admission. It was beautifully crafted and I enjoyed it a great deal.  Dan Antopolski's effort was a more gag driven affair touching on the passing his mother and his life as a divorced dad. He's an adept gag writer with a good blend of material, including some truly tasteless but hilarious stuff on working in children's TV at the BBC. Both shows are very much worth a look at Edinburgh or when they come back around on tour.

Phil Taylor won the World Matchplay in style on Sunday night with an 18-8 victory over Peter Wright. He seems to have found a consistency lacking in his game in recent years and it was a textbook performance. He didn't excel in every leg but took his moments to strike. What was especially noticeable was Taylor's ability to make the third dart count if he'd failed to hit a treble with the first two. The sort of composure that one suspects comes from years of experience at the top. Barring a three leg rally around the midway point, Wright never looked like recovering. Post match, Wright was almost on the verge of tears, downplaying his own abilities and suggesting that he was only ranked third in the world because he chooses to take part in all of the qualifying tournaments. I personally don't see the issue with this (surely if you're dedicated to your sport you'll take all the game time going) but I understood where he was coming from. It was difficult to watch...

I found myself downloading Worms 2: Armageddon earlier today, a game that I remember fondly from my youth having played it on the N64 back in the day. Team 17's quirky turn based strategy game always seemed a particularly British creation. It still stands up reasonably well and there's still a lot of fun to be had in consigning worms to death using a plethora of different weapons. Meanwhile, Phil Taylor was rolling back the years at the World Matchplay in Blackpool, walloping world champion and world number 1 Michael Van Gerwen 16 legs to 6. I don't know why I want to see Taylor succeed. He seems to be vilified by a lot of darts fans, probably for justifiable reasons. But there's something about watching the old master roll back the years and defeat the young pretender that I find compelling. My life is terribly dull. Maybe I should starting taking drugs.

The clockwatching at work today was unbearable. But a horse accidentally ran instead of another horse in a race of Yarmouth and we decided to pay out on both that horse and the horse who finished second, who is considered the legitimate winner of the race. Because the other horse was obviously ineligible. It says much about my line of work that this one of the most interesting things that's happened in a long time. Otherwise, a wonky day mentally. I'm feeling especially lonely at the moment I think. I am tentatively writing some new ideas ahead of another stand-up show and I think my struggles to engage with people in the world/form relationships with people/my reluctance to engage myself in the issues facing the world today will play a part in proceedings. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend a couple of hours pretending I play for Barcelona in a video game.

A much needed day off today after a 13 hour shift yesterday, with four days and 22 hours of work left before a two week holiday. Not that I'm counting. With a certain sense of predictability I'm going up to Edinburgh for my 8th festival in the past decade. I know that I should have taken a show up there by now and it's been a long standing ambition. For various reasons it hasn't happened. This year it's been especially difficult having written a show that I was proud of but the prospect of doing it at the Fringe was knocked back by my employers. The romantic, artistic thing to do would be to jack it all in and follow the dream, but I can't go back to not having an income. I hope in the future I'll be in the position to do it. Anyway, I warmed up for Edinburgh with a trip to Up The Creek on Sunday for a couple of previews. Stuart Goldsmith's show concerned his life as a recent father and his mental health issues, whilst Carl Donnelly did some enjoyable ...

The events of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 are told through three narrative strands, the air (covering an hour), the sea (covering a day) and the land (covering a week).  This film exhausted me. I saw it in IMAX at the Cineworld in Leicester Square. I thought IMAX was basically a gimmick. Here it completely immersed me in the film and sharpened its remarkable soundscape, as the loudest of gunfire seems to rain down from all sides. I heard someone say "You feel like you're in the cockpit with Tom Hardy" and that's not too far from the truth. I thought Mark Rylance was particularly terrific as the epitome of stoic British heroism, manning a pleasure boat commissioned by the Navy to help with the evacuation. One Direction's Harry Styles puts in a solid performance in in his acting debut, although something tells me that playing a young man bewildered by pressure and scrutiny might not have been an enormous leap for him. At the end, there's no moment of triu...

I went along to the Roundhouse on Thursday to see Daniel Kitson's latest show. Kitson has been the subject of criticism from one Guardian journalist this week over using the term "Paki shop" onstage. I disagree with some of the assertions made in the article (for one thing, I don't believe that Kitson is attempting to "reclaim" the word) but I accept that my history with the word is not the same as the writer's and it hasn't been used to harm me. In it, he reports the epithet as used by his school friends and questions why it was necessary to call their local establishment anything other than "the shop". Still, his family called it the Sikh shop so their attitude is fine. Presumably. The section is indicative of the tone of the show, if not the general use of language. Kitson discusses several ideas, thoughts and feelings he has a white liberal, generally well meaning member of society constantly questioning himself and whether or not he...

I first saw The Boy With Tape On His Face (as he was then*) in Edinburgh a few years ago and witnessed him absolutely storm a Late N Live at the Gilded Balloon in front of scores of drunkards in the early hours. I suspected then he'd move on to bigger and better things. Worldwide exposure via America's Got Talent followed and with it, big theatrical runs including this one in the West End. This is ostensibly a greatest hits show. It's loosely structured with the conceit that Tape Face is dreaming during a backstage snooze prior to the show itself. It adds an additional layer to proceedings that isn't really needed, although the set piece that opens the second half utilises the idea to good effect, as spinning plates represent the anxieties inside the performer's mind pre-show. For the most part, you get a lot of audience interaction business, involving various props and clothing. It's enjoyable to guess where he's going with the set up before the penny eve...

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington died yesterday at the age of 41 in an apparent suicide and it took me off guard. The band were a huge part of my teenage years. I'm pretty sure there was no-one  among my peers who didn't own their breakout record "Hybrid Theory", the record that came to define nu metal and whose angsty lyrics spoke to my generation. Bennington's shouty vocals and Mike Shinoda's rapping were an irresistible combination. That's an odd sentence, but it's true. The band's usage of samples and rock riffs was undeniably distinctive. Clearly, we weren't the only ones who loved it as Hybrid Theory became the best selling record of 2000 and one of the top fifty best selling albums of all time. I remember going to Reading Festival for the day in 2003. It was the first time I'd ever been to a live music event and remember how thrilled I was to be there. Linkin Park headlined and absolutely killed it, before I even knew what ...

The Front Bottoms opened the show. I'm a big fan and they've been one of the scene's success stories in recent years. It's a bit surprising therefore that there isn't more recognition from the crowd during their set. If I were them I would have played a few more of their big hitting tracks ("Laugh Til I Cry" seems a particularly large omission) but their main issue tonight is that their well crafted indie punk tunes suffer in a space as vast as the O2. They gradually hit their stride though and "Twin Size Mattress" provides an appropriately big finish to the set. It's strange to see Frank Turner And The Sleeping Souls play second fiddle to anyone at this stage and indeed Turner makes very few concessions to his support act status, picking the show up by the scruff of the neck as though it was his own. Unlike TFB, the band's setlist choice is pretty much spot on. Songs like "The Next Storm", "Recovery" and "If Ev...

With precious little else to do today, I found myself following a Twitter spat. Frank Turner is supporting Blink 182 on tour. Blink had to cancel their Bournemouth show yesterday on health grounds. At the last minute, Turner arranged a replacement show at another venue in the city with the other support act, The Front Bottoms. A guy on Twitter described the entry arrangements for the show as "a mess" which Turner took exception to. The guy was subsequently thrown out of the show by security and wrote a long Facebook post about how he had been wronged. I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time with bands everywhere. The guy in question had spent the previous week slagging Turner off on Twitter and a number of people present confirmed that he was a disruptive influence at the gig and was kicked out by security for that reason. A classic case of an unreliable witness. Not that this was enough for Turner's detractors,. It's another example of people online ap...

It was announced yesterday that the 13th actor to play the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who will be Jodie Whittaker. Who is a lady. You would have thought that a Time Lord with a penchant for regeneration might have been female before now, but better late than never one supposes. Like the majority, I consider this to be a positive development. It doesn't change the fact that I have a special kind of hatred for Doctor Who. Hatred is a strong word. But it is awful. I have been strongarmed into watching a few of the Christmas specials. There's no drama, no stakes. The rules of the Doctor Who universe are arbitrarily changed at the drop of a hat. The one where the plot is resolved and the bad guys defeated on the basis that "nothing is stronger than a mother's love" was enough for me to shout "Fuck off" at the television and vow never to return again. So I wish Ms Whittaker the best of luck. It's unlikely that I will despise anything she's in more ...

Predictably, Federer won Wimbledon in a 3-0 victory, having not lost a set in the entire tournament. With Murray and Djokovic badly hampered by injuries and Cilic on the brink of tears courtside with an ailment of his own, it seems strange to think that the most fit player in top class men's tennis is a nearly 36 year old man. Would Federer have won with a fully fit field? We'll never know, but you can only beat the players in front of you. Having added Wimbledon to his Australian Open triumph in January, most men would consider retirement there and then, but I suspect not Roger Federer. There's still the possibility of adding another US Open to complete a treble which would have seemed unlikely at the start of the year. It was difficult not to feel that Cilic should have given Federer more of a match with the abilities at his disposal. When he was sat courtside clearly feeling anguished, one wonders whether his issues were as much mental as they were physical. But at 28 ...

Today was distinctly similar to yesterday except women were playing tennis instead of men. I also caught up on some of Dave's Go 8 Bit. I can't recall there being a videogame themed TV show since "Gamesmaster" and I'm very much in favour this development. It's quite good fun and it also flags up some of the weird and wonderful examples of games that would otherwise have passed me by, like flying donkey simulators and the like. Next week I'm going to see Blink 182, Daniel Kitson, Tape Face, War For The Planet Of The Apes and Dunkirk. I may well have some opinions on those things that may result in some more interesting blogs. Let's hope so, anyway.

I am not overly enamoured with shift work. It has a detrimental effect on my social life* and my body clock. But the occasion late three hour shift like today's does allow for rest and recuperation. I slept well for the first time in what feels like an age and spent most of the afternoon watching the men's semi finals at Wimbledon. The favourite, Roger Federer, beat Tomas Berdych in straight sets. Berdych didn't play badly by any means but it's difficult to touch his opponent in this sort of form. Should Federer win on Sunday he will win his 19th Grand Slam and his 8th Wimbledon title, moving him ahead of Pete Sampras and William Renshaw on 7 each. Federer is a graceful, effortlessly brilliant sportsman and I'd like to see him do it. I think he will. His opponent Marin Cilic has the one of the best serves in tennis but lacks the all round game to get Federer at the top of his ability. Still, you never know. * Admittedly I am to blame for most of the central prob...

Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is recruited by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) for the Stark Internship Programme, with a view to him training to become another superhero. Stark encourages him to lay low for a while and resume his studies at his local high school. Meanwhile, a mysterious character known as the Vulture (Michael Keaton) sells alien weaponry on the black market after Stark Industries put his salvage operation out of business several years previously. Him and his associates attract the attention of your friendly local Spiderman despite Stark encouraging him to stay out of trouble. I was initially concerned about the tone of this film after an opening which features a hyperactive Parker excitedly filming and narrating his exploits at an Avengers training camp with his phone. Fortunately it settled down and I rather enjoyed Holland's take on the character as a 15 year old struggling with the dual challenges of school and being a superhero. It's not explicit but the ethos...

Oh lord. That exam was awful. Like, so much worse than I had anticipated. And I didn't go in full of awesome vibes. I thought there could be a chance that I'd bluster through but the second half of it put paid to that notion pretty quickly. In some respects it's good to know how far off you are because it gives you some idea of the scale of the task ahead. I've struggled a lot in the past six weeks in particular and need to make a plan going forward. The results are six weeks away but I know full well that I don't need to wait for them. But mentally that took an awful lot out of me. I'll take some time to rest and reflect. Still, Spiderman was quite good. More on that tomorrow if I remember.

Yesterday we were without running water for an entire day. Today I was soaked in a monsoon. Sounds about right. It is of course one of those moderate inconveniences that one has to live with from time to time. Thames Water were swift in setting up a water station for the town anyway. There were reports coming in that one of the off licences on the high street were selling the bottles they were handing out. What a bunch of shithouses. I got about as much studying in as I could today for tomorrow's exam before I started to go mad. I still don't think I'm going to get over the line but we'll see. It may depend on getting the luck with the questions. But I just want to get it out of the way at this point. I'm twenty days away from a much needed two week holiday so I've just got to stick it out for a little bit. I am mentally a bit wobbly at the moment but I'll need to address that later. I just need to type some stuff on a screen for three and a half hours and...

Back to the Hippodrome for my second Wonder Years gig of 2017. First on were The Dirty Nil from Ontario. Their shouty brand of rock n roll didn't do an awful lot for me. Points off for closing their set with Cheap Trick's "Surrender", one of the most covered songs in rock. Next up, Exeter's Muncie Girls demonstrated a great deal more verve in their half hour support set, combining catchy riffs with decent hooks in their socially conscious songs. Would listen again. It was another dreadfully flat start from The Wonder Years and I had a distinct feeling of deja vu. They admitted that this three show UK jaunt was their first show in months and initially it showed with inert renditions of "Local Man Ruins Everything" and "I Don't Like Who I Was Then". The guitars seemed dulled as quiet as they did back in Camden in February. The energy of this Kingstonian crowd drag the band through a couple of cult album tracks before the superb, poignant ...

Still plodding on, still working, still stumbling towards my exam on Wednesday. I've been catching up with bits and bobs of TV. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is into its third season and I'm about half way through. The more outlandish elements of the previous two seasons have been grounded into a more logical plot and I think it's all the better for it. The flamboyant Titus Andromedon and his musical numbers have been the highlight of the season thus far but the four central characters are all being utilised pretty well in coherent narrative arcs. I also finished Archer Dreamland the other night, an undeniably bleak noir interpretation of the series. I have enjoyed previous Archer series more but I invariably find enough in each episode to enjoy and it's the case again this time round. I'm off to Kingston later to watch The Wonder Years and hoping for an improvement on the mediocre gig at the Koko back in February. I'm still not entire certain whether it was the...

I took the decision today to delete my online dating accounts. It seems for the past few years I've been getting into a pattern of sending a lot of messages, eventually going on one or two dates with one or two people and the whole enterprise fizzling out. I've decided to take a step back because I don't think that my engagement with the whole thing is especially healthy. For a long time, I've been obsessed with the absence of romantic relationships from my life and I've frequently considered myself a lesser person for not being in one.  I've had a number of people in my life tell me that I need to go away and focus on myself and self-improvement before I consider the prospect of letting someone into my life. I'd often dismissed that as the smug summation of infinitely happier, coupled up people who didn't know what it was like to walk in my shoes. But I've come to the stage where I've accepted that those people may be right. I'm loathe to ...

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Bradley Lowery today at the age of six after suffering from neuroblastoma for much of his life. He was, like many, a young kid who fell in love with football and with Sunderland Association Football Club. It's difficult to comprehend the amount of hardship that this boy and his family went through. It's a time to take a moment to pause and appreciate what one has. His positivity and upbeat attitude was a shining example to us all, even jaded old cynics like me. I hope that Bradley's short life was filled with happiness. The rest of us will have to carry on carrying his love for the dysfunctional football club by the Wear. My thoughts are with the Lowerys and with Jermain Defoe, who has gone to great lengths to support Bradley and involve himself in his life. Footballers are invariably criticised for being out of touch with people in the real world. Defoe has demonstrated great character during a difficult period and deserves credit...

I pretty much got out of the cinema, took the bus home and immediately starting writing that Baby Driver review. And I'm still not at all happy with it. A lot of salient details seemed to fall out of my head, but I can't realistically take notes whilst watching a film in a darkened auditorium. And even if I did, to what extent would I actually be watching the film? Realistically if I was taking notes I would have to use my phone and using my phone would obviously be a grave violation of the code of conduct regarding cinema screenings. I don't know how these film critics do it. If I ever meet Mark Kermode, I'll ask him. Anyway, it's Edgar Wright's best film and you should go and see it. Meanwhile, I'm limping towards my final exam on my course on Wednesday. I've run out of time, but I've gone past the point where I can be bothered to be anxious about it. I've made myself so miserable for various reasons throughout my life to date that I'm go...

Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a young and exceedingly talented getaway driver working for Doc (Kevin Spacey) in order to pay off a debt incurred by stealing one of his vehicles some time previously. At a local diner, he meets and falls in love with a waitress named Debora (Lily James). They both yearn to drive as far as possible out of the city with no plan, never to return, in true Springsteen fashion. But despite paying his dues, Doc won't let him leave the business. I can relate to our protagonist more than in most films, a young man who rarely takes his headphones out (to combat tinnitus, which at least I am yet to acquire), soundtracking his days and miming through the streets of Atlanta. This is one of those movies where the score* really stands out and it's clear that writer and director Edgar Wright has agonised over the selection of each song. I particularly enjoyed the repeated usage of "Easy" by The Commodores. The film's standout set piece sees Baby hightai...

Wimbledon started today, which will at least give me a distraction at work. I do enjoy the tennis though. It's looking very open this year. Federer. I sense that most of Nadal's working year is geared towards triumph at the French Open, which he emphatically achieved again this year. Djokovic is probably in the worst form of his career but it's surely foolish to write him off entirely. Although Murray breezed through his opening match today, his recent injury problems have been well documented and I'd be surprised if he was still in contention come the quarter finals. But I hope he can defy the odds. I've grown to like Andy Murray and the people who dislike him are invariably tedious bores fixated on some ridiculous England vs Scotland bullshit. He's a talented man who gets on with business and I hope he wins. But I think it'll be Federer or Djokovic. It would be equally great to see Federer win Wimbledon one last time because he's such a supremely bri...

More work, more frustration. The popular musical "Avenue Q" once promised me that "Everything in life is only for now". I'm hoping this situation won't persist for too much longer. But I am very much aware of periods in the past where I've continued doing things where the only incentives are financial. Slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity. As Frank Turner might put it. Speaking of music, Paramore's Hayley Williams and New Found Glory's Chad Gilbert announced they were splitting up yesterday and those of us in the pop-punk world have been talking of little else. I jest but do think it's a shame. I'm not tremendously interested in tabloid tittle tattle but it does provide some interesting context to some of the material on both "Makes Me Sick" and Paramore's new record "After Laughter". The latter is a brilliant pop record that I will get round to writing ab...

Today was one of those monotonous days that crush your spirit. One of those ones where "What's the fucking point of it all?" reverberates around your head. I'm finding things difficult at the moment*.  There's clutter in my head and clutter in my life. When I get home from work, I pretty much collapse straight into my bed and lie there for as long as possible until the next time I have to get up and do something. Routine and structure appear to have fallen out of my life completely. Anyway, I'm anxious and unhappy and don't see much of a way out of my current circumstances at the precise moment you find me here. *I'm exceedingly close to knocking these blogs on the head, for one thing.