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...