Wildewire

That was a hard winter! -Not so much about the weather, just hard work. It wasn't until mid February that my first Care-leaver-lodger was assigned to me so the first dosh I received was four months later than I'd been told it would come and was actually only 25% of what I had budgeted for.  Its now two months later and things are finally where they should have been since October: I'm 'Rigsby' to a couple of lads who've been in care. Things seem absolutely fine and I think that slowly I am being a positive influence. Its all very risk-aversion-orientated: monthly meets with Social Workers asking set questions that made me realise I'm probably very lucky with my current 'wards'.  I flunked on my fantasies of focusing on the kids as my employment as I ran out of things to tell my mortgage company circling like a Great White Shark waiting for a chance to snap up my house. So I jumped into the  job hunt like an albeit Keyboard warrior, only to have th...

Since leaving my last job and STILL waiting for the Council contract I was assured would start "by the end of October", Sundays spent with two of my friends have increased in importance for me. We just 'hang out': listen to music, talk rubbish, share anecdotes, insult each other- its childish and satisfying. We've been meeting in each other's houses for three years! Once, some else was invited, but she completely misread the vibe and got drunk and leery which hasn't encouraged us to make it anything more than it already is! It has been easy to get fixated on how hard things have been and for far too long. Sundays allow me to let off steam, fantasise and get inspired. I have appreciate the solitude of recent months, though I've not made the use of it I could have done. My curse is my planning tendancy: I feel comfortable and confident when I have assessed the potential outcomes of current actions. I've come to a point where few of my next possib...

Seven years has been an interesting interval in my life: I left the madness of Talawa Theatre Company on the day Blair <spits> became Prime Minister to run a nightclub which, unbeknownst to me, was a front for a drug-dealing family with connections to the Krays and Richardsons! I got shafted and it took seven years to pay off the debt they laid at my feet.  Life was pretty good for me when I moved to Newcastle in 2003 and remained so until the beginning of 2011 when the people I worked for FINALLY woke up to what I had been telling them would happen after the global financial crash: arts funding would be declared a luxury and cut severely. For the second time; I found myself carving out a Freelance existence in a recession. It was frustrating to watch most of what I'd work disappear or being rebranded as other people's ideas in the following seven years as I tried to regain the foothold I'd had in The Arts in my region. 2018 was the year when most of what could ...