Pharoah's Dream

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 go wrong did so as a result of me consistently overvaluing assumed friendships. When I asked the guy I'd invited to lodge with me TEN years earlier as an assumed temporary measure to help him out of a difficulty and back on his feet, to START paying me rent, he refused and claimed what I was asking was exhorbitant. Let's not forget the £2,000 I gave him when he said he was off permanently to Europe and I had money, but he returned within six months. When the second lodger, a serial fantasist able to turn a few terms in the Sea Cadets into combat service in the British Army finally left I discovered stomach-churning HORRORS in the room he'd been occupying which took days to return to an acceptable state.

But the rest of the year was marred by bad decisions about allowing acquaintences into my house as lodgers. I have been used and my only recourse is public shaming which I will plan and deliver for maximum effect. I find myself unable to pay my bills and with no income because my plan to provide a service for the Council's fostering and adoptions service, which I was assured would be completed by October (registration started in July) is still incomplete though I am assured mine is a popular application and it is just a question of 'procedure' but it has been exhausting.

2019 has the potential to be much better: I have a book in the pipeline and am discussing the possibility of a PHD and I have pitched for a couple of touring workshops to teach young people interview techniques and general "confidence tricks" which has earned the interest of the fostering and adoption service as well as a major children's charity in the region. Roll on the next 7 years!

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