On Saturday night I concluded a three week intense creative project: Poets Platform at Stratford East Theatre Royal, London.                             

Directed by 2005 World Slam Champion Kat Francois, it was a  theatrical ensemble with interwoven dialogues and monologues made up of poems rather than a traditional script.

In the space of three weeks, 15 poets came together to write, devise and perform a new 60 minute piece of cutting edge theatre.

Two weeks into the process the buzz of writing something that would have a guaranteed outlet to a live audience was pumping such adrenaline through my veins it made me think if everyone wrote poetry (at least as well and intensely as I do) then drug dealers would be out of business.

 I welcomed the sleepless nights in which I was researching and writing my pieces. One night, with my internet connection down, I had to make use of the 24 hour Wi-Fi service in Starbucks, St Pancras, venturing out into the cold to execute my inspiration. Very little in life is worth such sacrifice, but as writers, sacrificing is all we can do to find that inner peace, be it our sleep, nutrition or an “adequate” social life. This was lesson number one, a reiteration of what I have discovered many times: there is no point doing anything unless you are willing to go to the ends of the earth for it ,or to put it simply, commit. Some things in life we have to condition ourselves to commit to; others we feel a natural inclination towards. To experience the latter you have to do what you love in life rather than love what you do.

A workshop for Poets Platform @ Stratford East

At this stage in the process I was in love with the project, singing Don’t Stop Me Now every morning in the shower, rendering my housemates suicidal.

This was a unique and special opportunity and nothing was going to get in the way. From losing my mobile phone to being threatened with eviction during the process, I could not let anything seep out the mental energy I needed to deliver and prove my ability not just to myself but to the audience and everybody else involved in the process. After several workshops and redrafting of poems came one week (last week) of full on rehearsals (technically they were not rehearsals as  as we were still devising the production from the poems) with the performances to follow on the Friday and Saturday night.

 Time was short and the pressure was on to deliver jaw dropping poetic magic. By Wednesday I felt I was bungee jumping without a rope; plunging into despair from a triumphant high of consistent quality writing. A voice inside was telling me I’m simply a writer not a performer. There was no place for me in the world except my bedroom, behind my laptop typing away. I was not the only one feeling this way.

The play was not coming together for us writers turned performers. Then the assistant director gathered us together, recognising our fear she told us something which will stay with me forever.

A theatre is the safest place in the world. We can try anything we like without being judged, bringing out our true selves. It is not a classroom or an office where convention and rules must be followed. Suddenly something clicked. Two things I have complained about all my post-teen life (not quite mature enough to call myself an adult) are convention and loneliness. This was a chance to experiment, not alone with a sheet of paper, but with fellow writers, budding performers, directors and most importantly an audience. From that afternoon things picked up dramatically. We all pulled out our best.

By 7pm the show was taking shape. Three hours earlier I was secretly hoping no one would turn up so I could avoid embarrassing myself. 5 days later I was glad I didn’t listen to the voice inside.

Then, the first performance.

 On stage, in front of a full house, I felt connected to all my fellow performers and every single audience member. Thinking one step ahead at every second, preparing for my next move, I had never felt so alive. By Saturday night the bond between us all was stronger. We had come together, mostly as complete strangers and created something in a short time that disturbed the audience one second then had them laughing the next.

Knowing this night would be the last time we were all together like this meant we had to deliver beyond our capabilities to ensure we left each other with pleasurable memories. Like visiting a friend for the last time who is fading from a terminal illness, the final moment has to be the best, the happiest. Everything you put in comes out at that  concluding moment.

By Sunday morning I was constantly closing my eyes and thinking back to the security and safety I felt on stage, often void when interacting with people on a daily basis. It’s funny, theatre.

But it is time to move on, to get back to the blank sheets of paper and fill them with words to be performed again, if not by me then at least by others.

Lesson number two, overcome nostalgia and look forward. Things always get better. Just as on Wednesday morning we were all flummoxed by our own identities -were we writers or performers? - and by Saturday we had created something for which there are already requests to do again on a bigger stage, so in life; if you stay committed things get better. What a way to learn such an important lesson. Educational theorists and policy makers take note.

RBS Chief Exec Stephen Hester explains to his board why readers of Nuts may find the banks logo funny.

Regardless, it was, as one can always expect with the FT, an inspiring read and produced in me four ideas to help solve the problem of bankers’ excessive remuneration.

1. Provide bonus payment by means alternative to cash or shares.  Free annual Oyster Cards for example. (For non-Londoners reading, Oyster Cards are basically Underground tickets bought in bulk). This way they will come into contact with the tired, lined faces of the toilet cleaners who are forced to clean up their shit.

2.  Provide them with free O2 Home Broadband. If internet banking is their thing they will never get access to their money again.

3. Make them open up personal accounts only in the banks they work for. This might make them think twice before making risky credit default swaps; at least before the proposed firewalls take effect in 2019.

4 Scrutinize them No, not a public inquiry into pay. I mean an Endemol produced new reality TV show: The Incredible Hester. RBS Chairman Sir Philip Hampton claimed his Chief Executive has “one of the hardest jobs in the world”. The problem is, we are always told this but very few of us actually know what these bankers get up to that is so difficult and demanding. This fly on the wall documentary would bare all and could make Stephen Hester the new David Brent.

Last week, upon hearing of Stefan Golaszewski’s new play Sex With A Stranger, I immediately booked tickets and entered it  into my diary.

An hour later I was attending a first date with a very special lady. Being a freelancer, I have to keep my diary on me at all times; you never know when the phone is going to ring for a new assignment.

I thought my organisation and pre-emptive time management would impress her.

All was going well and the phone did ring. She acknowledged, through signs of disappointment, my egotistical need to “do business”.

As the phone call ended, I opened up the diary to slot in the deadline date. Unfortunately it happened to coincide with the entry of Golaszewski’s play; all too legible, even from her side of the table.

Suffice it to say the kind of woman I am inclined to find attractive are repulsed by people who write 3PM: Sex with a stranger in their diaries.

As if that was not enough, I went to the nearest mosque on the way home to pray the special lady would accept my calls of explanation, despite having walked out before the tap water  in plastic cups with no ice was even ordered.

Whilst speaking to the Imam, my diary fell out of my buttery fingers and fell open on his lap, revealing my (on the surface) sordid lifestyle. Let me just say he was not the liberal sort.

Things can only get better.

In the religion I subscribe to I am told that absolutely nothing will survive Armageddon with the exception of human souls. Yet something in me struggles to believe God will want to destroy the spiritually cleansing sounds that some of His creation conjured up through blood, sweat and  tears

Yes, I can imagine Him saying be-gone to beautiful valleys, rivers and mountain ranges when the time comes, but not, surely not, to (certain pieces of) music.

I am fully expecting humankind to be resurrected to the sound of Dear Prudence, by The Beatles.

Then, I believe, all entrants of Heaven will be given a special back to back screening of all episodes of Fawlty Towers.

After all, that is what life is about, right? Music and tasteful humour: the roots from which all love stems.

Apparently there was once was a man who said:

“Money, money, money,

I want it.

I will set up a business,

a global institution.

I’ll call it religion

and I shall make myself

a prophet profit.

wondering if my secret was exposed when she looked at me with those
tap running eyes, a water like glance. Tried to hold it; slipped out my hands.

But for ever in this mind it’s framed with either ignorance or faith to be blamed

Caught off guard when we first met, and I jumped to visions of the future

crash landing in regret of the past for not truly making most of the present

as it was back then.

Dressed in black as if she was at the funeral of my dreams.

All doors were closed

until a smile unlocked a beam of light.

She tried to resist with a heart of some kind of metal

only to discover I was magnetised

but the sweat of my intense grip

let her slip.

.

Then, fortnightly frictions of five minute meetings

ignoring attraction, taking a beating

from this heart of mine

in this pantomime

Of monologues,

and echoes of fear I hear as applause.

She looked not once my way as I

half heartedly tried

to make her.

Thought in the imagination of another

I was safer.

Then that evening, out of politeness we sat together

and I got more than what I prayed for

that’s what I have my faith for.

But my heart spoke, not my mind, I had to escape

from her gentle intensity.

Someone to work with and talk to

not a body as a playground my passion

could walk through.

Made my excuses and left

before my faith fell victim to theft

Then from a distance that gaze I felt

and read each letter of every word it spelt

and put in on my reading list for another

time.

Protecting piety, my most foolish crime?

Two months later re-appeared the list

by then illiterate was I

And no books on the shelf again, why?

I’ll do anything to avoid feeling this way again

even if I have to take the devil as my best friend.

Only through her memory is how I now see the world

her thick brown hair like calligraphic swirls

opening paradise with her smile of flying doves

in congregation.

As the memory fades I plunge too deep into self…

Just need something or someone to call my own

Like a mortgage on a house, I’m just a( )lo(a)ne

In a holocaust of idleness I’ve killed too much time

And now, sentenced is my mind

To imprisonment within four cold walls

Where I fall asleep to the sound of wake up calls.

to the melody of your orgasm

And make the lyrics a mystery

no scholar of love could fathom

You could question them

with every panting breath

And every bead of sweat

as I relish in your depth

But nothing replaces conversation in a park,

be it autumn or spring

We can play hide and seek

with my heart between your thighs

And I’ll play dumb and foolish

searching ‘til sunrise

But nothing replaces fully clothed conversation

in an art gallery or a library’s cafe

We could strip naked,

perform the Holy Pilgrimage,

And do something Beautiful,

like God’s invisible image

Or we could watch pornography together

a sign of the times

But we are blissful hearts,

surely not disturbed minds

Still, nothing replaces conversation

with strawberries, honey and cream for dessert

for the greatest exhibition on earth came…

“Gentlemen with ladies and those pitiful ones without.

Children, dogs and butterflies, for it is

a hot summer’s day with windows open…”

The  Curator continued…

“I as surgeon will cut open this chest and show you the greatest installation

ever

known

to

humankind”

A few moments later the detached heart pounded in his right hand and all onlookers vomited

out

their

own.

Piles of beating hearts and dead bodies massacred in the name of Art.

on the rink skated not, but did slide

He who had three sleepless nights

came barefoot, fell flat on the ice

Disturbed by this sight, the parents cried “stop him”!

and children laughed as he slid on his bottom

Lethargic and drained yet still he tried

to pull himself up, but deep inside

A force dark and dangerous pulled him down

the other skaters, once gathered around

Now dispersed, went on their merry way

Lovers and friends, skating happily

Every so often, in their way he’d get

on cold ice, he’d break out in sweat

Now he lay in the centre of the rink

not a movement, not a blink

Each child’s giggle, each lovers’ kiss

meant his cries went amiss

He yelled and screamed, repeatedly: “Help”!

As the ice under him alone began to melt

Then one woman who at him once frowned

Drawing by Patsy McArthur- www.patsymcarthur.com

Shed a tear when she heard he drowned

Puzzled she was, drown how could he?

The melted ice was a puddle, not a sea

How would it feel, if ,as a stranger it hurt her?

To lose one loved to an invisible burglar

as beautiful as this;

such bliss and warmth

in an icy loneliness

Every degree dropping

accompanied by a tear

Every eighteen months I wish

Someone like her was here

Of my heart

an ice rink she has made

digging in deep

with her skate’s blade

her and all my bound lovers

across it in freedom glide

their every move

cutting me up inside

Do I imagine it all?

A pain self inflicted?

I am “the victim” and

the criminal to be convicted

Sentence me please

To life in a happy heart

Because I’m finding joy in misery

And it’s scary when it gets this dark