Bedrocks & Backstories
Pitching, preparing, letting go
Greetings from the world of hay fever.
I feel slightly validated by this article having been on the BBC front page. Turns out one of the smaller miseries of climate change is an extended and more potent hay fever season.
I’ve been told that I don’t have to bury the status of my cats at the bottom of the newsletters so know here at the top that they are alive and well.
Having promised to keep to delivering this newsletter once a month, I am already late. The Terror of Pollen is partly to blame, as is wrecking my thumb playing football but mostly just I’d forgotten the discipline of newsletters and I was trying to cover too many topics. The good news is I have plenty of material for a good few months (although if there’s something specific you want me to talk about, I’m always open to suggestions).
Writing wise this month, I’ve spent many hours working on a pitch. Sometimes those are pretty straightforward - you know the story you want to tell, the thing you want to say and you’re looking for someone to say “that sounds great to me!”
A lot of the time though, it can feel a lot like a confidence trick. Essentially writing marketing material for a product that doesn’t exist yet. When it’s a script that hasn’t been written yet, my pitch is a way to ask for permission to get obsessed for a few months by something I’m curious about and guaranteeing, in return, an experience and understanding that I HOPE to get to but can’t GUARANTEE that I will.
If you’re lucky (and I mostly have been) the people on the other side know that’s how it goes and so you won’t be beholden to the outrageous promises (thrills! meaningful revelations!) you’re making in order to get the project over the line. I’ve found I’m happiest when I’m able to clearly articulate the approach I wish to take with the material and that being the site of excitement, rather than relying on the apparent greatness of what I’ll deliver.
I’ve also spent parts of the last month preparing for a workshop that’s happening this week. That’s two newsletters in a row where I’ve mentioned a workshop but it’s just a case of coincidental timing rather than a regular occurrence (sadly). In fact, Cloud Atlas aside, workshops are still a relatively new part of my process and watching myself for this next one has shown me how my preparation for them has changed.
I used to be obsessed with getting the script to be the leanest it could be, mainly because I wanted a room full of people to think I’m a terrific genius (or maybe it’s more I was worried they’d think I wasn’t a terrific genius).
Now it’s more like - to borrow a metaphor from the world of gym enthusiasts - bulking and cutting. Putting on a whole load knowing you’ll aim to cut the fat and keep the muscle. That’s not to say the leanness instinct was wrong, of course. Actors flourish when you give them space around the lines. Just this script has A LOT going on, it’s the largest cast I’ve worked with, so rather than trying to prove the greatness of script-in-progress, I’m trying to have the confidence to allow it to be unwieldy. It’s a rare chance to try out things that probably won’t work without the pressure of a looming first night. And, more than anything, it’s exciting to be able to just hear the thing out loud after so many years of work.
(I feel I’m being a bit vague on this, sorry, but I’ll have more to say next month).
Something momentous happened for my family a couple of days ago and I’m still trying to figure out my feelings about it.
Late on Thursday, hours before the 1st May, we sold our family business.
55 years ago, on the 1st May 1971, my paternal grandfather opened that business.
It was a pharmacy on Temple Hill in Dartford that would eventually move to Plumstead which is where my memories of it started. To finish up today, I wanted to share some of those as a way to mark the occasion.
To set the scene: My grandfather was offered a chance to buy a pharmacy. But my grandfather was not a pharmacist. He was never going to be a pharmacist. He worked in a factory in the day and sold fruit at night, hoping to strike out on his own. Now this opportunity had arisen, how could he turn it down? He’d take it (alongside my grandmother as co-owner) and figure out the rest later.
Turns out “the rest” involved pushing my Dad to study pharmacy, which he duly did up in Sunderland which is where he met my mum. I’m not sure what would’ve become of the family business if she hadn’t died so young, but she was apparently very ambitious about its potential. In the end, we can “settle” for it having been the bedrock of the (paternal side) family for over half a century. My grandfather dealt with the business affairs, my Dad was the main pharmacist, my aunt worked there and, from a young age, my sister and I were part of it too. Here are some of my snap shots:
Being 5 years old, picking up rubbish from the floor and being offered a 50p coin or a £1 coin as payment from my Dad (I went for the 50p coin because it was bigger).
Pricing stuff up with the label gun (hours of fascination for a child - would recommend, though may lead to some accidental price-gouging/discounts).
Dashing across the road to Greggs to get a big bag of sugary donuts (for my dad), a pasty hotter than the sun (for me), and a Lucozade Orange (also me)l
Or hanging out in the local Star Burger, the Turkish owner of which was devastated when I turned vegetarian aged 6 but committed to making me a personalised cheese and fried onion burger every time I came in. (I promise I ate healthier foods too, but those “veggie” burgers are my Proustian madeleines).
We processed photos in the pharmacy for a good few years and I’d always manage to snaffle some 35mm film whenever it was expiring. I taught myself to load it into an old camera, and spent many joyful hours snapping away (which would eventually lead to my brief attempts at film direction, and my longer term career as a corporate headshot and wedding photographer).
The industrial quantities of drug-branded stationary that made its way from the pharmacy to home. I never knew what they were advertising but I was never short of a ruler.
Sulking in the chilly store room, waiting for my Dad to finish work so we could home. I passed the time shaping the various cardboard boxes into useful structures, such as a house for our hamster (which my sister subsequently tossed into the pond, hamster inside - he was rescued unharmed).
Working properly behind the counter aged 15, which I found tricky as a shy kid, but nothing was so tricky as the day a woman dressed in conservative religious clothing and possessed of not much English came in with a prescription from her doctor. Friends, the prescription was for a suppository. She needed to understand how to take this medicine. The mime I concocted that afternoon was surely the beginning of my life in the theatre.
Coming back to see the pharmacy after many years of being away. My sister was now running the place, having given up a life as an engineer in the Merchant Navy (my sister has had a much more interesting life than me). A lot of the staff who had laughed warmly at 5 year old me picking the 50p coin were still there and pleased to see me as I was to see them. I think it was the first time I’d noticed how much my accent had changed. I felt upset about it. This place had been a second home and now I was becoming a stranger. Years later again, there is a striking difference between my voice and my sister’s. Mine shaped by disappearing into English degrees and the arts. Hers by taking on the mantle. I think my now departed grandparents would’ve been sad to see it all go, but delighted that it gave us the platform to make whatever lives we wanted for ourselves.
Something I really loved this month…
Every now and then an article* pops up espousing the virtues of the r/bald subreddit, which has long been a small joy of mine. Its main function is for men at various stages of hair loss to post a picture of their head and ask whether or not it’s time to shave it off. I realise this sounds unpromising but the responses are truly delightful. Though it’s not exclusively for or about men, it is one of nicer pockets of masculinity you’ll find on the internet (and there aren’t that many of those).
*I wrote this bit in the middle of April and since then there’s been another article about r/bald, this time in the Guardian if you’re wanting more info.
And that’s it.
Sorry, I know that alongside last week’s letter there might be a worry that I’m going to get stuck in an elegiac mode. Not at all. The next newsletter is going to be a bumper one, including more talk around craft and the promised snack edition.
Catch you at the end of May x