Author: strokeofbadluck

I had a stroke on July 26th, 2013. I was a screenwriter. Don’t do that anymore. But have found another way to write.

The extension

Sat in flat in East Dulwich.
Went to pub.
Had a f***ing huge lunch.
And pudding.
Went home again.
D explained how he planned to build a monster extension.
I said: why?
He could NOT build it, take six months off, think about what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, and then be at exactly the same place financially.
Only without the monster extension.
He already has four rooms for himself, dog and occasional visits from his daughter.
Any more rooms would just be swank.
Wouldn’t they?
I thought so.
Dermot thought about it for a bit.
Considered I might have a point.
Job done.

Sadly, no Pointless today!

Spring Concert

I went to Colchester Grammar last night.
Saw Alex singing in the choir at the Spring Concert.
You’ll have to come one day!
It’s fabulous.
Alex has that same sense of humour we do (GSOH!).
He never means anything he says.
Fantastic!
He’s only 14 and yet he knows.
We went to Nando’s first.
(I wrote: we could go to somewhere like Nando’s.
He wrote: good plan.
I wrote: Where shall we go?
He wrote (after some thought, I imagine): er… Nando’s?)

Anyway, they have this music teacher.
Dr Medlicott.
What a name!
(He is so gay.)
At nights like this, he totally runs things.
The headmaster even said, in the interval: I’d better say something now because Dr Medlicott will want to say something afterwards…

Anyway, Dr Medlicott definitely knows his stuff.
They played: Haydn, Mozart, Copland, Coates (The Dambusters March), Lotto…
But they also played: When I’m Sixty Four (for barbershop group), Benny Goodman (big band), and Survivor’s The Eye Of The Tiger (Junior Brass Band)! (It sounded like a Czech military band which had to play it for a state visit, and didn’t ‘get’ it at all.)

But the piece de resistance is kept for the end: the Disco Medley!
Tonight: Go West segues into YMCA segues into Enough Is Enough Is Enough segues into (finale!) It’s Raining Men!
It was (Alex said, and I agree): the best EVER!
Dr M conducted and kept turning to the sound man and gesturing: Turn! It!! UP!!!

You should see them: 100 boys (in purple blazers) and girls singing this medley, doing the moves, loving it.
And the parents: either ‘getting’ it or thinking (Essex man): you what?!
And Dr M, in his dream job.
Where else could he get 100 people to do the moves to YMCA…?
A grammar school in Essex!

Next time you will have to come…

Still no TV…

John Lewis we’re finally on to deliver a tv this morning and mount it on the wall. To keep things easy, I’d ordered a Sony Bravia and the most popular wall bracket (of 39 available on the John Lewis website). They arrived, two good blokes (always are), unpacked everything, checked the wall, everything’s ready to go…

But the tv won’t fit on the brackets. Ok, I’ll have to get a new bracket. (19 steps forward, 18 back.) I get the JL blokes to look at the JL website so they can tell me which to get. (Even pre stroke this would have been a problem. It’s all to do with holes on wall and ‘Vcer’ holes in the back of tv. You need a degree in ‘mounting TVs on walls, advanced level’.)

So, the JL guys look at the website. All 39 brackets. Not a single one fits the Bravia!?!

I say: surely someone before, EVER, has fixed a Sony Bravia to the wall?

They say: yes, of course.

So they fill out a form (installation completed: no). They take away the tv, and say someone will call me. Which, beingJohn Lewis, they have done.

Only I was on the other line postponing my BT tv appointment…

To be continued…

IOTSUE

Email’s a wonderful thing. I can’t remember to post a letter (one to my solicitor is still in my bag). But I can send stuff anywhere in the world just like that…

But of course now we have Messages, Messenger, WhatsApp…

IOTSUE (if only they still used email…)

Did I tell you about Jo Unwin? She’s a literary agent (married to Chris Morris, represents Richard Ayoade) and friends with my ‘friend’ Robert, whom I last saw in Taroudant, Morocco on my honeymoon (he just happened to be there). Anyway, that was the only time he met K, and he didn’t remember her at all, so he was right to read my ‘memoir’ (which is now called: In Those Days I Could Still Eat Lobster…).
Robert said: Can I show it to my friend J?
I said: Too soon!
I then had a drink with my agent (when I was staying with you), sorted it all out (he doesn’t represent book writers, but I had to show him the courtesy…) , and sent it to JU via Robert.

3 weeks later I get an email from him: Can I send it in another format?
By this stage I:
Am in the ‘new’ (for which read ‘old’) house;
Don’t have broadband (later);
Don’t have the memoir on my iPhone;
Don’t have iCloud (because no broadband);
Don’t have a wireless printer to print it off my iPad (which of course has no USB socket…).
And the whole point was I’d put the document in Pages (as opposed to writing it in Notes) because that was the standard system on Macs (not Microsoft Word, which I did have but now doesn’t work with my computer…).

I had a Mac, she (presumably) had a Mac, what was the problem?

Well, there was one, apparently.
I said to Robert (whom I haven’t seen since 1997): I could copy the doc from my iPad to my laptop; plug laptop into my old printer; buy ream of paper; print it off; buy a Jiffy bag; post it to agent… That was good enough for me when I first got an agent…
He said: Don’t be silly!
And sorted out the problem in 10 minutes…
So: 3 weeks’ delay for 10 minutes’ work!
😤
I would rather just have posted it 3 weeks’ ago.
IOTSUE!

(Well, that doesn’t work either. They did use email… But you get the picture…)

 

Cathedral

One person wrote a good profile of herself in which she actually gave some scope for an interesting question. Among other things, she said that Raymond Carver was her favourite author. I sent her a question: what was her favourite RC story?

No reply.

A few days later I tried again (how many RC fans are out there?): maybe she didn’t have one?

No reply.

At that stage I had a conversation with a nice woman (who wasn’t interested but at least was human) about improving my ‘profile’. Any help will do! That gave me an idea.

I went back to the RC fan and wrote: you must be really rude to not even type ‘no thanks‘ when a man takes the trouble to write an interesting question.

(I mean, why bother to mention RC if you didn’t want to talk about him?)

Whereupon she wrote: no thanks!

And I wrote to her: mine is Cathedral!

My new watchword: 19 steps forward, 18 steps back…