Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening? How we doing?
So this week I’ve started work back on Make Your Own bed and Hope for the Best; which is a solo theatre show about my experiences of employment. I started developing it back in 2019 – To be honest its become a bit of a labour of love, which is ironic, considering the subject matter but I’m determined to get it finished this year.
It’s been through various iterations, most of which you can see for yourself on my YouTube channel, where I’ve been documenting the process. The most recent incarnation was back last July, where I did two nights at Camden People’s Theatre; as a full work-in-progress show. It went alright, all in all but I still wasn’t happy with it. So I’m back playing with it again and have been re-working the stories, which form the core of the material. It’s odd, the more I write this sort of stuff, the harder it seems to get.
Last year, when I went through this process, I found it quite useful to share what I was doing online, I think it helped build up a little bit of interest, whilst helping me edit the work. I’m going to try and do something similar again but in cooperating the old Substack. Well, it’s not old, is it?
I gotta’ say, I’ve been enjoying doing this though, putting things up on Lager Time. I think I will continue to put up various bits and bobs: poems, stories and thoughts; as well as the show material as I go back through it, until I find my stride with it.
I’ve also been putting a bit of time in to get better at recording audio. I can be quite lazy with that kind of thing but at some point, I’d like to try my hand at voiceovers and the like, geezers gotta’ eat somehow… and that seems another way to earn some much-needed spondoolies; so it’s good practise for me. Maybe not recording right next to a window would be a good start in improving things.
Large up all of you that have been supportive with it so far, I hope you’re enjoying it, like I am. On a quick note, before we get into the material, there’s two new books that have bene published this week, which are both very significant for me and my beats & Elements collaborators.
Making Hip Hop Theatre Beatbox and Elements – by Conrad Murray and Katie Beswick &
Beats and Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
The former is the go-to guide, on making hip hop theatre, alongside interviews and the latter, is three plays, No Milk For The Foxes, Denmarked and High Rise eState of Mind. Two of which I co-wrote. It’s nuts to see both the work and process in print. We made most of this stuff from nothing.
They’re both published by Methuen Drama and are available at all good book stores.
PAPER-BOY
Apart from that job I got licking stamps for a mate of my dad’s; some primitive spam-operation for a charter flight company, in the Gatwick metro centre, when I was about nine, the first proper paid gig I got was being a Sunday paper boy, for Smith’s Newsagents, Horley, in Surrey where I grew up. 12 years old man and boy (northern accent )
My brother Will’s mate, Mark, had originally held that paper- round but he’d graduated from Sunday Paper-Boy to that coveted role of Saturday assistant in Smiths. He phoned up Will one day and asked Will if wanted the vacant round. Will asked mum and dad. Dad said he can only do it, if he split the round with it me. So through a blatant case of nepotism and state intervention, I got my first job, in partnership with my brother Will. I was a working man… boy.
Few months into doing it and Will also got a Saturday job and in what I now view in retrospect, as an aggressive cooperate take-over of the partnership, the whole round become solely mine. Yes. The whole £3. 300pence, all for, me.
Getting up early is tough, especially when it’s dark, cold and wet and the only people about: are dog-walkers, odd balls, airport workers and casualties from the night before. But I get to ride my bike really fast through the subway the empty high-street, pulling little wheelies.
Each week I’d sit on the steps of the British Legion, at the start of the round and scan the back of the tabloids for the Millwall match reports form Saturdays games and any other football news as well any pictures I can find of semi-naked women .
Increasingly I began to take note of the front pages too. Politicians, commentators, journalists; who are these people and why are they always in scandals?
I’d listen to my Walkman, really loud. Missioning it between the streets; compilation tapes, hip hip, grunge, jungle, metal and whatever else my older siblings fed me. I learnt which houses I had to have special requirements for, paper under the mat, top letter-box only. The ones which the crazy dogs, which gaffs took the tabloids and which was took the broadsheets and would curse those ones for the sheer size of the papers in proportion to their tiny letter boxes. Who had time to read all of that?
Each week I’d ride past the bike shop and look at all the sick bmx’s and mountain bikes and try and work-out how many weeks paper-round wages it would take me to save for one. Adds up with fingers And then I’d quicky abandon that calculation because I hate maths and it would probably take me years, anyway.
I got good at this job and I was reliable; that’s what Mr Smith said to me one day. He started giving me extra rounds when the other kids were off sick or on holiday, which meant more dough, which brings me to the best bit in all of this; riding back to the shop, when I finished the round and Mr Smith pressing that magic button to open the till, sliding out the dough, then placing those solid, grubby, heavy, gold nuggets; three of the queens finest English pounds, right into my sweaty-palm.
I’d look at it, enjoy the weight of it. Then I’d always have that brief moment, like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings where Gollum’s his eyes bulge at the sight at the ring. I’d get this sudden urge to buy things, stickers, sweets, magazines, newspapers, greetings-cards, stationary, paper-plates and party poppers, napkins and ladies tights. I wanted it all! Right there and then!
Sometimes I would spank the lot, right then and then, on sweets and stickers and whatever else, then regret it later on. But most of the time I didn’t. Having the paper-round, meant I could pay for birthday and Christmas presents, and lynx deodorant and Oxy ten spot cream, that stuffs expensive and mum weren’t buying it for me. I liked the feeling that I could pay for stuff, using money that I’d earnt.
I’d ride home, say hello to mum and make myself a boiled egg with soldiers, then watch the Holyoaks Omnibus and I remember thinking to myself, if this is what working life is like, I’m alright with that
