Day 124. We'll be out of here come morning. (3/5/19)

(Soundtrack: my mate, Reid Anderson's album, 'Love, Loss and Lucifer'. For reasons that will become very obvious momentarily. That's him above.)

Facebook has reminded me that four years ago we were in the process of putting this short film up on their site.

Anna Cardus and I had had this idea. A film written, shot, edited and published in 24 hours.

Not necessarily the same 24 hours like, but you don't tell people that bit, that's rubbish publicity. 24 hours in totality, we did that.

It needed to be something we could do in as few shots as possible. My first idea was that it be one person, a narration to camera, walking through a street with a camera moving in front of them, a la the video for The Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony.

But that might involve a camera operator having to walk backwards through a city street. Holding equipment. And that would be madness.

So we thought, "The Gormleys". Or to give them their correct name: 'Anthony Gormley's Another Place'.

Another Place is at Formby beach. A succession of human shaped statues cast in metal, all cast from the body of the sculptor. They're dotted along the beach, some nearer the waterline than others. Those nearest submerge at high tide. You can watch them vanish. All are exposed to the elements. They rust, they corrode, they degrade. Just like us all. The statues that vanish below the Mersey waves obviously degrade most of all.

Some sink into the sands, some lean. None are, any longer, exactly alike. They're as metaphorical as any art you'll encounter.

And the perfect backdrop for the film we wanted to make.

I knew I wanted the script to be political. There was an election coming and I wanted a 'party political broadcast on behalf of the rest of us'. Something that isn't toeing a party line, though very clearly socialist in its approach. Would you expect anything else from me?

So, one Sunday in 2015 we headed down to a cold windswept beach and we filmed.

The wind took the words. Reid had an earpiece in, his reading of the script already recorded and playing back so there was no need to stop for script checks. There was very little time for anything. Everything had to be completed with speed.

The phone that the recording was on died. I was off camera prompting.

And all we had was wind.

So the soundtrack became a post edit dubbing of Reid reading the script.

Anna blanched everything out, made everything look desolate. Formby can actually be very beautiful. This didn't warrant beauty, this demanded despair.

Written, acted, shot, filmed, dubbed and on YouTube.

Sharing was needed.

So, for two days I hammered twitter. I tweeted every left leaning public figure that you could imagine.

And some of them were bloody lovely.

Sally Lindsay first. Of Coronation Street and Mount Pleasant fame. RT'd the film and said really lovely things about it.

Then Irvine Welsh did the same thing and was equally lovely.

Then Duncan Jones. And Anna was delighted because he's the excellent director of Moon and Source Code (and obviously other films since but they were her big two).

Me, I was delirious about the fact that I had somehow found myself in a brief twitter conversation about my work, OUR work, with David Bowie's son.

That moment, that's worth every negative aspect of social media just for that.

We had a message of course. There'd be no point doing this if there wasn't a message.

And the point was: make the world a better place, don't trust people who claim they're a 'man of the people'.

Nobody listened to that one.

The world just got worse. We didn't change it. (Not that we thought we would, that would be absurd).

Four years ago we were in the space just before an election. The idea was that the film would be up for two days and then become totally irrelevant as the country had seen some sense and elected a Labour government to replace David Cameron's scummy rabble.

They screwed that one up. Then screwed up a pointless, uncalled for referendum, then another election. And allowed the rise of far right goons.

So, I have this short film that I'm really bloody proud of and I wish to God it could just become out of date as soon as possible.

But it refuses to date. Refuses to stop being current.

If you could all just sort that out for me the first chance you get?

Ta x