Day 14. What'll you do now, my blue eyed son? (14/1/19)

I posted something the day before I started doing this again. Posted day 365 from 5 years previously, just to pique a bit of interest.

And in that day 365 post were were a few things that I mentioned I would be doing in the next year.

Due to the beauty of cut and paste, here they are again:

'Kites'
'Brilliant Solutions'
'Summer 1930 Possibly'
'Ghosts - a love story'

And obviously - Mumblingintothevoid.com


And not a single person pulled me up and went, "eh, E, how come we've heard nothing about any of those then?"

And that might be because people understood that sometimes things don't necessarily happen at the time you think they will. Or that nobody noticed that they hadn't happened yet. Or that nobody read it. Or nobody was actually even vaguely arsed.

But, just in case, just to clear up and because the Brexit vote doesn't happen until tomorrow and because I've got nothing else to write about and in one way or another I haven't actually stopped working at any point in the last 12 hours, let's have a quick look at what these things were:

(Soundtrack: Charles Mingus 'The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady' because I should at least make this 'try something I've never heard before last two days minimum. Liking it so far. Cool jazz. Nice.)

Kites - it's a time travel love story that moves between now and 1960 and involves the question 'what would you give up for somebody you love and which one of you should give it up?'.  I've genuinely had this idea knocking round since we lived in Leeds in the early 90s. This is how long I take to get to things. But. It was pitched to the BBC a couple of years ago when I was long listed for the 'Screenplay First' award. No idea who won that. Hold on. I'll google it. Charlotte Josephine. She's got a really good CV. 445 entries and I was in the last 30. Can't not be pleased with that. Pitched Kites along with a 60s based Hammer Horror/noir thriller called Queen of the Night. Might resurrect that as a play actually. Genuinely had that thought as I typed it. This is how it all works.

The other great thing about being on the longest for that is that my supporting material was the script for The Comeback Special. Which is how a TV company approached me about it. Nothing's come of that. Yet. Yet is always a big thing. Believe in the power of yet.

Brilliant Solutions - also called 'Burning Down the House'. Two lads go to Westminster with a big bag of explosives and a poorly thought out plan to blow up parliament. Which is a bit bigger than they thought. Originally written as a comic. Would have been commissioned for Crisis in 1991 but their budget ran out and then their magazine ran out. Shame, it was really bloody decent. Big state of the nation address story this, monologue about everything wrong in the country at the heart of it. I can rewrite that bugger every six months and it remains relevant.

Summer 1930 Possibly - it might be a ghost story, it might be about destiny, fate and higher powers. There's a cricket match, a biplane, the angel of Mons and the march back from Dunkirk. There's a St Christopher medal and there's the story of a father and son. Think this might still be a comic. Think that might never happen, if we're totally honest. But then again, you never know, do you? 30 years old though. Most of the people I work with are younger than this story.

Ghosts - A Love Story. This is only about six years old. This came into being about halfway through the blog year. What if you could come back? What if you could reach out from 'after' and touch those you left behind? What if you stepped through and others followed? Would those followers necessarily be the people you would want following you? What would it do to those left behind? What would it do to religion and faith? A very large part of me thinks this is my next novel.

And Mumblingintothevoid.com? Bought the domain, had it registered for two years. Those easy do it yourself website builders? Easy for others. Not for me. Do you know how much work there is in building and maintaining a website? Compared to how much money there might be?

As money making schemes go it actually manages to be a worse idea than writing a book about one specific Liverpool season where we didn't bloody win anything.

I get round to everything eventually. That's the point of this. Ideas never vanish, they just recycle themselves and pop up when needed, when the time's right.

The website though? Don't kid yourself, never bloody happening.

(Addenda: not sure about this Mingus you know. Too many notes. Bit frantic in places. Might need to sit down and focus on it properly)