Five Years. Or how this place changed my life. (24/10/18)

Weird how difficult it is to start something new here when the whole point of it was 'write something, doesn't matter what it is, just write something'. It's been a little while though, hasn't it? The Springsteen gig if I remember correctly. So, nine months.

It was my birthday yesterday. Fifty-five. Fifty. Five. What a ridiculous number. Almost fictional. I don't feel fifty bloody five. I'm finally willing to admit to thirty-nine. I'm good with thirty-nine. I might stay at thirty-nine forever; in the way that Superman and Batman are always twenty-nine.

You didn't know that? Canon for years, that: Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are always twenty-nine. Old enough to be adults but not old people.

Although I have a feeling that idea may have been upgraded to thirty-three a while back. God knows it'd make perfect sense for the big blue boy scout, Christ metaphors all over that bloke.

Anyway. That's not the point. Intros were never the point. Intros, here, were always my way of getting the rhythm going, eventually I'd slip into what I was really going to talk about.

Steve Toolan. I was going to speak about Steve Toolan. I'm *going to* speak about Steve Toolan. Briefly, like. He's not the main subject, you don't know him and I wouldn't have the right to talk about him.

I'm the main subject. I'm always the main subject. My page, my rules, my reason for being here. (And my refusal to edit for grammar or spelling mistakes, live with it. Saying that, I always prided myself on the fact that I could be grammatically spot on even whilst really really drunk. Colin Jones will testify that his favourite piece was the one I wrote outside St Paul's Cathedral at midnight on a HMV conference while absolutely bladdered.)

Steve contacted me on Facebook yesterday to say Happy Birthday, which is obviously lovely of him. (Brief aside, I do love a brief aside: if you're reading this on FB then you know it was my birthday, if you're on Twitter then you probably don't. Possibly a good thing, not sure I could handle trying to thank five thousand people individually.)

And Steve said, "Is it really five years since Mumbling Into The Void?"

Yes it is.

For those of you who didn't know me five years ago, and I know lots of excellent people that I didn't know five years ago, this is something I used to do.

The idea was this: As 2012 turned into 2013 and J and I sat and watched Amy Adams and Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia, I decided that I'd write a blog every day until I turned 50. You can see more on that idea on day one, the links all still live in the online world.

This one, today, this is about how that decision changed my life. Completely and totally.

About six days in (really can't be arsed checking for details), I wrote a piece about Joe Cole leaving Liverpool. I received a direct message on Twitter from Sabotage Times (website that's the brainchild of James Brown, ex-NME, ex-Loaded) asking if they could host the piece.

I didn't know direct messages existed. Didn't see it for a week. Asked them if they could still use it. They asked me if I had anything else. I found something else. And I wrote for them until early 2015. Mostly footy - I did all their Liverpool stuff, and took some fantastic abuse - but also wrote on politics (Nick Clegg - Lust for Glory, that was my favourite, and still 100% accurate on the power hungry gobshite), some film, some TV, some comics and some music. The music will become very important very shortly. Within a week I'd moved from being just a blogger to an actual writer with material published on a website with a large readership.

The grounding in writing footy for Sabotage Times meant that when Gareth Roberts of The Anfield Wrap advertised for writers for their new online magazine I had evidence that I could actually talk about the game in an almost educated manner and could generate content to deadlines that brought readership engagement. The fact I could pitch an article on what it's like on Derby day when your wife supports the other lot helped a bit.

Suddenly I was writing for two websites and was contributing to podcasts.

Which all builds to a book on Liverpool's last season under Rodgers/first under Klopp: I knew I could write, I knew people read it, I knew I 'had an audience' (looks really pretentious when you put it that black and white), I'd had a chapter in a book on the previous season, I knew I was in a position to approach the publisher of that previous book.

Tip for you. If you want to get rich, don't write books on Liverpool that focus on one season.

Got to do two signings at Waterstones though. That was cool as hell.

And it's been published in Russia. Swear to god. Got two copies. Can't read them.

Music then. I'm writing for Sabotage Times and a new EP (Artorius Revisited) come out by Michael Head.

I've been a Michael Head fan for decades. Thirty-four years if we're being precise. Vividly remember buying the first Pale Fountains album (WH Smiths in Church Street) one Saturday morning before heading into work at Undeb Insurance on County Road in the afternoon. Was genuinely instrumental in making sure HMV got right behind three releases in succession. (Blowing my own trumpet? So?)

So I write a piece about Mick, about my history of loving his stuff, about how Newby Street is the best song you've heard this decade.

A guy contacts me on Twitter. Direct message. I know what these things are now. A guy called Simon Mason. He's writing a book on Mick Head, would I fancy having a chat for something to go into the book?

And I've covered that in depth on one of the links you'll find floating around here. But this is how I've come to know Si for five years; genuinely one of the nicest blokes I know; a great one man show about his life based on his book, a fantastic debut album by his band Hightown Pirates and an EP coming out next year which I'd describe as the best thing you'll hear in 2019 but that would involve saying I'd heard it. Let's call it intuition and speculation, shall we?

And Si is how I came to produce a concert film depicting Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band at St George's Hall in October 2014, how I came to hire Crosby's historic Plaza Cinema to debut it on a big screen, how I came to be sitting in a church in Stoke Newington at an invitation only show, how I came to be standing on a stage in Islington talking about effects pedals with Edgar Jones of The Stairs.

And all of that is how I came to meet so many other excellent people.

And this all starts from the blog. And is only scratching the surface.

The other thing that was going on in the background of the blog was this: HMV was falling apart. After 27 years of the same job I was about to become jobless. The news broke at the beginning of the blog. My shop went through closedown procedure in early 2013. And was then saved. For a year. Long enough for us to put the whole thing back together from the clearout warehouse it had become before going into closedown again.

So, as this was going on, I took some holidays I was owed. Felt that a fortnight off would be more profitable for my soul than arguing with administrators who were spending all their time in my shop being less good at selling stuff than me. So I took some time to write.

I'd seen a piece in The Echo. A writers' group was looking for submissions for a contest. Ten minute two handers that could be performed in a pub. I wrote a couple of things, I joined the group. I started writing scripts.

I'd never written theatre/film stuff in my life. I'd written comic scripts though. It's all dialogue, isn't it? Neil Gaiman had told me I was really good at dialogue. Back in 1989 he'd said that. And if Neil Gaiman says you're really good at dialogue then it's no longer opinion, is it? It's cold hard fact.

Those initial two handers lead to short film scripts, filmed but never seen anywhere to my knowledge, lead to a half hour TV pilot that I fight to get made in time for a deadline and learn a huge amount from. And then the group announces another competition. Open submission for one act plays.

I can't write whole plays though, can I?

"We'll take monologues. Forty-five minutes upwards."

Forty-five minutes of one person talking? Oh yeah, I can do that. Been doing that for years. Basically without drawing breath.

Which is how Venus Rising was born.

The next step is a competition. As somebody who never entered competitions, they haven't half been influential in the last half decade of my life.

Liverpool Hope University with The Royal Court (the Liverpool one where I saw Bowie and U2 and REM and The Bunnymen and Our Daughter's Wedding as opposed to the London one with plays and stuff) were looking for the next big comedy play. Venus was on its way from a monologue to a play so I thought, Yeah, I can write plays, I've written a 45 minute monologue, I can definitely write a two hour show with intermission for a cast of eight, no problem".

Turns out I could. It was called The Comeback Special and it was about two scallies, a lot of weeds, shitloads of swearing and the ghost of Elvis.

One day I'll write at huge length about the why, wherefore and the sheer bloody craft behind that play. For now, you need to know this: it won the Highly Commended Award. Turns out I could write comedy. I have a certificate that says I'm funny.

Half The Sky followed. Six monologues for actresses accompanied by excellent live music. Another award nomination followed that.

A long listing on a BBC screenplay award. A meeting with a TV company who were interested in developing The Comeback Special as a TV series. Trails went cold but didn't close.

I've documented loads of times how me and J went for a coffee one Christmas Eve morning and decided that play number four would be Those Two Weeks so I won't go into it any further, save this whole thing taking forever and being a list rather than having a point. And you'll probably want a point at some point.

Those above? They're the plays produced so far. Three of them in the last year. Of those three, two are already booked in again for 2019. In bigger theatres than we've played before. One is part of a plan to go much bigger, one will probably be retired after the next run. I'm not saying which is what yet. You'll know when you know. (If you're interested.)

Which doesn't take into account the fact that I'm still to run 'Where We Are' anywhere, that I've no idea whether I'll ever find space for 'The Owl and Me', that there's a play I can't tell you about yet as it's in a competition but, for my money, is the funniest thing I've written.

It doesn't mention that I'm currently on the newest draft/latest refinement of Girls Don't Play Guitars - the greatest Merseybeat story you've never heard. It doesn't cover the fact that I'll be meeting this Sunday with Vinny Peculiar and a director I won't name yet to finally pull the musical Silver Meadows into a stage bound shape.

And there's my great superhero epic novel that's got five-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. The book that Neil Gaiman (again) kindly RT'd to a couple of million followers. The joy of knowing somebody a little bit for a short while a long time ago (and him becoming a best selling novelist and still being a lovely bloke).

The point is this. I turned fifty and changed everything. After five centuries on the planet and nearly three of those in the same job, I was cut loose. Economics made me part of the past. So I came home from a redundancy meeting, turned the computer on and I wrote. I backed myself, I reinvented myself. After decades of shyness and lack of confidence in my own abilities I decided that, from now on, I was going to be the most interesting person in the room. And I know how arrogant that sounds but you have to decide these things and live by them. I knew every step I wanted to take. At every point I knew what the next step was and I kept moving.

I kept writing.

That's the point. I kept writing. I turned fifty, made a decision, took what looked like an end and made it an opportunity.

That's what I did next.

There's no such thing as too late, there's no such thing as too old.