Seasonal Terrors

As the pubs begin their annual tirade, and the Saturday night streets of Cambridge fill with women in tinsel-trimmed boob tubes and Santa hats, it's time to face the long countdown to Christmas again. Scarred from too many winters working in pubs where 'Santa Baby' played on loop all day long and the stalwart drinkers started December with a seasonal arm-wrestling match (repeated with gusto throughout the month), I've usually had about enough merriment and mince pies long before Christmas eve.

Luckily, this year December also means the opening of Robert Lloyd Parry's show 'A Warning To The Curious' at the Corpus Playroom in Cambridge. He'll be re-telling one of M.R. James' finest tales from Dec 14th to Dec 19th, and it's not to be missed: http://www.nunkie.co.uk/

And, of course, no Christmas would be complete without a cynical marketing ploy, so I suppose this would be my cue to remind you that a copy of my pamphlet 'A Pint For The Ghost' might make a good stocking filler. To be frank, it'd make a rubbish stocking filler, being the slender volume that it is. But if you're as bad at wrapping presents as I am, you'll find it reassuringly square and unchallenging.

Or, if you prefer, you may be able to own 'A Pint...' on cd by the time Christmas comes to town. Neil and I spent this weekend recording the stories and poems from the show, with a huge amount of help from Ian Cartland, who is currently editing the material into a proper recording. If we're pleased enough with the results, you may soon be able to buy a CD featuring new music by Sam Genders, as well as my ramblings and Neil's sinister tones.

Finally, in the spirit of festive cheer (or seasonal boredom) I'll be doing my own ghostly 'Twelve Days of Christmas' here on the blog, posting a different, new ghost story or poem on the site every day between Christmas day and January 5th. So if you can't afford an advent calendar, look no further...

Go forth and be merry.

A tale told by an idiot

Of all the quotes that abound about life being a stage, Shakespeare still gets the biggest thumbs up from me for saying:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

On Sunday night, above a pub in Camden, I ended up strutting and fretting in equal measure. Having never even attempted to act before 'A Pint For The Ghost', I somehow found myself on a stage in front of a packed house, pretending to be a grumpy Yorkshireman.

How did all this sound and fury come about? Last year, I wrote a short play 'Careless Torque' about two climbers, trapped in a mountain hut. Here's a trailer for you. Imagine a gravelly voiced American bloke who makes a trip to the offy sound like the end of the world:

United by boredom in the northern town where they grew up, Niall and Jackson became partners in crime as teenagers - bunking school to climb on the rock outcrops of the Peak District. Ambition took Jackson to university, but kept Niall at home, labouring for cash and taking risks with extreme climbs. Now, with Jackson about to start a job in London and give up climbing for good, the pair have decided to reunite for one last adventure: a dangerous route on the north face of Mont Blanc. But when a blizzard traps them in a small mountain hut in Chamonix, they find themselves with nothing but each other, and their separate versions of a past that both have struggled to forget...

This would all have been well and good, except that, following an unfortunate turn of events, I found myself without any actors just three days before the performance.

My first thought was to go to Wetherspoons, find a pair of blokes propping up the bar and drag them to a London stage. But even the drunks in Cambridge sound posh, and my characters were meant to be northern. After a manic afternoon of bribery, blackmail, treachery and corruption, I was rescued by Simon Perkins, a fine actor with a good line in Barnsley dialect. Five minutes on the phone to him convinced me that I was talking to Ian McMillan. I was sold.But the cast was still only half complete. With the clock ticking, there was no other option: I'd have to play the part of twenty-something lazy and feckless Jackson myself.

Some of the exchanges between Niall and Jackson certainly took on a new dimension:

JACKSON: I’m freezing my bollocks off.

NIALL: What bollocks?

Indeed.

It's also worth pointing out that Niall (referred to throughout the play as 'a whippet) was being played by the tallest man I've ever met in my life.

Did we get away with it? Who knows. But we certainly had a laugh along the way, and I've learned a lot about performance which should feed back into 'A Pint For The Ghost'. You can read more about Sunday's shenanigans here.