Oscar Wilde (not)

Starting a blog is hard. Well, for me it is anyway.

Where to start. As Lewis Carrol explains (via a Caterpillar to Alice) its often best to start where it begins and finish where it ends.

But, where is the start? To be honest, I'm not sure, but we'll try the following:

Writing has been a passion of mine for, well, ever since I can remember. Unfortunately, I haven't done much of it recently, due to work and generally being lazy.

I am reminded of some of my first literary attempts. These generally tended to be scripts. I recall my first play to be based on the adventures of a Vampire, simply known as "The Count" and his faithful sidekick, "Batty" who was, yes you guessed it, a bat. This terrifying tale of horror and suspense was written when I was around 9 or 10, and I even had my own company of players to act out each painful scene one after the other (the players being my own school chums, who didn't really appreciate the play for the ground breaking twists and turns of a modern day horror thriller, but mealy saw it as a way to entertain themselves for the 45 minute lunch break).

The next foray into writing came with a tongue-in-cheek send up of the (then) current top television drama, Soldier, Soldier. Entitled (imaginatively) "Soldier, Soldier, Soldier" it was a rip-roaring and hilarious poke at life in the Queens on Fusiliers. The only problem came from the fact that it was neither rip-roaring nor hilarious to anyone else but myself and my co-writer and general conspirator Jon, who would work with me on one more future project. However, that was enough for us, and many a fun evening would be willed away whilst we played out all of the roles ourselves, with an occasional guest appearance from Bob, our other erstwhile friend.

But all was not well. With now two unsuccessful plays behind me, and believing that my writing career was at an end, the world would not know what wanted to pour from this young mind. I left writing for a while and had no real intention of embarrassing myself any further. That is, until my last year at secondary school.

Every year, the school would enter something called "Kiss Week" Now, I expect you are thinking; "Kiss Week. Fantastic. Who came up with that splendid idea. Kissing. All week." However, you would be mistaken as to the intention of said week. For Kiss was a charity (I have no idea what Kiss stood for, although I'm sure I will be told) and the school would go into overdrive to raise money, and all in all, did a superb job. People would do sponsored this and sponsored that, wear daft clothes to work and other "zany" tasks.

For the first 4 years of attending school, I had done nothing myself to raise any form of cash for the Charity, save sponsoring some stupid oik for speaking with a German accent for a week (a sponsor I refused to pay up for after discovering that the person in question was actually a German exchange student and spoke with the accent anyway) So, with a heavy heart I decided I should, in my fifth and final year, surrender myself to this worthy charity. But, what? What could I do that would be different to every thing else that people were doing?

And then, it came to me. I should write a play! And not just any play, a Pantomime! Oh, the excitement and enthusiasm coursed through me like motor bike through Heather Mills' leg. I began work immediately on my new masterpiece, Cinderella.

After 2 nights of constant writing, the first draft was complete. Most was fairly easy to write, but the parts of the Fairy Godmother and the Ugly sisters was rather taxing, as everything had to be in verse. Not easy by any means. I enlisted the help of my previous collaborator, Jon, and we skimmed through the script, making changes here and there, and were left with a final, 2 hour long, script. I was very proud of my baby, as was Jon.

We began casting during lunch breaks and soon had an entire cast assembled with scripts handed out to all and sundry ready, with only 2 or 3 weeks until the performance, to begin the arduous task of rehearsal.

This is where every thing sort of went a bit tits up. Chaos descended, and soon, after a few days, the play had fallen through and Stevenage (or St. Evenage as we liked to say) never got to see my Cinderella. Which, in hindsight, may be a good thing. Or it may not be. I don't know, and to be honest, I'm not sure I want to know.

I haven't written anything since, and that is 10 years now, so this will be my new Cinderella. It sometimes may not be as funny or camp as panto tends to be, although I will try and squeeze as many sexual innuendos in as possible, but I am hopeful that maybe more people will see this work than my previous attempts.


At least this time round, I wont have to find a rhyme for Silver. (Go on try.....)



Best Of British.

Iain.