Tuesday (just)

An hour into Tuesday, so I couldn't say Monday though I wanted to... Apparently you can't change the font face or background colour here so you'll have to rely on the content!

It's usually the smaller things in life that make an impression, to continue the theme. Good and annoying things. Today I got a replacement CD for a tape I had that snapped. The cheeky buggers said of course they would have replaced it but they didn't do it any more, but I could buy the CD if I wanted to. As it was almost impossible to find I happily said yes, and it's totally bloody different! OK, it's a double (I paid more than double the cassette price, so not really such a good deal) but the part with the name of the tape is half different tracks. Bloody fools. So the first entry sees me for not the millionth time turning into Victor Meldrew (to my American readers- now you know how I feel when you lot mention total unkowns here like Jessica Simpson or Hilary Duff- 99% of Brits know Victor, even though he's not a real person!). Anyway, that moan over, again I posted here with nothing else to report, but experience tells me those are often the best times to write, and also pushes the creative abilities if ever needed professionally and need to write with little or no inspiration.
I have also just (literally) seen a film online from my past, about 35 years ago. I am trying to get my favourite trade test transmission film when they were checking colour TV transmissions from 1968-9, the Shell film 'The magic of plastic', which featured coloured plastic chips and melting rainbows of psychedelic colour, and pipes being unreeled and carried which were literally miles long. I found the whole list (not including my one amazingly!) and remembered the other two I liked the most, 'Paint' (the companion of plastic) and the science exhibition by Philips in Eindhoven, Evoluon. I hadn't seen it since it was shown in the early 70's, and for a few years I had to go to my grandparents to see them as we didn't have a colour TV. Anyway, the good news is they had the film on the site, and if I had a CD burner was invited to make a copy as well! I love 60s and 70s TV, partly because the atmosphere then generally was totally different, and partly as I spent half my spare time watching it so became something of an authority. Via the web I've dug up so many favourites (mainly sound but a few video clips), namely the introductory music to ITV every morning, called Salute to Thames and Moto perpetuum (or something similar), and something I gave a whole page to, my favourite story from look and read, Joe and the sheep rustlers, which they'd just shown again for the first time on CBBC since about 25 years ago but I missed it. I have seen a few others since as they are running most of them again. I have the themes for Simon and the land of chalk drawings, and each time I remember another old and obscure favourite like Handful of songs, (where I fell in love with the singer, Maria Morgan, when I was about 10!) someone's made a page for it, often with the theme tune thrown in. If only life in the 2000s was like it was in the 70s...

Interestingly, I was thinking about careers today, as I spent years and years qualifying in various fields, but half the work I do (unpaid with a potential for paid) is from totally unqualified abilities. My therapy work is the official part, and I suspect that editors prefer graduates in anything to write pieces just because they assume we can produce a minimum level of grammar and intelligence. They may be right, I haven't really checked... The therapy gives me a hook into a niche market (bugger all in the job market, so there has to be some alternative use for it), but besides that the art and music are purely based on results. I was pretty impressed when I took my last two paintings to the gallery (I may have told this story before, but there's no search facility here...) the potter there asked if I'd been to art school, well I think she actually thought I had! We had (though I don't remember her) been in the same sculpture class, (though there may have been extra shifts?) and she'd gone straight into the business where I got kicked out of the class as soon as the second year began as the day I was supposed to register I'd been up in town taking an exam. So my A level art came to a sudden end and resurfaced in practice with no accompanying qualifications, but luckily it makes no difference in the marketplace. I reckon acting isn't really such a big deal either. I went to classes once or twice a week for about 4 years and learnt fuck all, literally. My speech, movement and any other abilities were the same after every type of class going, and I can basically either perform in a part or not, regardless of training. It just happens or doesn't. Back then (as you really still do in practice) you couldn't go for an audition unless you were in the union, which was a year or two's job minimum and I was a full time student with extra tuition required, so no stand-ups while I was studying like a friend of mine who did both, and qualified as a dentist and actor together, earning the same in a day acting as he did in a week as a dentist. So he worked as a dentist weekends and made the real money doing TV ads. They pay every time they're shown, and the same I earned in two days at the time.

Back to my story, I'll always hope to entertain on TV, as I said before, the cabaret work is not glamorous, performing to a handful of staff and no customers, or a restaurant full of estate agents who'd rather entertain themselves (literally I think) than have me there is really not a lot of fun. I will do a party if requested for friends, as my routine is pretty established for them and requires the minimum of speech as I mainly stick to a multitrack one man band, and restrain from singing or telling jokes which requires a lot of preparation in advance. But it's not TV. The screen, be it TV or films is for me the ultimate, and though qualifications may be a way in, it's connections plus the smallest amount of talent (sad but true) that get you in. I have no worries on the talent side or I couldn't have done all the work I have and been paid for it, and the one connection I had made simply through my interest in the supernatural was the way in for me. Once in, the door is created, rather than opened. That's the magic, the tape is there indefinitely, and especially on Sky, usually gets recycled time and time again unlike TV which tend to repeat things once or twice if they think they'll be popular. Until I know it's all systems go I won't quite be 100% certain I'll even be in it, but the trouble they went to on subsequent scenes based on mine would imply they'll be using them. Now if it helped me pull that woman I have my eye on (I can't say where, she may find out!) I'll get two birds with one stone!