Perfect Poisons

The close contact with writers near and far has me stocking up on books for the long days ahead and I’ve began several mostly the authors bookmarked as farai favourites there’s a couple of new greenes and I’ve ploughed through A Gun For Sale which I’ve found too beautiful and harrowing and I don’t want it to end while tobias wolff’s old school is a brilliant on-the-tube read and I haven’t really done enough trips to end it also there’s a truman capote reader mainly so’s I can have Music for Chameleons close at hand and the worthy jose saramago’s Death at Intervals is gripping but waiting for a beach and over at the Oxfam shop I picked up the Cuban writer pedro juan gutierrez’s second novel Tropical Animal having read his Dirty Havana Trilogy and suppose it’s the kind of book I’d like to write but couldn’t possibly be that dirty in print the man has killed my liking for the mammoth book of best new erotica volume 8 with his filthy musings dressed up as observational literature on Castro’s underclass.

But usually there's no time to read unless we make time for reading. I reckon it takes me three hours door to door to get to my tots at the weekend and three hours back again depending on engineering works and what it is is what it is then the journey's taken up by unfinished business and piles of newsprint and the odd nap and the interruptions of the train manager and screaming children and pissed rugby or football fans in short too precarious an atmosphere for the sacred task of ingesting words. One Sunday I'm told by the little people not to come too early because he was at a sleep over and was awake until four in the morning and she went hiking and walking and camping and map reading for two days and they'll sleep for as long as possible. So I walk into a pair of moody children who don't want to do very much and I say how about the pub. Oh the pub, I'd quite like to go to a pub as an experience says she, what's there to do at the pub, says he. Well for one thing Arsenal is playing Middlesborough at lunch you wanna come? They say yes after much negotiating and I get the Arsenal match as long as they can get some popcorn from the local cinema and go home and watch a film on choice tv. The pub's too smelly I'm told and we get the popcorn after a Fabregas goal and only 7 minutes and the film they chose is so dull I escape to the Costa cafe with a Sunday Telegraph and they pitch up and say that was incredibly rude of me to just leave like that and he's really grumpy because he's tired poor thing but he smiles when I tell him don't try to out-grump me mate where do you think you get it from.

The football season is winding down into a series of crucial matches and one Wednesday evening the Grove is packed with fans trying to find a pub that's showing Manchester United v Arsenal and the ritual we've fallen into my friend and I means we head over to the Elgin in great expectation and high spirits and I'm ten minutes behind him and get to the Elgin only to find it full to the rafters with people spilling over onto the pavement and a large wide bouncer saying we are full up. But just across the road is a little known gem of a pub with only a score or so of old West Indian geezers shooting pool and playing cards with a pile of 5p pieces and ignoring the solitary television tucked away in the corner which, for the last 75 minutes of the match shows the Arsenal 1-0 down and under extreme pressure and a breath of luck away from losing the game.Yes our team is under the cosh and the more we we say come on Arsenal the more United come forward in waves of menacing intent with the portuguese narcissus that is Ronaldo hitting the post and five minutes of injury time has us thinking oh well that's it we are out but our Spanish goalkeeper Almunia makes saves of such outstanding agility even the United fans admit he kept us in it for the return match at the Emirates.We meander down the grove in pleasant summer darkness and opt for a night of jack daniels and reggae music and exchange stories on love and loss and stuff and the albino star Yellowman is singing Man Smart but the Woman Smarter and no I haven't heard that tune for ages ofcourse you haven't try playing reggae of that quality in company it's an acquired taste.

Sometime in the week as the rain falls in between shafts of blinding sunlight when the monkeys are getting married the producer drags me away from the comfort of a self organised day and dumbs me in Hackney and to the offices of what's known in the trade as a script doctor. I'm always suspicious of these folk whose job it is to tear down your carefully constructed building blocks of words and images but I do it as a refresher course and the man at the flip chart holding court to the two of us is distracting because his personality is so large a kind of disheveled Liverpudlian drinking copious amounts of tea and smoking endless silk cuts and talking non-stop for two and a half hours on the science of the movie script.Your story's shit you are not a writer of any worth this thing I've read is three to five years away from making it readable never mind from making it you may not like what you hear but I have to tell you you have no clue. He throws his best combination punches in this way and tries to see if I'll wilt and I'm bemused really and listen since I'm here anyway embrace all criticism a wise script tutor once taught me and some poisons heal they don't destroy. You may start off with a little talent but what I say is unless you are willing to put in a minimum of three hours a day seven days a week and perfect your craft you might as well fuck off now if it takes a doctor seven to nine years of training to learn his craft what makes you think you can do it in three years at some stupid film school? We talk about empathy, the arch of a film the reasons why bums stay on seats comes from the earliest traditions of story telling which by the way can be traced back to Africa as well as the Greeks. Great, he's trying hard to be inclusive. You need four things for a good story - an interesting person - twenty minutes into the movie you drop a house on the guy and for the next hour the guy has to try and get that house off himself so an interesting person an interesting situation complications that ensue and stay away from the cocaine. Who is this man? Yet still we leave inspired and climbing this greasy pole to production will take every effort and we hold another meeting in the cab and chart the story of our tales by the hours we spend on them.