cheese, onion and chilli sauce on toast.
But this savoury goodness only serves as a snacky distraction from REAL contemplative business, the business of my LIFE. Y'know, big stuff, that needs sweating over a low heat.
The thing is, autumn for me always feels like a new beginning, the proper New Year. If I'm ever going to make a resolution (say 'no' to cake, 'yes' to cardiac activity), I choose this time of year to do so. Much more realistic. Your vision isn't clouded from binge-drinking Babycham and snorting sentimental lines of Auld Lang Syne. You face the coming twelve-month with a clear head and a clear eye, and it meets your gaze head on. You can lay claim to an objectivity over what's truly doable that's missing when the leftover Christmas Baileys is talking its special bullshit.
Usually at this time of year I'm starting a new project — a script, more often than not. But this year... I don't think so.
Let me explain.
Four years ago, the Beeb managed to persuade eight established scriptwriters to each write the first twenty minutes of a sitcom. It then invited members of the public to enter a competition whereby they complete the last ten minutes. I duly wrote my first ever script and sent it off.
And won. Cue champagne corks and streamers.
That win sent me off on a course that I hadn't really considered before, and over the last four years I have followed it with hardly a pause for breath. I have written three pilot sitcoms for the BBC and while all of them have met with praise and approval, none of them has made the BBC reach into its pocket.
Surely time to look up? Take my bearings, stop kidding myself, see what else is new and exciting out there? I'm not a quitter. I am that Chumbawamba classic with a Weeble sensibility made flesh.
But I could CRY when I see the BBC commission juvenile crud like We Are Klang and lazy, unimaginative spin-off sitcoms from past glories of its sitcom heyday in the 1980s. (To be honest, 'cry' is probably a bit strong, but I do splutter and look despairing.)
I am taking stock. Should I continue flogging something already lying on its back on the conveyor belt at the glue factory? Sometimes we need to look up from the path long enough to spot a turning we'd never noticed before; who knows, it could even turn out to be a short-cut. What was right then, may not be right now...
Would you believe it? Turns out I'm a quitter after all! And so I continue on this wonderful voyage of self-discovery.
Anyone looking for a feature writer? She's quite funny...
Happy New Year!
2 comments:
Ms Flyte a quitter? No! The only thing you could consider quitting is that butter-dripping, fat-saturated, carb nonsense pictured. No wonder you can identify with weebles! (Looked delicious though, and it IS lunchtime...)
I think 'redirecting' maybe a better term than 'quitting'! We all need to review from time-to-time whether what we seek is actually still relevant.
And cheese and onion on toast will ALWAYS be relevant!
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