On The Way to hay

Sally and Michael could have tumbled out of a novel.  Their children tumbled out of them, as did an
assortment of plays and television projects.  
Come to think about it where did they
come from?  Sally worked at Contact
Theatre in Manchester and Michael  was
and still is an active actor writer and director.  Both have  an energy and drive as much concerned with
their inner lives as their outer. 
Neither should  be separated, ever
.  Following their noses is what Sally
and Michael do best. “Lets move two 
hundred miles away” says one to the other. The other thinks for a second
“Let’s!”. And off  they go “what about
the jobs” says one to the other. The other replies “what about the jobs?” and
off they go.

It may sound 
ridiculous and reckless for a couple with two children but on the
basis of “no benefit without risk” it was a brilliant move, genius.   They are a lesson, a human pie chart,  a power point presentation on how  to improve your life.   And watching them grow and build and hearing
about their  success is confirmation of
the indelible human spirit.  They live in
a village in Bedfordshire, perfect for family life. But they have a thermostat
stuck right up the bottom of London, as it were

Yesterday they  had
some incredible news from a major TV 
production company and a major theatre with regards to two projects that
they have been working on for at least three years.   I feel
priveliged to hear it first hand on the phone as the train hurtles through
England and into Wales.  The news is
not  about  simple interest from said theatre and TV
companies but of  end game decisions made
after years of the back and forwards motion that happen between writers and the
companies that make their work.

Moving  home is a big deal
but we move for big little reasons.   I
moved to Manchester at the age of eighteen years old, from a little village in
Lancashire. I moved on the sole basis that    99 percent
of people seemed  regressive and one
percent progressive. I believed that the big city of Manchester would have 198
percent regressive  but a whole two
percent progressive. I am aware of the ridiculous mathematic nonsesnse. 198 percent!?  But you see what
I meant. I was eighteen years old.   This exciting flawed math was
the basis for one of the most exciting move of my entire life.  

When I moved to London, for love not money,  I got so desperately down. Michael was in town and I called him. He was a rock and  just listened  as we sat in a bar in in Convent garden.  Thankfully 
I don’t drink any more. I stopped drinking a  year ago. Never has it been more obvious to me
that drink is a depressive, helping to prop up the artists tendency to anniahlate positive thoughs about the self.  I still get
down  occasionally, but nothing like
before and my work output has doubled if not trebled in capacity. But this conversation was not about drink but friendship.  I put the phone down and continue reading my paper as I leave in England.

The train is now passing  through town of  Honeybourne and thankfully the onslaught of
rain has stopped.  Above my desk at The
Southbank centre it reads  “It ain’t where you go, It’s where your at”.
The line comes from a song I wrote abut seven years ago.  After all any seemingly  big move has never been to find a better place
outside oneself but to satisfy the place within.