Lager Time

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening?

As previously mentioned, I’ve been away, hence the podcast silence. This month is just a little update on the Euro’s and what I’ve been up too, plus a few new poems I’ve got in the works (been a while since I banged any of those out!)

Hope you’re all good out there in Lager Land, enjoy the sun, enjoy the football, keep it larger than life

If you’re feeling nice, give it a subscribe. And tell your mates. Please. The ones that might like this. Lovely. Poems below.

Paul

LINKS

Love Scripted @ Birmingham Rep Theatre - Friday 19th June

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy

2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray

https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening? Welcome to Lager Time. This is the final edition in this series I’ve been writing, based on quotes from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations book. For each chapter, I selected one quote, then wrote something inspired by the quote. This piece is from Book 12, entitled On Renewal. If you like it, there’s 11 more in the archives. I’m taking a little break for a while, but rest assured I’ll be back soon. Enjoy

P.S – If you’re enjoying this, if you haven’t already, you can subtribe here and if you think someone else might like it, please be sure to let them know. Much apricated, Paul

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjoour, what’s happening. This is the penultimate episode / blog in this series where I’ve been getting stuck into the Meditations book, and writing bits based off quotes from each of the 12 books.

'Just as those who try to block your progress along the straight path of reason will not be able to divert you from principled action, so you must not let them knock you out of your good will towards them. Rather you should watch yourself equally on both fronts, keeping not only a stability of judgement and action but also a mild response to those who try to stop you or are otherwise disaffected. To be angry with them is no less a weakness than to abandon your course of action and capitulate in panic. Both amount equally to desertion of duty – either being frightened into retreat, or setting yourself at odds with your natural kinsmen and friends.'

BOOK 11 – 9

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

Love Scripted show, @ Call and response, ACTA Bristol 30th May 2024

https://acta-bristol.com/whats-on/call-response/

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy

2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray

https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

What is my directing mind to me? What am I turning it into now, what use am I making of it? Is it drained of intelligence? Is it divorced and broken off from society? Is it so interfused and welded to the flesh that it sways with its tides?

BOOK 10 – 24

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy

2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray

https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

Love Scripted @ ACTA, Bristol May 30th

https://acta-bristol.com/whats-on/call-response/#more-24704

Piped Piper show @ Southbank Centre, London 31st May – 2nd June

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/family-young-people/pied-piper-hip-hop-family-musical

‘Oh no my sandwiches’ Video loop

PMA -Persil advert

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Look then at what is happening now. Only the intelligent creatures have forgotten the urge to be unified with each other: only here will you have no confluence

BOOK 9 - 9.3

Based on what I witnessed and experienced, growing up around Horley and Crawley, there was a lot of low-level isms - racism, sexism, classism, homophobia - ism and probably more isms - maybe even Marxism, but I didn’t know what that was until after I’d left the place, and too many people had done alright off of Maggie Thatcher and bought their council houses for that ever to take hold. There was one guy I remember, who was the father of a kid I went to cubs with and a nice man. He had a long beard and wore sandals with his socks; maybe he was a communist lone-wolf, quietly and unsuccessfully trying to lead local workers away from Benidorm, towards a glorious workers revolution. Alas, I digress.  

Most of the racism, seemed to me, to take two forms: the first being jokes: which mainly saw Pakistanis, reduced to the P-word and serving as the main ingredient for crass punchlines, sometimes just puns on typical names, sometimes about skin-colour and culture. The P-word would get thrown around a lot, and was often just a lazy, very ignorant, catch-all term for brown and also darker-skinned people in general, not just limited to Asians: this could include people from Greek, Turkish, middle eastern or Portuguese backgrounds, or sometimes it was just aimed solely at Muslims. Perhaps this was relative to the area I grew up in, as Crawley had large Indian and Pakistani communities. It also had a big Irish community, and there were plenty of jokes about them too.

Some of these jokes were fairly innocuous, some were plain nasty, and sometimes they weren’t even jokes, it would just be the P-word hurled casually out of a car window, speeding passed some ordinary person just going about their day.

The second form would take the lazy parroting of thought-lacking negative tropes, to diagnose broader social-ills, like immigrants our taking our jobs etc. I heard these sorts of ones quite a lot. My guess was, looking back, that a lot of these statements, or accusations, were sometimes made out of fear - fear of losing something, like employment, or identity, but more often than not, like the above jokes, were made innocuously and in ignorance, with very little thought given to the consequences of saying those things.

When I was in cadets, I once got caught telling a P-word joke to another kid, and was made to stand-up by the commanding officer, in front of the group and given a severe bollocking. He was a white guy, but he was really angry about it, and fair enough, though I meant nothing by it, I learned my lesson. I remember feeling ashamed, and wished I hadn’t said it. I certainly wasn’t thinking about what the kid sat in ear-shot of me, who was from a Sri-Lanken background, might be thinking or feeling.

There was a third and much nastier form too, which from what I saw, was a lot rarer, but I encountered a few people who would probably fit into this category – and that is those who actually believed in the supremacy of white people, but more relevantly, had a severe hatred of those that weren’t them. That also included gay people, Jews and the Irish. There was a pub in Crawley which I forget the name of, which me and my mates would often drive passed, which had a reputation for housing BNP meetings; we never went in to validate those claims, we just knew to stay well away. The couple of people who I came across, who would fit into this category, were as you might imagine, pretty scary. There was occasionally one or two of them in the pubs I’d drink in; and there were always stories that accompanied them - doing jail-time in this prison or that, or running with the Chelsea hooligan firms in the 80’s. One of them had a spiders-Webb tatoo on his forehead. Again, just steered well clear of them.

Though Horley was predominately white, Crawley was a lot more ethnically mixed, as was the friendship group I grew up with; and I’m all the better for it. We naturally learned things about one another and absorbed aspects of each other cultures. When I first met my wife, who is Goan, she was pleasantly surprised that I knew a little bit about her very nuanced culture. My oldest friend from school is from a proud Goan family, and I knew other Goan families in the area too, as we all went to school and church together. That definitely won me some brownie points with her; no pun intended; but amusing none the less.

Of course we didn’t all grow-up the same, and our experiences would’ve varied, especially when it come to any sort of discrimination; but we all had lots in common. Went to the same schools, wore the same clothes, listened to the same music, worked the same jobs, had to avoid the same rude-boys trying to shake you down in the underpass and on the trains, and the same wide-boys looking to fight anyone that accidently stepped on their loafers in the pubs. Regardless of our differences, we came-up together.

The other isms, typically tended to involve making sexist comments towards women, or referring to them as birds, middle class kids calling working-class kids townies, which later morphed into the more pernicious chavs. Middle class kids just tended to be referred to as posh, sometimes followed by the C-Word. Depending on who I was with, and where I was, I was one or the other; chav or posh, I could never figure it out; trapped in some undefined class-purgatory; like a dull lesson in school where nothing gets learned. Pun intended.

As I got older, I began to develop a very basic understanding of how politics worked in the UK – broadly meaning, I got as far as working out that Labour was left-wing and Torries were right-wing, this also coupled with other simplistic notions of social issues, like classism, racism and sexism, and things like history – understanding that Britian was a colonial power and their involvement in the slave trade. All contributing towards my ideas of what discrimination is, and what pernicious forms it can take, and the different groups it can target. I would much later come to realise, that my understanding was grounded in an idea of liberalism, and stiving towards equality. 

Though I didn’t know a great deal about politics and society etc (and would sometimes get very frustrated by this lack of knowledge) I considered myself left-wing. Though generally speaking, it was an affluent area, Surrey and Sussex, but I could see the effects of poverty around me. My family didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so I thought things like the NHS and social security were important, and every now and again, Mum and Dad would school me on things like this. They listened to Radio 4 and encouraged me to read books, which is probably where the posh slur came from, as that was seen as a middle-class thing. And of course, we were also Catholic - for us, there was a duty to help those less-fortunate, even if we ourselves didn’t have much.

Leaning left, felt like the right to do; no pun intended. I knew people who went either way; but I also knew a lot of people who just didn’t care for politics. Though Crawley was pre-dominantly working-class, or upper-working-class, there were lots of people there who’d done well for themselves- setting up building firms and the like or bought their council houses and got on the property ladder, so they would tend to swing right, but not always. The town often went from Labour to Torries then back again.

I was interested in trying to understand how the world worked but had no idea where to start. I began to read books, but when going to the library, or going into a book-shop, I just didn’t know what it was I was looking for; I just had this feeling that I wanted to learn some stuff… whatever that stuff was.

From 17, I had a job as an apprentice in an IT firm, where I was left to my own devices a lot. I had access to the internet, which was still a novel thing for me, and via a Drum and Bass message board that I wasted a lot of time posting on, I found another message board, which would put-up political content. This is where I first learnt what the word subversive meant.

 At the time, the UK had just gone to war in Iraq and I remember feeling quite strongly against it, probably influenced by the stuff I was reading, but also many people I knew were against it. It didn’t feel right, and of course, they lied about the weapons and that. However, I was conflicted, as I’d also spent a few years in Marine Cadets and at one point, when I sensed I weren’t going to achieve much at school, I was all-set on joining the Army (easier-going than the Marines.) Through cadets, I probably knew of people who went out there to serve; it was a job after-all, and I had a little bit of appreciation for what they were doing and how dangerous it was. I also didn’t like the way some elements of the more middle-class left, would demonise soldiers, who were often working-class; just for doing a job.

Though there was no way on God’s earth, I was ever going to swap my Nike Air’s for sandals, at some point I figured out what Capitalism was. With the irony fully lost on me, I decided it was a bad thing. Using my generous 30% discount from working in huge-retail-chain-store HMV, I went into huge-retail-chain-store Waterstones, who were owned by an even an even huge-er-parent-company; I bought some more books by the likes of Michael Moore, and another one about the Bush Administration rigging the election in America; further solidifying my slant-left. I was finding causes which evoked feelings in me; which at the time of reading felt right, no pun intended. This was even followed by a stint of using a biro to write pseudo-radical messages in public karzis about TV-brainwashing us, and McDonalds-eating-greedy-Americans exploiting everyone. I’d graduated from the fine-art school of Millwall Run From No-one and a crap-tag called Luna, to full-blown political sloganeering.

I was 27 by the time I started working professionally in the arts. I felt like I’d already been round the block a bit - had multiple different low-paying jobs, multiple different addresses and had been almost permanently skint since the age of 17, but for the first time I was encountering people who were around my own age, who were themselves not long out of university and had barley ever worked a normal job; which for me, was eye-opening. Though I felt way out of my depth, not really knowing anything about the arts; theatre, poetry or literature, I had lots of opinions and thought I’d be alright as I assumed, and rightly so (no-pun intended) that in these circles nearly all of these people were loud and proud left-wingers. Even though I refused to play-down my love of getting tanked-up on lager, donna-kebabs, football and Nike Air Max - I definitely thought we had something in common.

What a lot of them had, and what I didn’t have, was a university education, which often seemed to come with a set of very specific set of ideas around isms - like racism and sexism; which I came to learn, were very different from the ones I grew up with. I can remember starting to hear terms like white privilege, toxic masculinity, the patriarchy, decolonisation etc, a lot of which, I had to look up their meanings. Another term I learned was Imposter-syndrome ­which was definitely something I felt, being in that world. Whilst I had this near-constant thirst for knowledge, and ideas and opinions always swirling round my brain, I felt in no-way confident enough to discuss any of these ideas that evoked something in me. I just felt like I didn’t understand them, because I wasn’t smart or educated enough; or people would think I was an idiot, or worse, a bigot, who was way out of his depth; certainly on the last point that was true; but like before, I was interested in learning, and assumed, that these ideas were the right ones, no pun intended, as everyone leaned-left.

However, what I began to notice was that lots of these terms and phrases were getting thrown about very casually, and similar to the discriminative slurs I heard as a kid - became catch-all-terms to describe very complex situations; and in some cases, terms like white – would even become a pejorative in and of itself. The more I’d hear them, the more I’d get these moments where my brain would go wait a minute, what?

I can remember someone once remarked to me, in what I took as a ­­­­­joking-but-not-joking ­­way – what would a white-privileged-male-know-about-police-brutality?! ­I immediately had images of those coal-miners getting cavalry-charged by mounted-police in the 80’s; and I’d witnessed on a number of occasions truncheon-swigging old-bill getting handy at the football, plus I knew of a few lads who’d been indiscriminately thrown in the back of bully-vans and given a shoeing; as well as the numerous times I’d personally been thrown up against fences or walls to be searched, for no good reason; all courtesy of the police.

Another time I was at a poetry event, where a female read a poem out, about going to a party with a male-friend, leaving together then going their separate ways. She went on to describe her having to endure creepy-men harassing her on the tube– which I fully sympathised with - until it got to the end bit where she went into an invective about men not having to endure this when travelling around London. I had another one of them wait, a minute what?! - moments. So many of my mates, including me, have been either robbed, physically attacked or both, whilst on public-transport, especially when we were younger. It was something I used to have to factor in when going out - playing cat-and-mouse on the slam-doors, just to avoid the gangs going up and down the trains, robbing mostly young-guys of their wallets and phones. It was around this time, I learned another term ­­­whataboutery ­­– which normally was followed by a sigh and an eye roll if I, or someone else was to ever push-back a bit on some of these very broad and unnuanced claims.

What became more and more alarming, was not just the demonisation of people that pushed-back on some of these ideas, by claiming they were right-wing or worse,  ­especially people like me, who was never right-wing - it was the near blanket adoption by seemingly everyone in the arts, into what I think George Orwell described as Group Think. And the more these ideas spread, the more divorced from reality they became. To me, this definitely has aspects of classism to it.

With most of these ideas, whether it’s queer-theory, whiteness, anti-Racism, post-colonialism etc, they all seem to have some tenets in them, which make me think yea, fair enough, mate. During 2021 when there was a lot of discourse around the BLM movement – lots of black people were talking openly about their experiences of racism – things like having their hair touched by random strangers, I thought, yea, fair enough, mate, that’s not on and shouldn’t be happening. Most of these theories start from a place of anti-discrimination; so I’m on board with that, and I think most people are. But some of it, is just so wound-up in highly-theoretical academic concepts, it’s lost all sense of reality. That feeling I had as a kid, growing up with friends from different backgrounds, that despite our differences. we had many things in common - we had a togetherness - I don’t feel that with this stuff, it’s highly divisive, putting people into their different categories. My mates used to laugh when I’d tell them about some of the wacky things I was hearing in the arts, until over-time, it started coming into their workplaces too; probably unchallenged.  

There are much better-placed people in this world, who can provide decent, valid criticisms of a lot of this stuff, without going into the youtube territory of ­­right-wing-anti-wokeness and all that. It took me a long-time to learn that a lot of it, has a foundation in post-modernism, and not liberalism, but the two get conflated; which is perhaps by design. I think most people out there, who don’t know the origins of this stuff, and some of the table-turning philosophical mind-bombs, like there’s no such thing as objective truth  - will just assume it’s liberal; when it quite often isn’t.

What I can say, from what I’ve seen, it can certainly make for crap-art. When people feel they have to crow-bar these messages in all the time, into whatever it is they’re making, or worse, they see themselves as high-priests having to educate the great unwashed with their righteous art, to me, it’s no longer art, it becomes something else, like activism, or worse, propaganda. There’s a time and place for both of those, of course, just not everywhere and in everything from poetry to theatre to Netflix and Nike adverts. It’s not left, and it definitely ‘aint right. Pun intended.   

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work

Piped Piper: A Hip Hop Family Musical at Southbank Centre, London

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/family-young-people/pied-piper-hip-hop-family-musical

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

THE SUBURBAN BOOK - My 1st book collection of stories and poemswww.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy - 2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murrayhttps://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, what's happening

This week, I look at a quote form Book 8 of Marcus Aurelius's Mediitations, talking about computer games and not ever completing them

On Eating That Marshmallow

In the constitution of the rational being I can see no virtue that counters justice: but I do see the counter to pleasure – self-control.

BOOK 8 – 39

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work

Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre

https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy

2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray

https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, what's happening?

Welcome to Lager Time.

This week's episode is called On Good Help vs Bad help, and is inspired by a quote from book 7 of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 

Enjoy

BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban

Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre

https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, whatt’s happening?

This week's episode I get stuck into a quote from book 6 of Medittaions of Marcus Aurelius, it's called On the Good Catholics

Enjoy

Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre

https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/

BUY-ME-A-LAGER

https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

THE SUBURBAN BOOK

My 1st book collection of stories and poems

www.paulcree.co.uk/shop

Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy

2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray

https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening

Welcome to Lager Time, legions of lager-lites, grab your tins, your bottles and your pints. My name is Paul Cree and this is my little podcast and blog where I share bits of my writing: stories, poems, thoughts, sometimes music etc.

So what’s been happening? A fair bit. Last week I was in rehearsals for a theatre show, Romeo & Julliet at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon. It’s a modern retelling, set in Merton, and is all done through live music - Rap, beatbox, singing, guitar and a loop-station. The show opens this Saturday and is aimed at young people, between 9-12 but there should be something for all the family in it. There’s over 26 songs in the show that I have to learn, as well as almost a hundred ques that I need to remember. I’m one of the understudies but will be performing between the 10th – 14Th April, much later in the run. Alongside that, it’s my usual work with Dream Arts and Fourth Monkey Drama School.

Before I get round to introducing the next piece in this little Meditations series, I wanted to hark back to the intro post for this latest season (and also the reason why I started this latest series) where I took about reading books, to chat a little bit about what I’ve been reading, as I suppose it’s relevant. I tend to have a couple of books on the go at one time, one fiction and one non-fiction or light-ish  book.

I recently finished ploughing my way through Mister Good Times, which is the autobiography of soul DJ Norman Jay, the man behind the Good Times sound system. It was a decent read as it charts the development of lots of the music that came out of London from the 70’s onwards. The book was given to me as a birthday gift, from a good pal of mine, Richard Purnell, who himself is a writer (and wrote one of my favourite blogs about old books with the old dick and balls scibbled in them) Richard has recently started his own Substack blog, which you can find a link to HERE or in the notes of the podcast.

So in that Norman Jay book, when he talks about his younger years, getting into football and the like, he mentions reading these Skinhead books by a writer called Richard Allen. The way he talked about them, was that at the time they were some kind of street phenomenon, lots of working-class teens were reading these books; which took my interest. Last month, whilst having a few beers with my two oldest brothers and a few of their old mates, one of them, Dom, by chance was telling me he was re-reading all those Skinhead books. He consequently sent me a link to a BBC documentary from back in the 90’s, about the books and the writer, Richard Allen, who seemingly no one knew much about, and was pretty far removed from that culture, yet, he wrote a boat-load of these cult classics, which have become collectors items. So I’m currently reading the first, Skinhead, and it’s alright. There’s a lot of violence, racism, and sexism - the main character and his mates are horrible, it pulls no punches in that regard, but if it’s a snapshot of those times, even if it’s somewhat exaggerated, then I think it plays a part. I certainly don’t find myself rooting for this main character, he’s an anti-hero in that respect – but I’m enjoy it. It reminds me of a lot of Irvine Welsh books, many of which I’ve read, or that BBC film Made in Britain that Skinnyman sampled on his first album Council Estate of Mind. I wonder if all those people were influenced by these books.

Aside from Skinhead, I’m ploughing my way through a book I first read a couple of years ago, called New Class War by Michael Lind, which came out in 2020 I think, if you want to get a good understanding of the political climate of the last few years in the UK and the US it’s well worth a read. And I’ve also been reading a book by the comedian Rob Becket, off the back of other comedians’ books - Romesh Ranganathan and Geoff Norcott. All of which make me a laugh a lot more when reading what they’ve written, than they do when they perform their stand-up; I’ve no idea why that is.

So, continuing with these pieces I’ve been writing, inspired by the 12 books of Mediations by Marcus Aurelius, this week I get stuck into a quote from Book 5 and it’s called On Mad Skills vs Try Hard. Almost half-way through this series, hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

As ever, if you like this odd little niche thing that I’m doing over here, please recommend it to a mate, and if you fancy whipping the wallet out, you can make a donation on my Ko-Fi account, Buy-Me-A-Lager – there’s a few copies left of my first book the Suburban, which you can grab on my website alongside a couple of other bits – then of course there’s some music on Spotify, Apple, and videos on You Tube and all that caper

Keep it Larger   

Peas and taters

Paul

BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban

Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre

https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/

Richard Purnell is Writing -

By The Factory Wall (Richard Purnell) – Why a Kindle is Not for Me

https://richardpurnell.org/2011/04/23/why-a-kindle-is-not-for-me/

Mister Good Times – Norman Jay MBE

https://www.waterstones.com/book/mister-good-times/norman-jay/9780349700670

Skinhead Farewell – Richard Allen Documentary

Made In Britain Film

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084287/

Skinnyman – Council Estate of Mind

On reading Books – Paul Cree

https://cree.substack.com/p/on-reading-books

On Mad Skills vs Try Hard

They cannot admire you for your intellect. Granted – but there are many other qualities of which you cannot say, ‘but that is not the way I am made’. So display those virtues which are wholly in your own power – integrity, dignity, hard-word, self-denial, contentment, frugality, kindness, independence, simplicity, discretion, magnanimity. Do you not see how many virtues you can already display without any excuse of lack of talent or aptitude? And yet you are still content to lag behind. Or does the fact that you have no inborn talent oblige you to grumble, to scrimp, to toady, to blame your poor body, to suck up, to brag, to have your mind in such turmoil? No, by heaven, it foes not! You could have got rid of all this long ago, and only be charged – if charge there is – with being rather slow and dull of comprehension. And yet even this can be worked on – unless you ignore or welcome your stupidity. 

BOOK 5 - 5

Back in the mid-nineties there was this striker at Millwall called Chris Malkin. I remember we signed him from Tranmere, after we got relegated from what was then Division 1, I think, which is now the Championship, I think. He was a target-man, very tall - scored the majority of his goals with his head, of course. I don’t remember him being prolific, but he would get ten to fifteen goals a season.

To me, he didn’t play or look like a professional footballer. What is a professional footballer even meant to look like?... to a twelve year old at least; but to me back then he looked about 50, like he should be wearing some cheap ill-fitting suit, cheerily teaching science in a secondary school to a load of dis-interested mouthy twelve year-olds, constantly mugging him off - This gangly awkward guy, with dark hair that jumped with all the grace of a giraffe on a bouncy castle; at least that is how I remember him. But the main thing I remember thinking about Chris Malkin, was: how is this geezer a professional footballer?

Here’s the thing, making that statement would suggest he was shit, he wasn’t. He was an effective striker at that level, who had a decent career in the lower leagues. I think for my simple young mind, to be a pro, and a striker at that, you needed to have loads of mad skills. As in overhead kicks, multiple stepovers, taking on ten players and scoring hattricks (not that Millwall ever had anyone like that… except maybe Christophe Kinet, the smoking Belgian) – all the while looking like you’re the popular kid in school that gets all the chicks, like the smoking Belgian Christophe Kinet.

There were a couple of kids I knew growing up, who I remember as being amazing players: too good for the playground, too good for the school team and too good for the local teams – they both got on the books at professional clubs, Crystal Palace and Southampton I think  - but never quite made it as pro’s. How?! I remember thinking, they’ve got mad skills

I never quite understood it, because when we are at school, what these kids could do with a football was out of this world, so it often made make me ponder If these kids mad skills aren’t mad-skills enough - how much in the way of mad-skills do you need to make it as a pro?!

Much later in life, in my early twenties, there was another guy I played 5-a side with, who’d played non-league for a stint. He was amazing, so much so that our main tactic was – just give the ball to Matt, and he would ping goals in from impossible angles, using both feet, whenever he felt like it. I believe he got as far the reserves for a sixth-tier side, but never even made it at that level; so, again, I’d think How much mad-skill do you need to make it as a pro??? And what is the average mad-skill level of a pro? Insane skill???

Not until many years later, did I start to think, that maybe there is a bit more too it than just being technically brilliant with a  football at your feet. Obviously, just not to me.

There’s that famous Alex Ferguson quote, which goes something like ‘Hard work will always overcome natural talent when natural talent does not work hard enough.’

Now the case of Chris Malkin, I’ve no idea if this is true or not, but I imagine he was on that training pitch early every day, putting a 1000% into every drill, following every instruction exactly, attending every charity appearance or children’s ward trip at Christmas, boots always clean, performing every task to perfection. And a cursory glance on-line, tells me he’s running his own physio-therapy practise, which would suggest he would’ve had to undergo training for to get certified; which was probably hard work. I think this is how the Neville brothers made it as pros at Man United – they’re tactic was just work your bollox off and be as diligent as possible. In my mind, these are the people that mainly make it in the world of professional football and probably life in general. Even the tiny percentile of players who genuinely have mad-skills, like a Ronaldo, have probably dedicated their entire lives to this football caper, obsessively, since they were kids.

For the last fifteen years (give or take a few where I had to go back to part-time) I’ve (just about) made my living (on and off) in the arts, working as a writer and a performer, of sorts. Prior to this, I’ve had a number of different low-paying jobs, some of which were pretty tough, at times. This job, at times, believe it or not, can be tough, but not tough like grafting on a building site, in the depths of winter, eight hours a day, for not-a-lot-of-dough. The toughness of what I do is in the insecurity of it and the occasional difficulties of trying to work with vulnerable people. I’m self-employed. Most of my money is earned through running workshops or working on community projects, often in and out of educational settings, working with mainly young people, but not always, showing them what I do, or working with them to create something: theatre, poems, music etc – and occasionally, I get paid to perform or write something, that gets performed in some sort of performance-venue, with lights and that.

What I do is related to shows: stages and lights, dusty velvet curtains, I guess. Occasionally I’ll meet people who’ll ask what I do, when I tell them, sometimes, they say something like I’d love to do what you do… which I’m never quite sure how to respond to it, but sometimes, they’ll go on elaborate; because:

I write songs / I paint / I write poems  / My mates say I’m funny and I should do stand-up  / I was amazing in my school play as the donkey.…  / I wrote this amazing song once…

none of which I have any problem with, until it occasionally goes beyond this into the tricker conversational waters of:   

I’d love to do what you do…. But how did YOU get to do it?? You?? If I had YOUR luck I would be amazing at what YOU do

What I often interpret as being implied here is: I’d be much better at it than YOU if I was as lucky YOU, YOU don’t deserve to do what YOU do

The latter example, being the bitter one, is quite rare to be fair; but it has happened on a few occasions. The most common comment is I’d love to what you do implying something is stopping them from doing something they want to, due to something beyond their control, like some invisible force of unfairness, which I’ve somehow avoided.

When these rare conversations take place and get to the this point, being the judgemental prick that I can often be, my response in my head to their statement of longing is no, you probably wouldn’t want to do what I do, because chances are:

you’re not going to want to spend half the time skint, and the other half worrying about where the next load of work is coming from.

You probably like holidays and probably won’t want to go years without a holiday to go on, you probably expect holidays every year

Or more importantly, whilst you’re in the formative years of any artistic pursuit long before you get paid even the smallest bit of money for your art:

you’re not going to want to make the necessary sacrifices, like choosing to not go with your mates on a Friday night, or play computer-games or watch Love Island when you get home from work, so you can work on this weird little arty-thing you do, which they probably won’t understand or mug you off for

And then then once you’ve got a bit of something that you might want to share to the world:

haul your arse round a load of half empty open-mics on a cold Monday evening, where no is listening or you are routinely heckled by drunk locals who think you’re a cunt just for stepping in front of a mic, or whatever the laborious soul-destroying equivalent is for other art forms.

All of which is necessary, in order to develop and hone your craft. It can also be pretty boring and repetitive. It takes a long time to get even remotely good at something, especially, when you don’t have that much talent or self-confidence to begin with; which is true in my case.

I’ve met a few people in the game, who may well have had a shiny spoon hanging out their arse to begin with, or who’ve had the red-carpet rolled out for them in terms of funding and opportunities, with neither examples having ever earned any of it, but most people I know, who are successful in this, have had to work their arses off and made plenty of sacrifices in order to get where they are. Or they just didn’t have many mates in the first place, even then, they’ve still had to graft and wade through the self-loathing.

For all my many faults, and I have many, this is the one thing where I can say I’ve worked pretty hard at it and made plenty of sacrifices. And look at me, I’m flying, mate…. Well not quite, I’m surviving, just about, but it helps to keep things in perspective for me when I think about the vast majority people who have an artistic craft or passion, but never make anything from it, not that financial gain should be the objective, but it does help, because you need a lot of time to persue this crap and still keep the roof over your head.

For me, part of my drive to make a career out of all of this, was that I thought it was the only thing I was remotely good at. I wasn’t academic, I had no qualifications and since dropping out of college, I’d worked in a string of low-paying shit jobs, which I myself was mostly shit at; trying to pay bills and have some sort of life on top of that was really hard. It was a pretty miserable existence; minus a few laughs, most of which involved me being drunk or stoned (though there were plenty of times I did turn this down in favour of staying in to do this) – the only other times I remember being happy was sitting on my own, beavering away trying to write rap lyrics or stuff like this. At least doing this, skint or not, I’ve created some stuff, that exists in the world, that I’m proud of, met tons of people, had some great experiences and made loads of memories. Being a brain surgeon, plumber or programmer just weren’t on the cards, mate, maybe this was the only way to live some sort of meaningful life. But to get this far, has involved a lot of sacrifice.

A lot of the gigs and opportunities I got, in the early days, were probably because I was in the right place at the right time, so I got lucky in that respect - but I had to put myself into the place, in the first place, in order to be in the right place and make sure I had something to offer should someone notice me there. Most of the work I get now, is from people I’ve worked with before, or my name has been given to someone, because I turn up and do the best job I can; and I do feel like I have a unique skill-set and a load of experience under my belt, so I have something unique to offer.

What I didn’t have, at any point, was mad skills. I had some ability, which was undeveloped, as in, I could perform a bit, rap a bit and write a bit but nothing polished or super stand-out. I may have stood-out amongst my friends, none of which did anything like this; but that’s easy. Some people are happy being that geezer in the local pub who plays guitar / is well funny / does magic tricks but that was never enough for me. Putting myself into places where there were lots of people like me, doing something similar, but with more talent, or honed skills, experience and confidence, kicked me up the arse to get much better at what I was doing and made me realise I’m not special at all, just another prick in the arty-haystack (see what I done there). So I had to graft, and even then, it’s not like I’ve made it. Whatever that even means.

When working with young people, I often come across ones with natural talent, and naturally, they’ll shine in the groups they are in, and the groups will want to elevate them to front and centre; even when they don’t always deserve it. Whenever I see them not trying that hard, I try my best to implore to them that, it’s just now how the game works, and try and paraphrase that Alex Ferguson quote, as opposed to blowing smoke up their arse and letting them sit on their laurels; because life aint that long, and in the end, has little sympathy or patience for a 40 with rapidly fading good looks, who should’ve been a footballer, painter, actor, rapper, because they had mad skills

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening?

Welcome to Lager Time, legions of lager-lites, grab your tins, your bottles and your pints. My name is Paul Cree and this is my little podcast and blog where I share bits of my writing, stories, poems, thoughts, sometimes music; I don’t get out that much these days, outside of my work, so this is my little outlet for the creative things I like to do.

And so onto this week’s piece itself, continuing with the Meditations theme, this week’s piece is based on a quote from Book 4 where I talk about why I didn’t like Grime.

Keep it Larger Than Life

Peas and taters

Paul

LINKS

Dream Arts - https://www.dreamarts.org.uk

Pictures from Devon show - https://doorsteparts.co.uk/scratch-share-night/

Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre Tickets - https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/

BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree

The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cree.substack.com