Your application has been …

APPROVED and the visa has been issued.

The game hasn’t ended yet, but at least I’m still in.

And The Band Played On

When the demise of your government has become such a spectator sport that it’s being live blogged, it may be time to think about your post parliament plans.

Or you could continue sitting in your office with your fingers stuffed into your ears singing ‘la la la la laaaaaa, I can’t hear you!’ – that’s pretty much what the NZ Labour Party did in it’s final year and that went really well for them too.

Oh, wait.

Not So Liveblog: Budget 2009 – Losing Bill’s Virginity

Woo! It’s Budget day …

What? I’ve handed over my passport to those in control, in the hope that I can get into the UK (more details if I am successful) … so instead of stewing while I wait, I may as well geek out a little.

This feels like a budget of yore, when you used to stock up on petrol, cigarettes and booze the day before as you had no freakin’ idea what was going to be hiked up the next day. Little has been released as it were under a Labour government, but you can bet that the tax cuts National campaigned almost rabidly on, will have disappeared.

It’s Bill English’s first budget and he starts with a small stumble as he forgets process, which the Speaker carefully corrects.

14.06
Pre-amble: The economy is fucked. Everywhere. If this all goes to shit, it’s not our fault. But it is the fault of the folks before us.

14.16
[While B.E. sings his party's praises, just thought I'd add - if my visa comes through, I'm leaving town two days later to go to Singapore. So if you're in Wellington, just be aware that I may, in a couple of weeks say that I'll be parking up at Hope Bros. to drink ...]

14.18
“redesign the legislation to allow quick and efficient decisions to allow development … overseen by Rodney Hide …” Trans: Dear Environment, prepare the lube, you may be getting fucked soon.

14.30
It’s all very well saying “we’ve allocated x to insure y” but it’s not terribly impressive when they are pretty much just maintaining what’s already been done in the past … I’m bored already.

14.43
Tax cuts for 2010 and 2011 are postponed until “economic conditions are improved”. Told you.

14.48
“This is the first budget on the road to recovery”. I hope you’re right, dude, otherwise you know we’re going to roll out this sound bite next year if it all goes tits up.

And so ends yet another boring budget (except for the suspension of the Cullen fund contributions, which was always on the cards no matter what government but 10 years is a flippin long time). Tune in next week when we hear …

Melbourne By Numbers

31 – Days spent in Melbourne

3 – Weeks of comedy in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

300 and something – Shows in the Festival

2- Shows I was working on.

340 – Tickets sold to Philip Escoffey’s show in one day

2000 – Alleged number of phone calls received by the box office trying to get tickets in the final days once Philip’s show had sold out the season including his extra shows

17 – Expletives used while while on Skype to Sam and negotiating the automated phone systems of both Vodafone and 3 Mobile Australia. The exact wording was [cover your eyes if you are of a sensitive nature ... actually, if you are of a sensitive nature, what the fuck are you doing reading this blog?]: “oh for fucks sake … fucking cunts fuckers and their fucking automated service, couldn’t give me a normal fucking person! Fucking cunt fuckers can’t fucking do the fucking thing with a fucking human NO they have to use a fucking computer with fucking voice prompts. And they record it. You know what they what they’re going to end up with on the voice bits? FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING CUNTS!”

Uncomfortably Numb

It’s back. Do you remember?

I’m sitting here staring at my screen trying to get inspired, trying to write letters telling people how great I could be and yet the words aren’t flowing.

Instead there is a replay loop in my head of all the deportation stories I hear and I sit here frozen and afraid. The ‘what ifs’ are incredibly loud and having been on the receiving end of a classic Heathrow grilling, are some what amplified.

I know I’ve got to keep pushing through, but it feels so hard and I feel so very alone.

I promised I would tell you if it was coming back. Well, here I am telling you that I feel darkness all around me. It’s been growing for a couple of months now and every day the sky keeps falling. I want so very badly to go home to London, but I feel so numb that I’ve only got myself to blame if I can’t get through. Can you see the loop?

Don’t yell at me in frustration or tell me to chin up. It’s not helping. But I don’t know what will.

Silent Running

Yes, it’s a post! Twitter has taken over (I seem to be moving slowly away from Facebook. I’d rather not use it, but everyone seems to be situated there – I wish everyone would move to Twitter instead), but there’s other stuff too …

Immigration.

I don’t want to be wrongly accused of anything by immigration authorities so I’ve been keeping my woes to myself. There are a few things involved …

One: I work in the arts industry. The centre of the arts industry is London. I had some good things just starting over there – I would have liked to see how far I could get (as it all felt like my career was taking off).

Two: I am deeply in love. And the love of my life works in the arts and lives in London – the centre of the arts industry.

Three: I no longer live in London as my working holiday visa has expired.

So now my days are spent doing applications to get my way back there. There are very few options available to me, but I’m pursuing every one I can … at the moment, every week heralds a new story announcing how immigration controls in the UK are being tightened, how the visa fees are going up, newly invented taxes I am going to face as a ‘economic migrant’ and amount of information about myself that I am going to have to give up on a single ID card (which the government will probably lose by forgetting a laptop on the train, or something … again).

Yes, I really love him. I must do to put myself through this.

In the meantime, I can’t help but ponder on the use of borders … I turn to you, internets, to explain the use of this function to me. Governments collect taxes and use them to create property rights and occasionally provide social services.

Fine.

So borders are areas that define where the taxes are collected and are spent accordingly.

Fine.

So what do immigration controls achieve?

Genuinely, I do not know. The more I think about them, the less I understand them. It stops people who want to work and pay taxes from coming into the country and I’m sure it creates population pressure as once people are in they become afraid to leave in case they can’t get back in again. Does someone out there have an answer as to why this use of a border is a good thing?

From the Graveyard

I’ve been digging through boxes of old notebooks, desperately looking for inspiration to turn into film scripts … why film scripts? It’s a long story.

A very long story.

One day, when I can laugh about it, you will hear. At the moment, it’s not funny. *sigh*

In the meantime, going through 15 years worth of notebooks ranging from yearly diaries, napkins, coasters, ringbinders and spiral bound bits of paper has revealed these things:

I really thought I was funny as a teenager.
I was actually a bit of a smart arse.
A not funny smart arse who was an angry, angry little girl.

But then there is, however clunky, some things that I like as I grow into my skin and my writing voice – like this poem I wrote for Kathryn when I was 20:

Oh Kathryn, why is it, when you are so tall,
Have a friend like me who is a tad small?
When we walk down Courtenay Place
People stop and stare and hide the smirk on their face.
“The Long and The Short of it” they say with a grin,
Whilst secretly thinking “my wit’s setting in”.
But little do they know that we’ll have our day
For on every topic we’ll have something to say
And if they dare ask to try and outwit us,
They’ll get the full force as if they’ve been hit by a bus.
Questions on weather? We’ll answer “yes”.
“Yes what?” they ask, we reply “guess”.
“What do you mean?” say they who are quite confused,
We’ll then say “you’re welcome” and leave them bemused.

I can see it now like Thelma and Louise,
We’ll drive in big cars, running free in the breeze,
Reckless, gorgeous and young, we’ll never grow old!
(But don’t forget the cardies, cos it might get a bit cold)
We’ll take on the world and see what they will do
When it’s not one quick witted chick, but a very smart two!

The world will be blown away, when we’re centre stage,
The media will cover us on every front page.
“Angelic sweet girls, or demons from hell?”
Eventually, in time, the world will know us well.
We’ll become role models for every young girl
And now is where the marketing machine begins to whirl …

I see t-shirts and dolls and maybe shampoo
And a marketing strategy we’ll have to do.
We could make millions overnight,
If we get our planning right.
Start off slow and give them plenty of tease,
The rest will then follow with much ease.

With this plan in hand we’ll be set up for life,
No more doing dishes or living in strife!
Stick with me, I’ll show you the way
That we can spin gold from something like hay …

Thunderbirds Are Go

Just been called to board my flight. No delays. Nada.

See you on the other side (reluctantly).

Snowed In

Well, I must confess this is going to be an unusual way to contact my mother …

Mum,
I’m snowed in, in London. I’m currently at Kathryn’s house, stuck away from my laptop so I can’t Skype you. It’s Monday and Heathrow airport has closed their runways. The snow has just stopped but is likely to start again at 4 this afternoon and they reckon we’ll be in for 7 inches of snow by tomorrow morning (we currently have about3 -4 inches). By all radio accounts, London has stopped functioning. There are no buses going, Heathrow Express (the train I plan to catch tomorrow) has stopped running and when Kathryn returned home this morning after setting out to work, the normal trains weren’t going either.

My visa expires tomorrow – I’m going to call immigration and ask them what to do if I can’t get to the airport tomorrow because of the snow, or my flight.

So, in short: I may not be back on my flight as expected on Thursday morning.

But I will be with my laptop, with an internet connection, so I’ll keep you updated.

Also, Mum, don’t call me until tomorrow your time. My phone battery is low (and my phone is having problems charging. I need a new phone – um, Bhai, we may need to talk about iPhones).

Yes, it doesn’t rain, it pours.

Or snows … as the case may be.

R.I.P. Dirty Creatures, 2005 – 2009

Remember way back when I started this blog, how I would talk about my great full length play?

The one that was going to shake New Zealand audiences, would play it so close to the edge it would be … er … edgy? My grand opus?

Remember?

Three and a half drafts later, it is time to put my beloved dirty creatures to rest. Yes. To the dark recesses of the hard drive (with a CD copy) it will be committed, never to be seen or heard again.

Over the years I have tried to craft it, I have forgotten what it was that I wanted to say. Even when I was writing it, the premise was not always clear to me. The idea of a artist blowing himself up was intriguing (that was the surprise ending), but I could never get the idea to fully develop into something satisfying.

I don’t know whether this counts as a failure or just part of the journey to something better. I’ve learnt a few lessons from it – for starters, doing a treatment is a really good way to structure a play and if you can’t summarise your play in a sentence, then it’s not going to be clear to the audience either. Well that’s certainly the case for me. At the moment, I don’t feel like I have anything meaningful to say and if anything, I want my work to be meaningful. I don’t want to just be writing for the sake of writing.

There are bits of prose that I’ve been working on (you’ve seen some of it already) and there are a couple of satire pieces I’m working on. But for now, anyway, I think my voice is still to come and that my best writing will arrive in a few years yet.

Just not now.