myriad musings

Last night I judged a youth slam at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London and, man... The kids were so good; they had questions lingering like dragonflies and families falling to pieces piece by piece with no peace and fell in love like gangstas fall in love with rims etc. Crazy. And there was a kid called Henry who lied about his age to get on a writing workshop (said he was 14 but was 12), who just blew us away with his performance. On my way to the slam I was reading on writing for kids so it was very enlightening to see the range of imagination and points of view on offer during the slam. Great night out. I headed back home reading a spec script for 'Frasier' on the train because I'm toying with the idea of writing a sitcom with my good friend, fellow writer and dreamer, Ainsley Burrows in the next few weeks. Now, thinking of sitcoms makes you look at the world slightly differently, because everything is a situation so all you have to do is find the comedy - how a woman with hips narrower than a pencil is carrying an obese kid across the road, how one man in a conversation nods his head off-beat, like 10 seconds after the point has been made, how women often accuse men of flirting because they can see the subtle flirting of the other woman, but the men can't see it because for men, largely, flirting has to be blatant, a neat-freak bald man picking at his girlfriend's dress for fluff; all these things in the right context, with the right timing are rich veins of laughter... Anyway, I stopped at Sainsbury's in Paddington where strawberries had dropped from £2.99 to £0.69 so I couldn't resist buying a punnet with the intention of making a very basic dessert, with the last 4 digestive biscuits I have at home and some ice cream:

I'll be using a process similar to that used for making jam, but without the pectin ('cos I'm quick and dirty and gangsta!). Basically, I'll put about 8 tablespoons of sugar (I'm only making a little bit) in a pan with some water, heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved then crush the strawberries, put them in the solution and thicken slightly. When it cools it will get a bit thicker. On the other side, I'll crush the digestives into crumbs, layer the bottom of a bowl with it, cover with vanilla ice cream (soft) and then ladle the strawberry mix over it. (Man, this strawberry is bringing the whole Prince connection back like a raspberry beret!). The whole deal goes into the freezer to chill a little until I'm ready to chill with it!!

Otherwise, I'm been having some thoughts about beauty and the divisions it brings so expect some musings on that tomorrow - a recent poll conducted for men and women showed that men were less focused on physical attributes like breast size etc. than women! It was the women who wanted those bodies; interesting huh? The womeselecteded the most 'processed' woman (photo) as the most attractive, the men went for someone plainer who turned out to be one of the more intelligent women on the list :). But I'm off for now. I'm so proud of myself I've written two blogs today; this one - my thought movement - and thundermental writes

what i'm reading/listening to

listening:
Nevermind by Nirvana

reading:
Successful Sitcom Writing by Jurgen Wolff