breathe, vaughan, breathe!

this week i did things that scared me. i didn't mean for lots of challenges to happen all in one week, they just presented themselves and it was up to me to slay the dragon or let it turn me to flames. the first happened on monday afternoon. my lovely friend paul asked me to cut his hair. i warned him that i'd never cut hair before but was willing to give it a go. he bought a sharp pair of scissors and away we went. it was only about 3 minutes in that i suddenly froze with panic. he'd asked for a very simple "same length all over" cut and i was taking huge chunks off and realised that i can't cut hair. not only am i not qualified, i have no idea what i'm doing. i've cut my own hair often and trimmed other people's hair before but i don't know how to take someone's hair and fashion it into some sort of sexy do and this point had escaped my attention till this very moment. i'd started on the side and the back and it was too late to go back. "its ok," reassured paul, "if its really bad i'll shave it off". he dropped into conversation that wedding that he was being best man at. it was this coming weekend. the haircut i was giving him was going to be in someone's wedding album for the rest of their lives. eek. i had to just keep going and developed a reliable method of sort of brushing my fingers through the hair, snipping as i went. i realised how much we take for granted when we go to the hairdressers, like going to the doctors, you just assume that this person knows exactly what they are doing and is blessed with magical powers. it aint true. they might just be making it up as they go along just like you. it was ok though, paul was pleased with it, although i know it wasn't a real haircut, i knew it was pretty much the same all over, which is what he wanted. it was OK and that was good enough for me.

i then had to confront someone on a work issue. i hate confrontations but i'm not afraid to just do them and get them over with because i know that if you leave things to fester then they can infect all sorts of things, a stone left unturned can hide nasty diseases. so i had a little chat and felt an awful lot better for it and it made lots of work things go a lot better subsequently. i have ideas form plans and i can get defeatist about a thing unless i'm sure it is worth seeing through. i can take my job a little too seriously but its because i care about it so much. i feel the weight of the responsibility in my hand, here is this precious thing and it needs to be nurtured in order to grow and succeed. in our meeting on wednesday we were talking about the future of chapter again and i found myself getting so excited, seeing all the possibilities. its already my favourite place in the world and its only going to get better.

the last thing i did was the biggie. on wednesday, after i'd finished my ushering shift in the cinema, graham the projectionist asked me if i'd be available to do a meet and greet with someone coming to speak at the film on friday "get him a cup of tea, make sure he's ok till he has to go on". obviously, this didn't present a problem. then sally the lovely new cinema programmer bounded over to ask if i "didn't mind hosting the Q&A session too". full of confidence that i cannot fathom the source of, i said yes. i think it was due to the sudden influx of vitamin A from all this recent unexpected sunshine. it was only the next day, when i spoke to carol, head of marketing, who went over my duties for that evening that i started to get a little nervous. the speaker was MARK LYNAS, a climate change expert who had contributed to the making of THE AGE OF STUPID, a documentary-cum-fiction film staring pete postlethwaite about the effects of climate change. i'd seen it in a preview screening the week before and enjoyed it, if it did frighten me a little. i'm quite careful with my carbon footprint (i have a bicycle, not a car; i buy ecologically sound cleaning products and organic food; i never put shopping in plastic bags; turn the light / heating off when not needed; etc) but i know others are not so careful and i know that there is shit going on all over the world in other countries that i have no power of controlling. you get the picture. carol warned me that i may get the odd nutter in the audience (it is chapter after all, i'm used to nutters) and an e-mail from dan, the WALES ONE WORLD FILM FESTIVAL organiser advised me that mark has had a lot of problems with audiences recently due to coming out as pro-nuclear, which he likened to coming out as gay to your wife. suddenly these images flashed into my head of dreadlocked tie-dye wearing hippies spitting at him on stage and a whole room full of people shouting at him and it being *all my fault*. nerves. shaking. waaah! i spent the afternoon researching the subject and went on mark's website to try and get an idea of who he is. i was terrified of cocking up. i went in at 5pm to check the mics were working and got reassured by the amazing rob and graham that i'd be fine. lots of people heard what i was doing and told me i'd be great. it kind of made me worse, thinking "all these people believe in me, they don't know i'm going to cock i up". of course, it wouldn't be the end of the world, its only one bloke coming to chapter, its only a small thing really. but the fear was gripping me. the voices in my head started "no-one would blame you if you pulled out, you're not really qualified to do this, they'd understand"... "you could lie and pretend to be ill, then it wouldn't be your fault"... "maybe if you get yourself so worked up you will genuinely be ill and they won't let you do it anyway"... its very hard to ignore the voices of doubt in your head. i was determined to do it. i remember when i was about 13 i was asked to accompany my friend for a national youth theatre audition. i had to sing, although i couldn't sing, i wanted to do backstage things. i got so nervous and worked up i had a bad tum that day and my mum said it was probably best i didn't go. i am still so ashamed that i allowed myself to get so nervous that i made myself ill and missed the chance of doing something i loved. i sat in the house that day and felt numb with relief and disappointment. i thought about that time when i was 13 quite a lot on friday before the talk and determined that it wouldn't happen again. for goodness sake, i'm almost 30, i've done plenty of public speaking before and have to speak at meetings and things, for some reason this felt like that audition all over again.

i met mark at 5.30pm and he was a very nice man. it was a little bit awkward, meeting a stranger and pretty much babysitting him for half an hour. i was relieved that he wanted to watch the film before the talk, he said he'd seen it in so many different incarnations during the years it was being made he wanted a refresher on which one this was, it meant i would have it fresh in my mind too and i wouldn't have to make awkward chit chat for an hour and a half. we chatted about cardiff and i told him about chapter. i'm proud of my city and where i work, i had no problem filling the time. we chatted about the film's subject matter, he wasn't as militant green as i was expecting, he was professional and sensible but just had a lot of integrity. he was really kind to me, i told him it was my first Q&A and he said he'd help me out if he thought i needed it, he'd done hundreds! it was fine. i completely garbled the introduction, i'd rehearsed it a few times in my head but still managed to come accross as nervous. once the film was over and i'd helped put the chairs out i felt at home, it was fine. it was quite enjoyable and though there were dissenters in the audience, the pass-the-mic work by my friend rose was perfect and i did the whole "yes, the man in the blue jumper" bit ok. mark was quite comfortable and i managed to come up with some interesting questions for him (obama and the current economic climate and its impact on the issues, the severn barrage etc). i felt really proud of myself by the end and was on a massive grinny high for the next couple of hours.

this week i also saw the czech film BOOGIE which was about a man going back to his home town and having a night out with the boys when he should have been at home with his wife and son and took him outside of his normal life and back to a world of heavy drinking, prostitutes and bad nightclubs. i was underwhelmed. it was a bit dull and reinforced the stereotypes of machismo in the eastern european countries, it made me a bit depressed but films like this are always worth a punt. i also watched the last episode of RED RIDING on channel 4. i've really liked getting into an event like this, watching something live on tv but it has made me realise again how much i hate adverts, iplayer / tv on demand is so much better. its been such a beautifully shot, well executed drama, full of filth and corruption. the final episode tied up a lot of loose ends but still left you full of the suspicion that the community was rotten to the core and so riddled with dirty old secrets and trauma that it would never be properly well again.

tonight we go to see THEO in buffalo. woo! he is a boy genius. i love his two eps so much, they are full of magic and sadness. if possible we will try and make it over to gwdihw for casey's film night that i have shamefully missed these past two weeks previous. its ridiculous that CLUBFOOTFOOT shows pretty much exactly on-the-button stuff that i love and hold dear yet i haven't made it to all his nights yet. shame on me but sleep often overtakes me on a sunday.

saying something stoopid like i wuv wooo

this week started off with the best gig of the year so far with ponytail and comenechi making me dance like that woman in flashdance in tommy's bar. we began the night by going for a supposed romantic meal in pizza express (nothing says romance like a 2-4-1 voucher) and had to move tables due to the 10 excited tweens at the next table making it hard to think let alone hear ourselves talk. it was good eating: my pizza had an egg on it, i require nothing more in this life. steen was worried we'd be late but we were first there and the bands hadn't finished soundchecking. we found a anxious looking john from FORECAST who was putting on the gig. someone had also scheduled casiokids to play in clwb the same night. ouch. and one of the support bands hadn't turned up. owee. subsequently there was a big time delay in getting started but it gave ample time to chat to mates charlotte and ashli about our beautiful cat and get a pint of old rosie in before the bands started. COMENECHI were a japanese girl and lanky britguiarist in a skeleton mask. she drummed and yelled into the mic things like "you are retard! i was your lovely sunshine!" and did ace confused stage banter and they were amazing fun. throughout the gig there was a petit, dykey lass with cropped hair and a pixie face in the crowd. "she's new", noticed perv claire, is there a student in tommy's bar? heavens to betsy! but no, she turned out to be the winning lady from PONYTAIL. she came onstage, went into what looked like a spiritualist trace and yelped and chirruped and danced like she'd taken some strong peyote. behind her were noodley post rock guitars and an unerring beat. i started dancing and clapping and grinning and didn't stop till the music did. i turned to john, who was dancing next to me "gig of the year!" i said excitedly. thankfully it wasn't just me but a whole bunch of lovelies were all a bit rapt.

this was also a week of catching up with some old mates. on tuesday me and my long lost friend paul (who has not so much been lost as "living in bristol") had a couple of bottles of wine and a catch up, vowing to never leave it so long again, and i bloody hope we don't. then thursday i met my friend elena for a less boozey version of the same thing. last night i was yurt-bound for nims and kats birthdays and a girlie winefest. its wonderful realise that even though you haven't had a proper conversation with your mates for a few months you can slip back into it so easily and get it all off your chest.

this weeks' ushering shift was an interesting one, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED with anne hathaway. i was quite excited about seeing it as she was nominated for awards and i do love american indie but i was quite disappointed. it was all right, the script was quite sharp and the acting was good (debra winger as her mother had a small but powerful role) but i really hated the smug family. i can't stand wedding films at the best of times. i find it hard to empathise with any of that stressful "the petals for the bridesmaids to throw don't go with the tablecloth!" nonsense and this indian themed wedding a capella singing and electric guitar "here comes the bride" the family had was especially irritating. apparently the screenwriter who is the daughter of sidney lumet based it on her family and it was very annoying having all these self congratulatory people around ("and now a speech from our close family friend fab five freddy...."). but then afterwards i was thinking about it and maybe you're meant to hate the family as much as rachel, maybe they are irritatingly smug so you feel more sympathy for her. all i knew is that i'd probably be off my face on drugs if i was a teenager in that family too.

mid week we stayed in and watched CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS as steen had not seen it before and i'd not seen it since i saw it in the cinema many years ago. i was slightly disappointed as they had done a new version of the movie for the dvd which cut out the beginning bit where it looks like you're there to watch a PBS film about childrens entertainers in new york and it unexpectedly turns a bit dark when they talk to the most popular clown david friedman. this is actually what happened, the director was making an innocuous film and discovered this huge story about friedman's fucked up family in a nearby suburb. instead the dvd version went straight into the story about how david's father and little brother ended up in prison after being accused of sexually assaulting a group of boys at the computer club. i felt it lost a little in going straight into the story, you didn't get a sense of the director's journey into the story so much, but its still bloody fascinating. it turns into a salem witch hunt in this town with the stories getting increasingly incredible and no-one sure what happened for real and what people are being selective about. the friedmans filmed themselves on videocameras during this time, thinking that it would just blow over and they'd look back and laugh so it becomes a film about reliable memories. i watched some of the extras from when the cast and crew took the film around the film festivals and these were like car crash tv, david and his brother almost doing a stand up routine about it, the only way they can deal with it. disturbing.

we also went around to see the patti girls to watch RED RIDING on thursday, armed with biscuits and ready to drink lots of tea. the episode featured the yorkshire ripper and we saw how much further the police corruption had sunk. steen and i were too young to remember the ripper really but helen told us some of the fear that was around at the time and we reminded each other to all go on the RECLAIM THE NIGHT march on tuesday to show our support for the cause.

on friday steen and i went to see THE AGE OF STUPID with my friend anne. it was suitably frightening and steen and i vowed that we would not take any unneccessary flights. i want to go and visit my brother in germany but we have to stop thinking of these things as cheap and convenient, according to the scientists we don't have long before we can stop global warming and there are enough ignorant people out there using up fuel and pumping shit into the air without us adding to it. train to rostock please! it only takes about 24 hours....

tonight i'm looking forward to seeing one of casey's films in gwdihw (which i seem unable to pronounce without doing it in a camp comedy high pitched tone). today i am tired and its beautiful and i'm stuck inside. booo for work!