LION KING

Just a back from seeing the film Lion.   I sobbed my heart out. There should be a five minute black out at the end of films like that, where they have very loud music playing so everyone can sob.   There were so many people sobbing in the cinema that people started to laugh. The emotions are very very close.  A very fine line.   The little boy should have won an Oscar.    It is the only film I've seen and wanted to do something about the situation at the end of it. My friend had been to see I Daniel Blake the night before.   'Devastating' she said, because it was true.   The director is a Dickens of our time, reflecting back at us how the system is broken, and how we need to break those who keep it the way it is.   Brexit and Trump may not be the right answer but they have broken the wrong ones.
So what next week?   Manchester by the Sea, Beauty and the Beast...we either have nonsense super hero films or brittle brutal reality.   Dreams, denial and reality.

I love my job I love my job I love my job

I interviewed the fabulous Johan Carter on Share this week.  He is one of my heroes.   Him and Alastiar Mackenzie.    Gentlemen and professionals both


https://shar.es/1DOxqx

Simon joined by travel journalist and author Sarah Tucker. This week, they looked at why 2017 is set to be another record year for inbound tourism to the UK. And, there'll be an insider's guide to Washington DC with Susan Marany, a guide from Tours By Locals.They were also joined live in the studio by TV holiday expert John Carter, formerly of Wish You Were Here and the BBC's

LAST OF THE YEAR

Everyone is bemoaning 2016 as a bad year. It was an eventful year and amazing things happened.  Even the 2016 Wipe by Charlie Booker failed to be as funny as it usually is, because how do you satirise the surreal?  The surreal is already satirising itself.   There are more tigers and hopefully will be more elephants and people are planting more trees.   Everyone is bemoaning Trump as being as being clinically insane, but perhaps we are just exchanging one illusion for another.     Don't fix it if its not broken, they say, but people forget, all the establishment from the financial world, the economic, the political, the health, the education, the legal system - IS broken. So the establishment in all its guises does need fixing.

The Years Honours list is awful.  There are some names deserving of merit, those not mentioned on the news, but those who don't deserve it, the celebrities, the sportsmen, devalue those who do.    No celebrities.   No sports people.  And definitely no Posh Spice or Cameron cronies.   Cameron will be recognised as being almost as odious as Blair.   Or perhaps he is, and we don't know it yet (I suspect Murdock does).   As for the others, they have been rewarded financially enough.   And if they give to charity, then they get back in terms of feeling good about themselves (which they will) and in tax breaks.    Those who deserve the rewards are those who don't make the headlines and don't have the financial breaks.     

Patsies have been put out to protect the guilty in all areas.  People like Rolf Harris and the football coaches, long dead, have been given out as something to chew on while the others continue to go about their business believing they are above the law because half the time they make it.   But at least we know now no one is the public eye is to be trusted, respected, or given time. More people are turning off the news, not reading the news papers and trusting in their instincts.   And starting to identify who to talk to and who isn't worth the time any more.   Its a shame because there are some wonderful writers out there, just not the outlets for them to share their voice, which has neither ego nor agenda.   

I've had a good year.  Learnt lots of lessons.   And I know whats important.  I'm blessed to be teaching in phenomenal schools with phenomenal teachers who deserve the honours bestowed on the sports men and women and the celebrities.    We are completely misplaced in society about what is really valuable.   Funds should go directly, without passing go, to the schools and the hospitals and get the nurses, the teachers, the doctors, the heads to distribute the money. They will know what to do with it.   Where it is best applied.  But perhaps that is too simple.   

A lot of voices have chosen to leave, while others have chosen to remain, like a heavenly Brexit all over again.   

I have a list of things to achieve in 2017.   In order of priority.    But for now, a poem to appreciate the moment.  

Dragon fly life

one day

a breath

a whisper

an opportunity

one word

or perhaps two or three

no more

to fly high

and breathe deeply

and smile

and love and 

laugh 

loud

and scream

and love

oh to love 

and watch 

the beauty

of 

e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

because 

now 

its

gone

.

BAD TV

I watched Philip Schofield on the TV last night. He was presenting a strangled excuse of a programme on the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme which celebrates its 60^th birthday this year. I never did it. I did the Queens Guide instead and had a hell of a time passing my camping badge because none of my patrol liked it each other.  It was my first taste of party politics, getting that badge. Getting people to cooperate and do something they didn’t want to do, didn’t have to do, and for which there was absolutely nothing in it for them.   And unlike politicians I didn’t even lie.  That came later.    But I got my badge and watched while others told me about their bronze, silver and gold which seemed a lot of work for nothing.     I don’t know much about HRH Philip. I have heard loads of rumour, which I’m sure most have on the internet. He drives around in a taxis in London, probably with his light off so that he can pass people by in the street when its pouring and Scrooge-like not offer them help.    He was skint when the then Princess met him and it was a marriage that was arranged by Mountbatten and the Queen Mother (allegedly).  I met someone who did a bust of him who told me he is an ‘alpha male who has to behave totally out of character and walk behind a woman.’ And an alpha male never follows anyone. They lead.   I’m sure he’s found his ways to rebel.  The taxis is perhaps a touch of it.  And he has many children, but then I’m sure the prune faced Mick Jagger has more than the eight he is officially announcing.   

And it was interesting watching Schofield sychophant his way so far up HRH’s arse, even the Prince looked pained.    The Prince has a contempt for the media, but then again, so do I. They lack authority and credibility now and it’s a pity because there are good writers out there who are boxed in by editors who have an agenda, which is nothing to do with the news.    In the late AA Gills’ review of the ‘fictional’ Royal family in the series ‘The Crown’ he comments ‘a not very bright, frightened and stifled family, looking out at a world they don’t understand and don’t really like’.   That’s ours and although I think the Prince is probably one of the brighter ones, that is not saying much. His arrogance and pomposity make him ignorant because he thinks he knows better.   Because he is better.

Talking on a completely separate matter, I do wish someone would get on leading that government paedophile enquiry. Then there would be some news to not write about….

Ps Brian Sewell dead, AA Gill dead.  Great writers and great voices.   I never met Gill but I met Sewell. The world is a poorer place at the end of 2016 and its nothing to do with global financial crisis.

FOUR TESTY YEARS

Degree done, yoga teacher training done.   I feel as though I've achieved something over the past four years.   Its been like being in the wilderness, and occasionally coming up against sand storms and tsunamis of other peoples emotional dramas.   As though I've walked into their book and don't want to be there, so I've walked out again, literally.   Interesting as I'm a storyteller and I've found the most interesting ones are the ones we tell ourselves.    Never again.  I didn't feel like myself, as though I'd lost myself.  Not got lost. I'd lost myself.    I've felt like Paul Pennyfeather, things happening to me, and when I've walked away, walked straight into someone else's storyline, and I was nothing more than a mirror for them to project onto.   Their stuff, their story.    I though it was my drama, my storm, my tsunami, but it wasn't.   I was just pulled into it, sometimes willingly.   Perhaps thats why I did the degree, watching all those years ago Educating Rita at the theatre in Bath, and realising I knew the stuff, I just needed to get the accreditation to be heard. And write my own story, and my own book again.    And the yoga teacher training, because although I can write, I wasn't appreciated.   They strangely complement each other.   Academia is isolating, as is teaching yoga.   They are both disciplines.   You focus in on yourself with yoga, and focus in on a subject with academia to the point of exclusion of everything else. They discipline the mind.   And the mind, if asked, wishes to be disciplined like the body.    The emotions want to be appreciated and let go of, and the body. Well the body likes to be stretched, and balanced and twisted but really just wants to have a good time.   Oh, and it loves it when you breathe.
Both the degree and the yoga has allowed me to walk above, below or around the sand storms and tsunamis without even knowing I am doing it.
I'm telling my own story again.  

LIFTS

Lifts are interesting things.    Love in an elevator, but then I see Trump and Farage in a golden lift and it takes on new meaning.    There was Roald Dahl, the Great Glass Elevator that knew no boundaries and had no boundaries, it was made of glass, but got Charlie and co in to trouble.    I remember the drawing in that book where the monsters were in lifts and with their bodies (you've got to read the book) marked out the words 'SCRAM.   There was that film where the devil was inside the elevator and they were trapped.  Evelator to hell, they seem to go up or down.  You get stuck in them. They are claustrophobic. No one speaks.  They can have sex (Fatal Attraction) or just flirt (New Years Eve), or get killed (Dressed to Kill), in one.    Confined spaces make people horny or suicidal.    Or in the case of Trump and Farage, you wish going down all the way.  Just making sure they do not take the rest of us with them.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH IN

What a year.    Anything could happen and it has!!!

I was at World Travel Market last week, where all the countries and peoples of the world were on a central stage all under the same roof and although there was a lot of noise, they got on.  Or seemed to get on.   I spent the morning in the Inspire Theatre, listening to people talk about the wellness tourism, and how it has grown incredibly, outstripping any other form of travel.   This is mainly happening, as some of the 'experts' mentioned because people, for want of a better phrase 'mentally exhausted, and sick'.   Yoga has led the way, a system which moves people to a place of calm (emotionally) to listen to their breath, and clear their mind of the internal dialogue that persists in creating imbalance.  Thats the idea.  Yoga itself has become a form of exercise when it is a meditation.   Kick boxing yoga, pilates yoga, spinning yoga?   Yer what?    Any way, I digress, because I taught yoga this morning, and my usual class of 6 turned into 26 because of the US elections and worry about the world.   We did twenty vinyasas, saluted the sun and stretched and twisted.  Thats all the posturing you need. Forget the political posturing which does you no good at all.

Don't worry, be happy.   Politics like the financial markets is foogazzy.  Guess work.   What really matters is that you are there for your children and you love them unconditionally.  I teach yoga in schools.   I know that's what matters.   Thats it. And you are in good health.  That's it.   Simple really.    Everything else is puff.

And everyone is going on about the 'elite'. I must admit, I have never met someone who is 'elite'.  I've met people who think they are.   Everyone talks about the 'elite' as though they are a 'race'.   The 'elite' is not a type of person. It is a social construct. People may feel they are better than someone else, but they are the ones who are insecure and feel less than everyone else.   Elitism is pomposity.  Pomposity is like a balloon. It is meant to be popped.

And I'm taking part in research to see how I cope with stress, my cortisol levels are being checked to see how my brain copes with everything.   I went to a fascinating talk by Tara Swart today @corinthiahotellondon at the Corinthia Hotel in London.  She will be the neuroscientist in residence there for a year and helping out with brain power day spa packages and brain power residential packages on how make the most of your brain.   And yes, yoga is part of it.

Take a deep breath in, close your eyes, listen to your breath and realise what is important.  Your health and your children.   And breathe out.