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
On Mad Skills vs Try Hard