Author: Mason Hawker

Founder and chief babbler of Third Time Enabled.

Art For The Square-Eyed

Whether you play them or not, there is no denying that today’s video games are more cinematic than ever before, boasting visual effects and immersive experiences worthy of Hollywood itself. I have never owned any of the major consoles (save for a Nintendo Wii), but I know the strides that are being made nowadays and they are impossible not to admire. In being so impressive, they must be behind increased sales to some extent, but in my experience, “less is more” can be just as enticing when it comes to gaming as the snazzy and highly-advanced products we are now offered on a regular basis.

When I was 8, Mum bought me a Game Boy Advance for Christmas, with Lego Star Wars accompanying it as my first-ever game. She will tell you that Louis and I fought over it like cat and dog to begin with, but when we weren’t doing that, I was busy being utterly flabbergasted by the fact that so much scenery, storyline and playability had been packed into a tiny cartridge for use in the palm of my hand. Such a feat seemed like it should be pure fiction, impossible even in the 21st Century as something that transcended the laws of physics. And yet there we were, with other more complex systems such as the Nintendo DS and PSP catching up and expanding this compacted art form.

From the outset, then, I was very impressed – but the impact those early experiences with Lego Star Wars had on me was nothing compared to when I got MotoGP for the same console shortly afterwards. Bear in mind that this is a game based on a legendary real-world motorsport series, featuring real tracks and real motorcyclists I have admired on TV, so to my younger self it was always going to be a revelation regardless of its quality. When I got it, I owned no officially-licensed racing games of any kind; I saw those as being the reserve of the PS2-owning elite, of which I would never be a member. I was therefore eager to see what this new addition could offer, hoping that it wouldn’t disappoint by comparison to the big boys.

I should make very clear that the entire MotoGP game can pretty much be summed up by the word “simplicity”. Even the hardest difficulty is easy to conquer in any mode, since braking is virtually pointless on every circuit layout and the AI are hardly stiff competition. Race weekends are much shorter than their real-life counterparts, too – one lap is allocated for qualifying with a maximum of four for the Grand Prix. But trust me when I say that I would never slag this game off; we all have flaws, after all. Indeed, its charm lay in its pick-up-and-play suitability, its excellent replay value (even to this day, as it turns out), and the aforementioned ability to take to the track against actual racing heroes. Even more prominent than these qualities, however, were its visuals, which I would still describe as nothing less than stunning for the Advance.

16 different destinations feature in the game, perfectly replicating the 2001 MotoGP season calendar, and all are rendered so beautifully that they almost resemble oil paintings. From the mountains seen in the background at Japan’s Suzuka Circuit to the deep blue sky and sea at Phillip Island in Australia, they never fail to disappoint. The same applies to the sprites representing the riders and bikes, as well as the trackside scenery – billboards feature the names of real sponsors, there are distinguishable kerbs and cones, and excited spectators even appear to cheer you on at certain corners. The fact that all of these details are included in such an uncomplicated piece of software is what makes the game stand out above all the others I own, despite its age. If you want to take a look at it for yourself, you could search for some gameplay on YouTube, but I honestly don’t believe that this will do it justice. I now play it on my DS, which offers me an even more vibrant display thanks to its brighter screen, and this in turn only cements its reputation in my mind as a piece of modern gaming art. It won’t take you long to complete if you do pick up a copy, but I honestly believe this 16 year-old game is still worth buying. As a bonus, you won’t spend as much time being antisocial with something so easy!

Mason

Fandom Island

Fandoms are truly amazing things. There’s one for seemingly every franchise nowadays, and whatever the product they exist solely to bring fans of all ages and backgrounds together in a comfortable and familiar environment. They are capable of lifting, inspiring and even saving lives, and so their importance to millions around the world – including myself – must never be underestimated. As you will know by now, my chosen fandom is Doctor Who. It has definitely shaped my life to a significant extent, as I may never have chosen to write without it, and watching it has filled me and many others with seemingly endless wonder. It pleases me greatly to see fellow Whovians freely interacting online and indulging in what they love so much – and even those of you who are not fans can surely appreciate how expansive this international community of enthusiasts is.

That said, however, I do see an underlying problem that I feel compelled to address – not with the Who fandom itself, but with the perception that some non-fans have of it. I was inspired to write this post just a few days ago, when – being very excited to see the unveiling of Jodie Whittaker’s new costume – I suddenly thought about how these people have reacted to my declarations of love for the show. I can’t help but think that I occasionally feel looked down on in a way that people in other fandoms, such as Harry Potter or Supernatural, never seem to be. As soon as this occurred to me, I knew that I had to find out whether this perceived reaction really was an established thing, and what people’s reasoning – if any – was behind it. I posed these questions to some of my friends, Will included, who I thought might be able to relate to my Whovian predicament — and one in particular gave me a very intriguing response.

It was Lauren who said that, as a Doctor Who fan, there can be some very complicated scientific concepts and plots for one to figure out, meaning that those who can (and don’t be fooled, because I’m not always one of them) are stereotyped as being more nerdy and less cool than fans elsewhere. Believe it or not, I’d never considered this before. I suppose it makes sense, although the apparent implication that non-Whovians are less intelligent in some way does make me a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe the people who look down on or criticise us but have never seen the show are put off doing so by assuming you have to be clever. It’s not essential at all. In fact, I’d say that the reason I had never about Lauren’s opinion is because it’s not why I fell in love with Doctor Who in the slightest. I love it because of that wonder I mentioned, the ever-present notion that anything is possible, and the Doctor’s relentless message of acceptance and equality that is so clearly present everywhere he or she goes. These reasons might all sound clichéd, and maybe I’m repeating myself in giving them, but that’s only because they’re never ever untrue. If you’re reading this, you have a few pre-conceived ideas and you’ve never given Doctor Who the time of day thus far, all I ask is that you give it a try. One episode. You might surprise yourself, and gain a few million new friends in the process.

Mason

Harmonised

I wanted to share another one of my thoughts about Saturday’s Jamiroquai gig (see The Funk Is Here To Stay, Part 2) – particularly a new feeling that had never struck me before until I was sat there, with my eyes transfixed on the stage and the lights dancing around it. I was on the crest of a wave during the opening montage of the show, scarcely believing that I was really at the concert which had been so hotly anticipated since April. The rollercoaster ride was about to begin, and I eagerly looked around at all of the other arrivals streaming in by the minute. They varied greatly in age, from the under-tens to pensioners I would never previously have expected to see at that kind of gig. Like me, some were wearing Jamiroquai t-shirts or hats, and one man even chose to sport a full Native American headdress in honour of Jay Kay’s love of headgear. I noticed that some of these items of clothing were older and perhaps suggestive of a longer obsession with the band than others – and this, in turn, got me wondering what each fan’s individual story was. How and when did they first fall in love with Jay, his band and his music?

The man himself mentioned mid-show that 25 years have now passed since the release of the first Jamiroquai album, Emergency on Planet Earth. Judging by the reaction that statement received, there were definitely fans in the arena who had been there for that first record, and had been hooked ever since. But there were also fans whose love developed from every subsequent nook and cranny of Jamiroquai history, such as those who grew up at the height of their fame – ensnared, maybe, by Travelling Without Moving or Synkronized – or those closer in age to me, who might have encountered Noughties albums such as Dynamite in mid-adolescence. And then, finally, there are the very youngest, who may only have found the Space Cowboys with the release of the “Automaton” single in January. It’s fascinating to think about, but it obviously doesn’t matter at all. What matters most is that we’re all on the aforementioned rollercoaster together at the same time, feeling the sheer power music can have in a live setting – the sort that can bring a tear to one’s eye if they’re passionate enough. Regardless of who we are, or where we come from, we’re all there to be dazzled and entertained in perfect harmony, making memories to last a lifetime.

Mason

The Funk Is Here To Stay, Part 2

Three days after first writing about my love for Jamiroquai in The Funk Is Here To Stay, Mum surprised me after work with the news that she’d booked two tickets for us to see the band live at Arena Birmingham in November. I was thrilled and overjoyed in equal measure, since I could not have wished for a better first concert to attend, and spent the next few months adamant that it would the unquestionable highlight of my year. The big day came around in what seemed like the blink of an eye, and last night the wait was over as Mum and I found ourselves seated in the arena with a clear view of the stage ahead. Around us, the seats were gradually filling up as a steady stream of standing spectators also made their way in, leaving very little free space by the time Jamiroquai walked on to widespread screams of adulation at around 8:30pm. Those who weren’t already at their seats were seemingly late because their determination to get a pint in the bar queue eclipsed their hunger for the music – more fool them, because here was one show nobody should want to miss a second of.

As Mum and I finished our own beers – Heinekens presented in a plastic equivalent of the normal green glass bottle – the atmosphere in the arena was one that, as Murray Walker once said, you could cut with a cricket stump. The fans present were comprised of the young and old alike, and all including myself gave an equally loud and rapturous reception to the montage of video clips that heralded the start of the gig, fitting with the theme of the Automaton album they represented. Sections of various news reports and TV programmes warned us of the potential rise of robots and machines in society, as swathes of colour and computer graphics accompanied it on the other screens. With that, the evening was underway, and Jay Kay (appropriately behatted with his new colour-changing electronic headpiece) and co emerged to begin an infectious two-hour set, starting with Automaton‘s opening track, “Shake It On”. From the very first note, it became even clearer than before that I was in the presence of some exceptionally talented musicians, as well as a Jay who had not lost a single shred of his ability to sing, dance or have an audience eating out of the palm of his hand. I was a willing contributor to every deafening roar that responded to his performances and between-song banter, and the band definitely made sure to pull out the crowd-pleasers. I would rate “Space Cowboy”, “Cosmic Girl”, my personal favourite “Canned Heat” and encore finale “Virtual Insanity” as the songs that drew the biggest audience participation, although my voice was almost hoarse – along with plenty of others – from belting out every tune that Jamiroquai treated us to. I have not felt as alive as I was then for some time, swept up in a wave of disco hysteria and adrenaline amongst the addictive rhythms. Another notable inclusion in the set was “(Don’t) Give Hate a Chance”, chosen in tribute to those killed in May at the Manchester Arena, while “Too Young to Die” was performed live for the first time in 15 years, according to Jay. There was even something for the hardcore aficionados in the form of 1994 album track “The Kids” – a song even I didn’t know the words to!

The whole show really was a treat for all the senses. There was ear joy from both the music and the wildly enthusiastic audience, a feast for the eyes thanks to the abundance of colour – both from the big screens and Jay’s hat – and the rows of (sometimes drunken) dancing fans leaping from their seats to boogie, the feel of my £20 souvenir programme, which really will be something to cherish with the gig itself, the taste of my ice-cold Heineken and even the smell of chips and vinegar from some of the other seats. Everything about last night will stay vividly in my mind forever, but the mighty Jamiroquai were, of course, its crowning glory – and I just hope there’s plenty more where that came from. I left with a huge smile plastered on my face and a sense of joy that will never leave me, having been blessed with a night’s entertainment from a group of musical heroes that can never be taken away. I have now promised Mum that I’ll have to buy her a concert ticket or two very soon!

Mason

 

 

 

The Day I Fried a Snake

“I saved my pocket money for three weeks. I didn’t buy anything. No comics, no crisps, no sweets. I went to a pet shop and bought this tiny green snake instead. A grass snake they called it. When I got home I played with the snake. It felt warm and soft. I was scared but I still had to hold it. I liked the way it wrapped itself round my fingers like an electric shoelace. And then…. then I realised. I could never keep it. Not as a pet. Where would it sleep? What would it eat? Where would it go when I went to school? It was a stupid thing to to buy. So I had to get rid of it. But how? All sorts of things occurred to me: flush it down the toilet, bury it, throw it from a tower block. But all the while another thought was taking shape. A thought so wonderful it seemed the only thing to do. So I got a frying pan and put it on the gas stove. I put a bit of butter in the pan and turned the gas up full. The fat started to crackle and smoke. I dropped the snake into the frying pan. It span round and round and its skin burst open like the skin of a sausage. It took ages to die. Its tiny mouth opened and closed and its black eyes exploded. But it was wonderful to watch.” – Presley’s monologue, from The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley, 1991.

The piece you see above was both the best and worst thing I ever had to perform during my A-Level Drama course. I loved it because it was surreal and it gave everyone who ever heard it the shivers, but on the other hand it was also the closest I have ever come to suffering for my art. I never read Philip Ridley’s full play, so I can’t tell you about the context behind it, but I found this in a book of monologues for students and just knew immediately that it could be a winner. A large part of our grades for the course was due to come from our monologues – but unlike our previous end-of-year performances, to which we could invite anyone we liked, these would be given only to the rest of the class, our teacher and the visiting examiner. By this point, my class only actually consisted of a handful of other people, but I was glad of this when it came to choosing my piece as I knew I would have a smaller and more intimate group to try and unsettle. But how would I do this? I needed to gross them out in some way, and after a week or two of thought I knew exactly what to do. I needed to fry the snake in front of their eyes, leaving them open-mouthed and speechless in response…

OK, so frying an actual snake wouldn’t have gone down well with the examiner or the RSPCA, so instead I had to find what I’ll call a “stunt snake”. This came in the somewhat predictable form of a raw sausage, which would slide around in a real frying pan and be squashed and manipulated mercilessly in my fingers as though it were alive. Having taken a trip to Tesco so that I would have some bangers to hand, I made sure I had one on my person for rehearsals the next day – as well as a pan borrowed from the kitchen. Sure enough, my plan for the piece worked like a dream, even though I realised I was going to have a problem with raw sausage meat getting stuck underneath my fingernails. Even when I washed my hands vigorously after every run through, it wouldn’t always budge immediately – this is what I meant by suffering for my art. As time went by, however, this soon became a very small price to pay, because the end result was something I became immensely proud of. In just two minutes or so, I had the chance to perform something that would completely captivate its tiny audience – not because of me, but because it was sheer surrealism in the truest sense. For once, I couldn’t wait for exam day.

Now, let’s bypass all of the build-up to the big moment and cut directly to the chase. Imagine me there, with my lamp, frying pan and stunt snake ready on the table, being given the signal by the examiner to begin the monologue. What residual noise there was has now completely died away and I am now alone in my performance space, with only my meticulously-rehearsed lines in my head for company. They’ll never desert me, surely?

Wrong. For the first and only time in any Drama lesson, I drew a complete and total blank. I searched frantically for my opening lines, but there was only rolling tumbleweed for what seemed like a lifetime. It got to a point where I was sure I was only seconds away from being failed and ushered back into the audience – and it was then that the piece spluttered into life as I remembered what I was supposed to say. I sailed through the remaining dialogue with ease, but the silence at the beginning was still in my thoughts, overshadowing everything else. I was convinced that I had totally sabotaged my own A-Level grade, and that for my classmates, the teacher and the examiner, it was also the elephant in the room. The biggest surprise would be saved for last, however, when it transpired that nobody in the audience actually noticed I’d forgotten my lines, and that the examiner thought the resulting pause was for dramatic effect. I believe it actually ended up improving my mark slightly – but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to prevent my D overall…

Mason

 

 

You Can Call Me Al

Somebody once suggested that, if I ever end up writing for a living, I should adopt a pseudonym to release my work under. I thought about this for a while, and at first it seemed cool that I could have some amount of mystery around my true identity, but I quickly put it to bed when I couldn’t come up with anything decent. Not only that, but nobody would ever know what I had written was my work! This blog therefore carries my regular birth name, as I hadn’t ever expected to replace it when it began three years ago, but this week I suddenly thought of a story I feel compelled to tell here. It gave rise to the most likely alternative I could ever have to “Mason Hawker” – and all through a simple misunderstanding.

If the weather behaves itself on Sunday, I hope to go back to archery again, as various reasons have prevented me from going since shortly before my birthday in August. Before that, though, the club held a session in early June that allowed us regulars to meet the newest arrivals to the group at a relaxed and casual shoot. The weather was perfect for it, with not a single cloud in the sky or breath of wind in the air, and the turnout was much bigger than I had expected – especially when you consider that we had previously been quite a small club, on a field off the beaten track. Dad thought that there could have been as many as 50 people present, meaning there would be ample opportunity for mingling throughout the session. Sure enough, we all chatted away to one another, shaking hands and making introductions as we shared bows (since there were more people than there were bows to go around) and snaffled chocolate bars with tea at half-time. It had been a positive shoot for me so far – I’m more rusty on some days than I am on others, but today I had hit my fair share of golds on the target, and I was pleased to have stretched the muscles in my arms dealing with a sixteen-pound bow. I therefore felt like I’d earned my cuppa and chocolate bar, both of which were gratefully accepted and went down a treat. As I sat quietly for a moment, pondering the morning’s results and the rest of my day, I could see one of the new members approaching in the corner of my eye, and quickly turned my head to greet them warmly. It’s taken us a while to get here, I’ll admit, but this is the point at which I was unwittingly given my potential pen name in just a single fleeting moment.

As is customary when two or more people meet for the first time, our exchange swiftly reached the stage where names would have to be swapped. The man to whom I was speaking was – and is – very friendly, but I was still determined, as I always am, not to trip over my words and make a good first impression. Naturally, therefore, the inevitable happened, and my hopes of avoiding any awkwardness were quickly flushed down the toilet.

He’d given me his name (which I’ve since forgotten, I might add). Good. Things were going well. All I had to do was say my own in return, and then my work would be done. I waited for the question:

“What’s your name, sorry?”

“Just say it, you idiot,” I thought to myself. My lips parted, ready to speak. And after a hesitant second, sound emerged. “Er…Mason,” I uttered timidly.

Note the “er”, which definitely was not intended to be part of the end response. My companion should have completely disregarded that first bit – and definitely should not have mistaken it for my first name.

“Al Mason?” he asked, somewhat confused by my unease.

I corrected him, of course, but there you have it – Al Mason, an inconspicuous fusion of my own real name and a misheard false one. It’s not going to catch on, but for the sake of this post, as my old drinking buddy Paul Simon once sang, you can call me Al. I trust there’ll be no such confusion on my next archery outing.

Al

Chinese Whispers

We’ve probably all participated in at least one game of Chinese Whispers at some point, when a group sits in a circle to listen to a buzzword or phrase become increasingly warped as it passes from ear to ear. In a carefree, social context like that it can be good fun, but Chinese Whispers are of course present in real life too, mainly in the form of upsetting and potentially damaging rumours. Some are today’s news and tomorrow’s chip paper, whilst others linger like bad smells for prolonged periods of time – with each assumed form being even worse than the last. They are constantly evolving monsters, and there can be no guessing what might happen next or when they might end. With that in mind, I asked some of my friends what the best and worst rumours they had ever heard about themselves were, and in one particular case I was pleasantly surprised to find a more positive way of looking at them.

The idea for this post originated with Emily, when one of our recent conversations drifted towards the aforementioned rumours. I promised not to mention any of them here, but I feel like I must say how uplifting it was to see the way in which she reacted to them. She would have had every right to spout pure bile and vitriol towards those responsible for spinning all of this, but instead chooses to look back on it almost as though it forms a fond teenage memory. “If you’re not laughing,” she told me, “it’s just sad. And no-one wants that.” I suppose that in refusing to be put down by what others are saying about her, Emily is depriving any given rumour of the oxygen it needs to thrive, and is therefore killing a parasite before it can breed and snowball into something more devastating. What’s more, she’s doing so with equal doses of humour and a thick and resilient (but never cold) skin.

Maybe the fact that Emily has had to deal with a certain number of these rumours means that her character has developed to some extent. I don’t know how she felt the very first time she heard something about herself, but perhaps she’s now better equipped to deal with the harsher aspects of life than she was, say, seven years ago, when we first met. She seemed to prove me right in her end summary, quite bluntly closing the matter with: “I’ve just learned to get on with shit.” Right. Can’t get much clearer than that. I then asked her if I could quote that to close this post – and, like the pussycat she really is, she said it was fine, followed by a smiley face. See? Hardened resilience, and then the more typical soft warmth that you can find under almost any set of circumstances. Good old Em!

Mason

He Could Be So Good For Me

The central character that I created for Excludable was one Jim Rossiter, originally named Jake. He was “born” on 30 March 2013, the day I started writing, and from the outset he was intended to be an alter ego in the truest sense of the word. Like me, he used a wheelchair (although I never specified his disability) and tended not to be very forthcoming towards those around him, because he was always afraid of being a nuisance. He could be dishevelled at times, and was prone to overthinking and the occasional social faux pas. Despite these shared qualities, however, I was very careful not to make Excludable a script all about me. When somebody once asked me if it was, I quickly clarified that it was only about someone like me – a relatable character in whom I could place some of my most closely-held thoughts and feelings without it being obvious they were mine.

It seemed to work pretty well. Jim became not only a reliable fictional confidant, but also a decent testing ground for new ideas I considered putting into his story. I spent so much time thinking about Jim and his progression through Excludable that he became almost like an imaginary friend, albeit a more useful one. If something particularly thought-provoking happened in my real life, I might find myself thinking of my new project: “Jim could do that”, I would say to myself. It took a while to piece something together, as you all know, but I knew the waiting and endless thought would pay off in the end, and indeed it did. I am the biggest critic of my own writing, and especially of this, but at least I’d finished it. Some of my rawest and most personal emotions had manifested themselves creatively onto paper, which I would now have to hand whenever I wanted to develop it. And it might never have seen the light of day if I didn’t have Jim at the centre of it – a character perfectly placed to finally show me, after so much time spent thinking rather than doing, what I was actually capable of completing. All that’s left now is for you all to meet him one day.

Mason

Original Vinyl Recording

Writing prompts are amazing things. I know that a simple phrase or group of words always has the potential to spawn a much longer and more imaginative piece of work, but just how little you need to create something never ceases to astound me. I took part in a creative writing exercise yesterday along with a group of other people, and we were encouraged to come up with a range of short stories using only a few photographs and objects. They seemed simple and self-explanatory at first, but then we started digging. One of the photos was of a city being bombed by fighter jets. Fire and thick black smoke dominated the image, and anybody’s natural response to this would have been to see it from a civilian’s perspective – all of the horror and devastation that comes with losing your home and livelihood. However, we were presented with something different, namely the question of how the pilot dropping the bombs may be feeling as he presses the big red button. It only took the addition of a second point of view, and a small alteration to the original viewpoint, to make the possibilities seem endless – but it would be the objects that intrigued me the most.

Each person in the group was asked to take a card at random that had an equally random object written on it. One person was left with a highwayman’s mask, another with a fortune teller’s crystal ball. I, meanwhile, took one that read “an original vinyl ABBA recording”. I felt confident about my ability to write something from this, being a record collector myself, and I quickly discovered that even from these five words, I already had a fully-formed character in my mind who would feature in my short story – to consist of no more than four or five lines. I pictured a lonely man, single, tired and perhaps middle-aged, who struggled to find solace in anything except buying music. The reader needed to feel sympathy for him, and pleased that he had – at long last – found the rare record he so dearly wanted, since it would be key to his happiness. But then they needed to stifle a guilty giggle at the dark humour to follow when he proudly placed it amongst all his other LPs, only for them to topple over and crush his prized new addition along with all his hopes and dreams. This all had to happen, as aforementioned, in the space of only a few lines – and, to my delight, they seemed to flow in exactly the way I had hoped.

I wasn’t brave enough to read what I had written out once everyone had finished their stories, but I was quietly rather proud of what I’d come up with in two minutes. I was also greatly impressed by the fact that a clear character and scenario had both been incorporated – along with a late twist of humour – into a text shorter than this paragraph. Mind blown. And it was all thanks to that ABBA record. Who would really dare say that the English language is boring? To use an unusual analogy, it’s like chicken – Dad says you can do anything with it…

Mason

Brown And Sticky

I wrote my first feature film script in the space of 14 months, between March 2013 and May 2014. It was titled Excludable (although that was always meant to be a working title, since it’s clearly not a real word), and it might not have been a masterpiece but I was very proud of it. I hadn’t started this blog at that point, so it was in many ways the most personal thing I’d ever written. Will seemed to like it – all 73 pages of it – and I was committed to making the idea work after his ever-reliable feedback. I therefore started working on a second draft, and had even written a pitch that I sent to a production company for a radio series based on the concept. That old devil called writer’s block would soon put the brakes on proceedings, however, and a change of laptop just over a year ago accidentally caused me to lose the entire script. I still have the pitch, which I am confident will come in very handy one day – but the script is gone forever, inaccessible on my new computer, and that means that I am now eagerly pondering its replacement.

I do, however, have one other complete script I can showcase, even if it is just a single page in length. It was written quickly in September 2015, when I was required to shoot a short advertisement for a product of my choice as part of the college course I was on after my A-Levels. Having held a lifelong affinity for the brown and sticky stuff, I chose Marmite, but I was struggling to figure out how to tackle it in an original or memorable way. I thought about it long and hard for at least a week, seemingly getting nowhere despite watching a whole host of past adverts in search of inspiration. It was my tutor who eventually suggested that I use the famous “love or hate” debate surrounding the spread to portray a group of Marmite lovers at a support group gathering, discussing their shared issue as though it was something sordid or taboo. This was something of a eureka moment, and I agreed with it immediately, recalling an advert I’d seen in which a man was implied to be pleasuring himself to footage of Marmite on his TV screen. I thought that if I approached it carefully, the idea could give me just the memorable quality I’d been looking for in my advert.

I got writing soon after the discussion with the tutor. It was only one page, as I’ve said, but a lot of thought still had to go into it, as it needed to pack a punch and sell the product to the audience in the space of a minute. I can’t say I was entirely happy with the finished piece of work – for me, dialogue is an area that will always need improvement, and admittedly, the view of a support group that I presented was probably nowhere near as realistic as it could have been. Far from being supportive, gentle or encouraging, the leader of the session was a cold and ruthless man who had little time for anyone else’s stories and was determined to berate them and their relatives for their introduction to Marmite. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t quite happen in real addict gatherings. I’m also in doubt as to whether they end with leaders and visitors alike licking Marmite jars in an ecstatic frenzy, but if nothing else the script may still turn out to be a useful basis for another idea one day. I left my course the day before I was due to film it. I don’t know how happy I would have been with the end advert, but I might feel better if it resurfaces in another form one day, knowing that another complete piece of my work is out there for the world to see representing my portfolio.

Mason