Trying Not To Kill People

Once upon a time our business consisted of two Camera Boys, Miss Whiplash and a big pile of kit, our main concern was to insure against bad men running off with a camera or the film stock getting eaten by tigers.

Now that we have a proper grown-up out-of-the-house building and lots of people, the responsibility for not killing people is mine all mine.

Paperwork about Regulations and Compliance rain down on me. I’ll have just filled in a stack of forms for security arrangements or arranged fire warden training, when another hazard looms. I dream that a giant rabbit is living on my lap, every few minutes it burps and gives birth to several kittens and I have to keep them all within my capacious skirts - they keep dropping on the floor and some of them break and I have to scoop them up and hide the bits in my pockets and try and glue them back together when no-one is looking.


I’ve just subjected myself to some intensive coaching about how to be a good employer, my coach is patient. To deal with different situations, he suggests scenarios where I imagine putting on a succession of different coloured hats or confronting a series of doors, there are diagrams too - one looks like a hairdryer.


Yesterday afternoon I had set up a broad range of policies and contracts and insurances, I thought I had it all covered...

I had forgotten the rogue fourteen year old who I rashly said could come and do a week’s work experience with us in the summer. Today I got a phone call from the child labour inspectoriate demanding an interview, they want to come and grill me and my premises and look at my policies ...

High Anxiety

I fought my tendency to pessimism for years - then I realised that living in that state of happy surprise when things aren’t ever quite as disastrous as I expected is probably as good a place to be as any.

Making television programmes demands that an enormous amount of money and energy be invested before any project has the slightest hope of getting off the ground. I am a partner in this particular business but The Director and Miss Whiplash are in charge of most of the buttons - I just peep between my fingers from behind the sofa while they move noughts around on spreadsheets.

Earlier this year our company made a film which was really rather good, we’re up for more prizes and there have been talks about making more programmes. The talking goes on for ages before anyone actually writes a cheque so we have to get on with ordering equipment, booking flights, finding new premises and keeping our fingers crossed.

I try and internalise my predictive gloom which leads to some funny symptoms like the ones where I think I’m having a heart attack or that I've got flu or that I am slowly being paralyzed by worms. I also get those dreams where I discover myself in a state of public disarray, this weeks prize dream involved being at the hairdressers and asking if I had any bald patches, Oh yes Madam said the hairdresser and held up a mirror to show me that not only was the back of my head bald but my brain was exposed and bleeding.

That might explain my grumpiness - an exposed and bleeding brain is not easily accessorized.

The first filming trip for our new set of programmes will be to Sri Lanka, there would be job for me on this one and I really really want to go - naturally I’ve refused to believe it would actually happen, I went along for the innoculations (just in case). Then, yesterday, after a kafkaesque morning at the Sri Lankan Embassy I stood blinking in the sunshine with my hurty arm (from the jabs) and a fistful of officially stamped documents and I woke up to the fact that 1000 people per year die from snake bites in Sri Lanka and I’d better get a move on with my bespoke suit of full-body armour - I’m having special added spikes attached to foil the leopards and crocodiles.