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Dear Readers,
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If so, please comment below and I will endeavour to answer as many of your questions as I can.
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I like to talk about writing - if there are aspiring writers reading this, lets create a discussion about the business of becoming a writer.
I’ll try and get back to everyone as soon as possible.
Your loving writer, Hanif
xx
Hi Hanif,
I spent 6 weeks living in a hospice with my partner who could not stay on a ward as brain cancer made him hypersensitive to noise. I had to move in because he couldn’t be left alone due to seizure risk and the hospice being unable to provide a 24/7 close watch.
It was a mad, intense and unusual experience. Our room became an extension of the staff room and an ante room off the ward for lots of patients who just wanted some company. Various family and friends came every day to give me a break so I could go home and feed the kids etc. We had a rota not unlike the system you have recently described.
I’m writing about it but cannot decide whether to write a memoir or a novel. Some of the most poignant, comical and tragic moments happened when people behaved in ways that they’re probably not proud of - me included. I’m fine with showing my own dodgy parts but........ is it okay to write about, for example, the sister who broke into the house and knicked his record collection whilst we were away, and other such incidents. Is it my story to tell as I like? I feel conflicted about it. I think a novel might liberate it - let the story fly but it did all happen so.......
Thanks.
Sandy.
Dear hanif. Thank you for your chronicles. You have taken your misfortunes and turned it into a creative art. But enough about you. I am a member of the loftily named Oxford Theatre Guild an AmDram group that puts on shows throughout the year. We do at least one Shakespeare in the Summer and one in the Winter. Then we do a lot of Eurocentric and white people stuff to cater to the North Oxford cashmere scarf wearing lot. This includes more productions of the Importance of being Earnest, Nell Gwynn, The Recruiting Officer, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Andromache and on and on. I be like, "Sahibs, Memsahibs, bruvs, can we put on something a bit more contemporary and relevant to widen our target audience and be a bit more inclusive?" They have said they will think about it. I would like to direct a play that looks at identity, displacement, and the joys of living in the UK. (I am South African of Indian origin). Your Buddha of Suburbia was a mindfuck when I first read it. I was like, " There are other brown people who have expressed their struggle with identity and belonging and amplified their thoughts much more articulately than I ever could" Thank you Sir. But enough about me. Do you have any suggestions/thoughts or leads I could explore for any drama that could be done in the amateur dramatics arena? I can't write (yet) or I'd have written a funny play about immigrants and the immigrant experience or about just being brown and black in Oxford. For we are Townies not Gownies and some of us work at the BMW car factory.