As a recent recipient of a Grants for Arts Award, I guess I should put my head above the parapet given that recent funding cuts could well mean that my first Grants for Arts Award is also looking like it could be my last. As a writer that's penned a couple of plays about sport, too, I am quite possibly ideally placed to scrawl a response about the diversion of the cash from the Arts to the sporting spectacle and financial black hole that is the Olympics. But, cripes, I can't actually decide what I want to say, how to say it or indeed if I have anything to add to what's already been said by other, much more articulate, people. All I know is that the money I received allowed me to work for three more months as a full-time writer and that my bank manager and I were very happy and grateful when it dropped through the letterbox. It would be an incredible shame if other writers are denied access to funding that could afford them the time and enable them to write something earth shattering that would enhance the lives of other people just so we can watch no medals being won by our athletes and an opening ceremony at which loads of London school kids run around with coloured ribbons. Luckily, chaps like this are much more lucid on this whole funding cuts subject and have already formed their opinions. My contribution to the debate? Well, those bastardised Olympic rings. Feel free to put the pic on your website if you think it helps to illustrate anything.
As a parent, you always hope that your kids will take on board the amazing example you've set and follow in your footsteps. However, I'm not sure that either this or this is what I really had in mind. Still, blogging sons, eh? It's a wonderful, wacky world. And at least with blogs you don't have to go through all that terrible myspace add me as a friend business, or prize open their padlocked diary, to spy on their every move.
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