Your November Newsletter

(Its hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain)

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Stage newsletter. I hope everyone has been keeping warm enough, it takes for it to get to the temperature of the Baltic Sea in my house before I'm even tempted to put the heating on.
We're now heading into the Christmas season, which is one that normally has the boys here at stage scratching their heads wondering what to do, as in Cornwall it means quiet services and not too much going on.
Thankfully that's not the case here in the city of Exeter, the Christmas season is shaping up nicely and we've changed the menu to suit- I can smell mulled wine brewing from where I'm sat now which is basically Christmas if it was a scent.
I'm hoping that everyone gets to spend ample time with their families and friends this year as last year we didn't get to have the full Christmas experience.
Anyway, onto the newsletter proper- we have a variety of different articles this month, and Jevan will be joining in too with his first article.
If we don't see you at the restaurant then I hope that everyone has a good Christmas and holidays, cheers!

"Stages"
A poem by Cam

Stop the clocks. Something just froze time.
It didn’t see it coming, but it was always on the line.
Gone without a trace, leaving nothing behind.
Just the memories of a face slowly fading from my mind.
It came out of nowhere, here one minute, gone the next.
I’ll never forget when I received that horrendous text.
I wasn’t there and I felt like a cock.
The first thing to get through was the feeling of shock.
No this didn’t really happen it was all a bad dream.
I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll have peaches and cream.
Or sugar on toast.
Or Nans favourite roast, No this can’t have really happened,phone in hand, your number ready to dial.
This was the hardest part to deal with, a serious state of denial.
After denial came anger.
It’s a cold place to be, like an aeroplane hangar.
A strange reference to make, but you worked on planes in your youth.
It was stranger when I eventually learned what happened, I finally knew the truth.
If I’m honest it left me fuming. Like a dying star, the heat of my rage was booming.
How could this have happened to you it’s not fair!
You’re the reason I wanted to learn how to cut hair.
The doctors couldn’t help as far as I could tell. For that reason I wanted them all to burn in hell.
It got to the point you knew you weren’t getting better. So you did something that normally comes with a letter.
Writing this now, I know that it’s bad. But when I heard what you did, towards you I felt mad.
Dear lord please can he come back, I’ll do anything you ask.
For the first time ever I prayed alone, rather than at school like a task.
I'm no religious man but I was willing to try. Late at night starting up at the starry black sky.
Hoping you’re in heaven if it even exists. Or some place else that’s equally as bliss.
No matter where you were, no matter how cheerful. I’d sell my soul to the devil to have you back, I’d no longer be tearful.
As the loss of you started slowly hardening. I became aware it was pointless bargaining.
Now this particular stage, sometimes I greet like an old friend. But at the time I’d never experienced it, like the latest new trend.
A darkness came over me, I didn’t see the point. After my connection to you became disjoint.
Getting out of bed became a daily struggle. Comfort couldn’t even come from a warm cuddle.
I couldn’t cry anymore I was exhausted from each session. I’d go on to experience this a lot in life, it was called depression.
So now you’re truly gone and I guess I’ve come to terms with it. You taught me a lot and I’d better try to learn from it.
You weren’t that old in the grand scheme of things. No matter how short mine is, I’ll always wear your signet ring.
I miss you old man that will always be true. I’ve accepted it as a fact, like the sky will always be blue.

"ALL DIS HIGH DEFINITION"

Stop tapping. Stop fidgeting. Stop talking. Pay attention…
In classrooms across the land, we tell children to sit still, be quiet and behave.
From an early age we are moulded for a life of desks, screens and automobiles. How much of our days are spent sitting?
In a car, then at a desk and ending on a sofa. Rinse and repeat until the end of time. But we are not built to sit, nor to be still.
We have not evolved to use screens or watch tv.
Over a millennia, humans have adapted to hunt, forage, and survive, If a shark stops swimming it dies and if a dog doesn’t walk & play it becomes fat & depressed.
If a human stops being human… well you know the rest.

I can’t blame anyone, I’m as guilty as anyone. We have every piece of film at our fingertips, every song ever sung, every word ever uttered.
For most, work is no longer building, growing or crafting. Work is now a laptop. Tapping, conversing, and streaming for hours on end. iPads are the new parent and Google the new teacher.

Our existence is so far removed from our free and wild ancestors that it’s hard to imagine life without constant noise, distraction & money, I’m not advocating for going back in time.
It’s hard to fathom what life would be like without the convenience of being able to whatsapp my brother on the other side of the world, stream an audiobook to my ears in a heartbeat or a quickly facetime mum on a Sunday afternoon and don’t even get me started on the wonders of modern medicine.
What I do wish for is a collective acknowledgement of our need to move. When a child is fidgeting, it’s not because they’re naughty or not listening- they are thinking processing, and learning.
When you are feeling restless, don’t rest but go. Use your hands, your legs, your heart and your mind.
We are so quick to define and sweep aside any kid who doesn’t conform to the narrow paths set out in our education system.

It’s impossible to truly weigh up the pros & cons of diagnosing people with different learning difficulties, and for sure it’s important to specialise teaching for the multitude and variety of students that make up tomorrow’s society.
But anecdotally at least, the amount of truly amazing and intelligent people I have had the pleasure of knowing that have experienced the feeling of not measuring up against their peers, feeling insufficient or stupid, all because they have been categorised with dyslexia, dyspraxia or autism. Concepts that only exist when you require literacy, mathematical and modern social skills. Both of course helpful & important in our modern age, but also exactly that – modern constructs that do not come naturally.

In short what I’m trying to say is that we must not write off others for being easily distracted or find maths or literacy challenging, everyone has strengths and it’s all about finding and nurturing them.
We all have a need to move, to think and be free.
In a world of screens and 24-hour news we could all be diagnosed with ADHD but of course that’s because of All Dis High Definition.

For many, the month of November entails growing a moustache to raise funds and awareness for mens health, both mental and physical.
Movember is wonderful cause, not only for the money raised but the mentality that it promotes - checking in on your bros.
In the run up to this November, upon thinking about whether to grow a mo or no, I realised that I hadn’t really been checking in on myself, and didn’t feel like I was in any position to check in on anyone as I didn’t have anything straight in my own head.
I don’t know what my plans are, I don’t know who I want to be or what I want to do.

Now these are very much ‘first world problems’ I grant you that, but that doesn’t make them any less of a problem.
I am blessed by the luxuries of a loving family, caring friends and a stable enough job, why am I not using this blessings to help other people?
I have free time, I should have money left at the end of the month and I want to do good, but instead I find myself spending too much, drinking too much and ultimately not doing anything lasting or of any positive impact.
I’ve lost my direction and with it my discipline.

Now how do I get that back? I used to be strict with my diet, exercise routine and be excited to get work in the morning - leaving me free on my days off to enjoy time with friends and connect with almost anyone I bumped into.
Now I eat whatever, don’t really exercise at all and have to drag myself into work every morning dreading the day ahead.
NOvember.
If I just cut out a load of things I do that waste time, money and energy, then maybe I’ll be in a better position to take on more, to reconnect with myself and give back to those who provide me with my aforementioned blessings.
If you know me, you’ll know I like to suffer, it forces me to dig deep and I think in digging deep a real sense of humanity can be found.
The list looked something like this: ⁃ No sugar ⁃ No breakfast ⁃ No scrolling ⁃ No drinking ⁃ No smoking ⁃ No late nights ⁃ No spending ⁃ No shit coffee ⁃ No excuses
The first of November was a write off, I needed up breaking every single rule, so we started again on the 2nd.
This is something I’ve done before, failed very hard on the first day.
But it’s about the end goal, a month without these things is more important than the dates it falls into, so I’ll just stop on the 2nd of December instead.

Fast forward to the 7th. I was out at a friends for dinner and someone brought Ice cream and I couldn’t resist, after all I lasted a week with nothing else, it felt justified.
I couldn’t knock the habit of scrolling, I didn’t plan to have anything else to do so I just keep getting lost in my timelines.
On the 16th I ate a whole box of Jaffa cakes with a carton of strawberry milk, oops.
I’ve only eaten dark chocolate but that still has sugar in, hmm. Oh and I bought some skis, maybe I’ll class that as an investment.
It hasn’t been the best, but it’s certainly been an improvement.

On a positive note I’ve been going to the gym after work at least 5 times a week, and that’s because I want to go, which is a nice change, I’m not forcing myself. Maybe the discipline is coming back, we’ll see how it progresses.
I have two days left now and I haven’t had anything to drink or smoke, and I’ve only been drinking nice coffee. We’re getting somewhere.
Onto YEScember, maybe I’ll get onto doing some good as well as cutting out the bad.
I’ll let you know.

Morgan
"I survived the great Sue Ryder clothes avalanche of 2020, 6 days buried under M&S cheque shirts with only a saucisson in my pocket.. rough."

Since I was 16 I’ve been an almost obsessive advocate for charity shopping.
It was certainly written in my stars, as my mother would drag me between BHF, Age UK and Cancer Researches as a kid, assuring me of all the wonders and bargains available while I cringed at the thought of everybody who must’ve died in all these hanging clothes.
As a youngen I was all about the Converse, baggy jeans and a Saltrock tee and hoodie (my favourite brand back then, and still some of my favourite branding - bigup Tok) and once i started actually choosing my clothes myself circa age 14, I became a classic teenage high street hoe - Topman jeans, a checked shirt from River Island, a big baggy tee from H&M (sorry world).

Not ideal, but after one fateful day in the first year of sixth form when me and three homies caught a train up to Plymouth for a big day shopping and visiting franchises that were inaccessible to us as lowly Cornish boys and girls,everything would change.
We found one street which had about 10 charity shops on and just strolled down, amassing a whole new wardrobe each of gender bending, irregularly cut fashion statement pieces - which would herald in the age of James and I becoming the fashion icons of the common room - and having only spent about £30 each.
I was sold.

In the early days it was novel to remark that my whole outfit had come from charity shops and cost less than some arbitrarily low amount.
These days, aside from a few staples like my favourite Uniqlo vests and occasionally my underwear, it’s a surprise if I’m wearing anything bought new, and as I’ve got better at blagging from my friends and family, and worked industries where there’ll be clothes knocking around for the more margain-minded to snap up for free, that arbitrarily low amount seems to get lower.
That is probably my first solid argument as to why more people should give their local Children’s Hospice shop a visit; so many of my favourite pieces, and bits which might be able to fetch a pretty penny, not that I’d ever want to sell them (yellow Mambo shirt with the roses, thank you Newquay Oxfam), cost less than a fiver.
And if I had a penny every time I compliment homies on their ankle-length silk jacket or 70’s corduroy flares they look like they were poured into and I hear “Thanks, got them in a charity shop!” I could probably afford to buy myself some of this shit new.

My next point is that the industry of charity shops and bolstering the ‘Reuse’ section of the ubiquitous three R’s which people so often think of backwards, truly is something which should be higher in people’s consciousness.
My mum tells me of times when she was growing up where buying clothes new wasn’t really an option.
Special occasions you may get to ask for a certain dress you’d seen somewhere but you may only buy one or two new items a year, as opposed to the Primark-happy, SHEIN-centric fuckdom that we currently live in.
See the freedom in wearing something you won’t see anybody else in, the potential for those jeans which you’ve fallen out of love with to inspire a new outfit for someone else, and the opportunity to support a charity you care about to do some good without having to put yourself out of pocket (insert a terrible pun about pockets).

My last point (promise), is a reflection on my time volunteering in my local CHSW under the powerhouse management of local legend Kirstie Madden.
I was blown away to see behind the scenes of a shop which I’d spent much time and money enjoying, and how overrun they were with donations, considering the process which they had to go through to get it out on the floor.
All clothes needed sifting through for stains and stank, organising by category and size, and steaming to make them look presentable.
It’s not just as simple as emptying the darkest crevices of your chests of drawers into a sac and raking in cash for it, and that’s just the clothes. Electronics need PAT testing, crockery and bric-a-brac needs checking for collectable value, books and DVD’s need checking for completeness.
These jobs need doing all day every day by teams of often retirees, fuelled by tea and biscuits and not seeing anything back but the lovely locals you get to chat to and the knowledge that they’re doing a whole heap of good.

Kirsty was an icon in her approach, she’d rummage through the mountains of donations if people were looking for something specific, offer discounts to people who she felt needed it and sell things online which she thought wouldn’t get the attention they deserved in her likkle Cornish shop.
A true hero and a presence sorely missed, though her heroism is just being applied in other ways now.

So, to wrap this up, whether you’re shopping for that new long tartan skirt, a decent quality Elton John vinyl, more cake forks for your restaurant on Magdalen Road, a last minute fancy dress costume or some beautifully pointless or pointlessly beautiful tat to busy up your mantle piece, I’d like to suggest we all make the most of these hallowed establishments in as conscious a way as possible.
Consider a couple of hours volunteering if you can, chat to Caroline about her family and make some cups of tea; keep supporting the shops and make a scout of the locals wherever you go high on your priority list, you never know when you’ll stumble upon a particularly eccentrically dressed Somerset village with an RSPCA filled to the brim with goodies.
And for Salvation Army’s sake, wash your clothes before you donate them, lest they end up getting ragged or worse still, taken to the Matford carboot for Hal to bring home to his disgusted girlfriend along with the stench of a year’s BO mixed with moulded moth balls.

As always I just wanted to thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed hearing from the boys.
I'm hoping to expand on the newsletter a little bit when we get the time off in January, bring more people from around Exeter that we know into the spotlight, maybe get Morgan to take some great photos and jazz it up a bit more.
Anyway this is something that we all enjoy very much, and hopefully that comes through in the writing, all the best wishes for you in the run-up to Christmas and hopefully its a good one.
See you in 2022!