Lee Kemp

Fazeley Studios, where Fullrange is based, runs a yoga class on a Tuesday night. I’m genetically, politically and historically predisposed towards not doing stuff like yoga. It’s the kind of thing that people who read the Guardian do and, you know, I was in the army, grrr gung ho bollocks etc.

But I went for physio about 8 years ago after a car accident. Another car went into the back of mine at speed and I was hit hard enough for the stereo to fly out of its housing and into the back seat. I went to physio feeling generally fine but with sore muscles around the neck from the whiplash. After the initial consultation I felt like a wreck. Not just because the physio, a waif-like pregnant woman, had used my body for origami practice but also because she had identified a series of other problems. My left hamstring had become much shorter than my right, I wasn’t breathing properly out of my left lung and my awful posture had set in motion back problems that would likely plague me if I didn’t resolve them sometime in the next two decades.

All this made me realise that we are very good at compensating for stuff. Over time we develop little physical problems from bad posture or unresolved injuries that don’t score highly enough to need medical attention but do affect us in some way. So we compensate. When you tie your shoelaces you find somewhere to sit, you don’t crouch down or bend at the waist anymore like you did when you were a kid. Your ability to sit cross legged for hours has long since disappeared so you don’t do it. I’m probably about 60% as flexible now as I was twenty years ago and those are just two points on a downward trajectory towards a wheelchair in old age. I don’t imagine it needs to be like that.

I think, hope, you just need to give your body some attention.

I don’t mean like running, which is giving your cardio-vascular and leg muscles attention. That’s fitness. I’m talking about just concentrating on your body, how it works and how it moves. Or doesn’t move. Hence going to Yoga.

I’ll tell you about it later. It hurts.

I went to an RSA event recently as a guest of a fellow and got talking to someone from the Birmingham Book Festival. He was telling me about writing stuff that I didn’t know about and I was telling him about things that he didn’t know about. So I thought I’d put it all in one place.

Coming Up: Channel 4′s scheme is open to writers without an original single, series or serial broadcast on telly and directors without a primetime credit. Someone I know on the scheme a couple of years ago went on to write a film called Outpost. It got made by the same director and got theatrical distribution last year. The scheme’s definitely worth a look. It is aimed at writers with something of a track record but I know for certain that they’re simply looking for talented people.

The chap I met told me about the Birmingham Book Festival. The event is geared more towards novelists, poets and non-fiction writers but there is some scope for screenwriters so worth keeping a weather eye out.

Shooting People is  something some people rave about. I think it’s worth joining for a year and making your own mind up. The guy that runs the writer’s list, Andy Conway, lives in Birmingham and his website is worth reading. www.andyconway.net

Film Forum West Midlands. I’m a member but haven’t yet managed to make it to any of the events. They used to be on weekends and then when they held their first midweek event it was on the same night as my own embryonic writer’s group. But i’ll be along before too long.

In other news, we had a Canadian music video director called Jazz Virk come into the office. We sat round for  a while swapping favourite movies (anything by Park Chan Wook) and watching each other’s films. I was lucky enough to have some stuff with guns and explosions in but I couldn’t really compete with his Jazzy B video that contained a couple of Rolls Royce Phantoms, two Bugati Veyrons and a gulfstream jet.

The lovely Simon Cox, director of cult movie Written in Blood popped in too and I might have my first interview on here soon with him. He’s currently seeking funding for his sci-fi movie The Kaleidoscope Man.

Something substantial next time. See you soon.