Category: Other

This week in my bizarre little double life, I have been lucky enough to stay up through the night working on re-drafts of a script, drunk whiskey in Ving Rhames’ favourite London pub and talked about guns, opera and the most effective way to simulate brain matter with a university lecturer.

We are still hard at work on the Delectably Dead project which has its opening night in about three weeks. Scott and I sat up all night playing around with the script and doing silly voices. We then read it to George and were all happy with what we had. Then I slept for the longest time.

When I came round, I caught up with one of my best friends at the OKH in London Bridge before heading to GBK and eating my weight in sweet potato fries. I have since become addicted to abbreviations. Over the course of our catch up we talked about love, money and zombies, the key topics which had changed since we last spoke. There’s something daunting about the idea of turning 30 so it was good to try and hash out some kind of plan for that with one of my nearest and dearest.

On my night off I hit the gym and then spent an hour on the phone to my dad explaining what a zombie dinner show is. Despite the fact he gets scared when Zombie Pete comes out of the shower curtain in Shaun Of The Dead he has agreed to come and see the show. I am so excited about it that I could vomit. In fact, I did, just last night, but that was because I got a little overzealous with the tongue scraper.

Scott, George and I met with a special effects director, fight choreographer and all round awesome guy who works locally and agreed to give us some pointers for the show. Without seeming pious in any way, shape or form he provided a list of things we needed to work towards pulling off as well as pulling out some of the most incredible anecdotes for us to enjoy. He has even said he is interested in coming to see the show and giving us lessons in stage combat. I’m a lover, not a fighter, but that is not to be missed.

With enough juice down us to satisfy our five a day we headed back to the unit and prepped some of the additional work required for the play. We want the project to be as immersive as possible so there are all kinds of tricks and games going on behind the scenes. I don’t want to give anything away but at midnight I was running around a car park with a Nerf gun, pretending to be a girl from above the Watford gap.

As I have mentioned recently, I am really enjoying where I am at currently. It’s sometimes surreal, often tiring, but I would not give it up for anything. Scott says you have to throw enough shit at a wall for something to stick. I’m trying to throw enough Schiernecker.

While I try and work out what having an album out means, here’s the YouTube stream of the album for those of you who are into that sort of thing.

This weekend I had something of a blip in my mental health. I just thought it was worth mentioning as a reminder that this shit doesn’t just go away and is something that I continue to battle like that bowlcut-headed twerp in The NeverEnding Story.
Depression and anxiety are a total bitch. I wish there was any other way around it. I got home on Friday and I felt good about things. I woke up on Saturday and I thought my entire body was going to get sucked into a black hole in my chest. That’s just how it presents itself in me. I can’t speak for anyone else. I sat with that awful feeling all day and although I was able to get on with a project I’ve been working on, I didn’t want to see anyone, I couldn’t leave the house and I found myself breaking down into tears and having to tell my mum that I was struggling.

It’s hard for people to get their head around. Nothing has to happen. Nothing necessarily kicks it off but then I get sick and I feel rubbish for a couple of days and then I’m alright again. It’s horrible when you’re in the midst of it.

Fortunately I had a very good friend turn up and sit with me and the sadness on Sunday evening so by Monday at 11am I was actually able to leave the house and get further than a couple of miles from my sofa.

I just wanted this to serve as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else that there are times when it sucks and there are times when everything seems awesome and that life is a constant back and forth between those two with plenty of leeway. It’ll get better again. It might get worse again. Fuck it. Enjoy the ride.

I would like to thank Steph, as well as my mum, my dad, my brothers, Jill, and anyone else who reached out to me when things went dark.

“Don’t start a fresh on your head, start it in your head” said my brother, in a move that was both unusually profound and advice I would ignore. I’ve always been very protective over my hair, my curls. Only yesterday I went for drinks with a friend who hadn’t seen me since the bold move to shave it all off, to lose it all.

“Where are the curls?” she asked immediately, rubbing her hand over my scalp, looking both enthralled and disgusted, like when you pet a naked mole rat. Here is the story of how and why I shaved my head and why it isn’t that big a deal and makes me feel like a superficial little idiot.

This year has had its ups and downs. Every year has its ups and downs. It’s not really possible to blame it on the year or to say that you can’t wait for a given year to be over to start. There are positives that come from a new year but essentially time is an invention of man and you have to make your own decisions and are responsible for your own destiny etc.

I’ve said for a long time that something boldly cathartic I would like to do is shave my head. It felt like a cool thing to do, like when JT left N*Sync and shaved his head or when Zayn Malik left One Direction and shaved his head. I wanted that sort of going it alone after life in a boyband vibe. Didn’t quite achieve it but nevermind.

There’s a lot to be said about siblings. I said to my therapist this week that siblings are able to say exactly the right thing to undermine you in a way that you thought you had grown out of. I feel like a strong confident man who don’t need no thing. My brothers are able to chip that charade away with the expertise of a marble cutter and say just the thing to make me feel like a skinny little twerp once more.
“You’ve got a funny shaped head”.
Oh no. It stings. I want to hide in my bedroom and read about Narnia. Aslan wouldn’t cuss my scalp. He’s got a glorious mane. He’s like a Jesus for the new age.

I was in Singapore. It was hot. Unbearable heat and humidity and this flop of new romantic fringe kept getting in my way and I figured the best thing I could possibly do is just shave it off and it could be part of me finding myself while I travelled across Asia with my friend Adam. It seemed like a cool thing to do. It would be bold. It would be shocking. Then again, on a trek through the Grand Canyon last year I went for a dip under a waterfall and when I crawled out with my hair stuck down on top of my head the guide said “you’ve got a head like a peanut”.

I told Adam I was going to shave my head. It seemed like it would be the answer to all of my problems. It helped with some of them, sure, but there’s no such thing as a solution to all my problems. Maybe there is but the Oedipal stuff is pretty deep set.
My friend Luke worked in Geylang as a barber for eighteen months. He lived in the Pinnacle Tower. He told me that while I was there I should visit his old shop and see his buddies and they would sort me out. I decided that would be the time when I would take the plunge and shave my head. We arrived hungover on the Monday and found it was closed. It obviously wasn’t meant to be. I would keep my hair for another day. We got some questionable buffet food and continued to tour around.

When we checked into our Air BnB in Malaysia I told Adam the time had come for him to shave my head. He seemed sadistically keen on the idea. I sat on a towel topless and gave him my beard trimmer. He turned it on and ran it through the middle of my head. There was no turning back.

Fifteen minutes later I was bald. Adam told me I looked dangerous. With my tattoos and shaved head there was something of the This Is England look about me, something proved as we pranced across Thailand together and got strange looks.

It had the desired effect. I felt different. I had one less thing to worry about. I’m not going to keep it this short and can’t help but notice how high my hairline now is but fuck it, it’s only hair. It’s aged me a little but at the moment that’s not a bad thing.
The only thing I did realise is that the whole Justin/Zayn thing didn’t happen. What I had done was have a 2007 Britney Spears style breakdown. I went away to find myself. I wasn’t there. I did however get my happy ending.

Today marks the start of Depression Awareness Week 2016. I’ve written a lot in recent months abut my own struggles with depression and anxiety. I believe it is important to. You tell your friends and family when you’re physically ill so why not when you are mentally as well.

There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s certainly nothing wrong with you. Together we can all work on removing the stigma and ensuring that mental health concerns are appropriately and professionally handled.

It’s not fun and it’s not pretty but it’s so important. I cried myself to sleep last night. I cried in therapy today. Every single day is hard but there are always things worth fighting for and you are the person who can do it.

Please talk to me if you are ever feeling bad. I am here to help. Be strong and stay strong and look after yourself.