I keep being asked about the new stuff coming out, and I usually only have time to give a very short answer, so here is what happened with the film.
I bought the equipment, know how to edit, probably need new software which I haven’t really costed yet as I have nothing to edit at the moment. Had made some costumes and some props, had notified the neighbourhood and was setting up for the first day of filming, which was a funeral scene.
I had thought out the plans for the film based upon my normal habits, so all I would have had to do is load up the car every time I was passing through the area, jump out of the car and do it.
I was still very upset over my friend’s untimely death at the time and did not really have anything nice to think about. Bawbag had been sufficiently ‘friendly’ to get his latest skank to come over and sound me out about returning to his dubious ‘fold’ and I had said no, on the basis that Bawbag is a pretty shitty person that isn’t very nice to his friends, especially when they are female. He had his chance at establishing trust, he blew it, probably delibarately but he is quite self aware and was sort of protecting me by doing this.
I say this as someone who has a lot of experience with disordered people. A disordered person who means you actual harm such as my eldest sister will verbally stab you in the face whilst telling you how much she likes you and gaslighting you, even when it is blisteringly obvious to any non-disordered or traumatised person present what she is doing. Basically all you have to do with that is let her speak and then ask the audience whether they would like a sister. I haven’t encountered anyone who wants to agree to this lovely offer yet.
Bawbag on the other hand, warned me very early on that he was not a nice person, that if he kept his hands off me it was a compliment and then preceeded to spend a year or three screaming abuse both to my face and behind my back because I did not return for round 2 after I insisted on making his cafe legal.
Friendly abuse, if you will. It did not do my physical health any good and I could have done with having an actual person to speak to, but the fact it was not far worse was gratifying, because it meant he did not actually mean me any harm despite the apparently constant self-torture. I used to send him presents from time to time as a sort of thank you for leaving me free to do my own thing. You do have to remember that disordered people are traumatised too, whether that is justified, as in Bawbag’s case, or not at all justified, as in my sister’s case.
Anyway, whilst I have a great number of contacts in the media industry, I do not particularly want to make use of them and some of them are just assholes that I do not want to see again, so I wasn’t going to be involving them. Besides which if any of them got wind of the Bawbag problem, a whole new set of problems would have emerged.
So I was left with only one option, and that was to do the thing myself and await some of the locals to show some interest.
So the day of the funeral shooting, I had selected a really great spot was about to do the shots, and Bawbag decided that he had no sense of humour and that he would show off to his wee friends what a tough guy he was, came out and smashed my stuff.
I am aware that this was as much about not involving him in the shoot as using me as a puppet to feign grandiosity, had I asked him to help there would have been no issue, but I did not want his help and did not see the need for it. I just expected him to suck it up and show a bit of understanding. Had he done so things could have been very different.
What it did demonstrate was that I was not safe or sufficiently well thought of in the area for anyone to show the slightest bit of enthusiasm or interest or deal with the Bawbag problem without police involvement.
I knew what he was going to do in terms of trying to damage me as a local character before he did it, because he was just my sister all over again, without quite as much actual poison. Bawbag has some warmth to his abuse, whereas with the sister it is directly toxic and the only thing you can do with it is make sure she cannot get anywhere near you. Let her poison her own family, now she cannot get involved with anything I am doing. She even found a way of using the Christmas presents I bought her kids against me, so I stopped bothering with that years ago.
Anyway, I responded to it by raising my profile rather than doing anything else, because getting involved in a disordered person’s pish is entirely pointless. They just keep going, year after year. Hence the small amount of promotion I have done, because the entire point of me sitting sewing in public for a year and a half was to make the film eventually and use it for something positive for everybody.
Anyway, despite a couple of attempts to get people to at least discuss it without spending too much time there in case Bawbag tried anything, nobody offered any support and one of the few conversations I had about it was someone saying their staff might not like the idea, which was particularly crap as a response. Therefore I just prioritised elsewhere and did not see the point in rushing to finish the collection after that. I was also pretty ill, but I seem to be in recovery at present.
You can spend a lot of time wasting your emotions on disordered people. They really aren’t worth it. They are sometimes likeable, sometimes not, either way you shouldn’t stop to listen as they are a waste of your time and energy.
Anyway, now I have a giant pile of work to finish, I await the inspiration to do something with them, but I suspect that what I am working on just now is not actually what I will end up with. Still trying to think what to do about the film as I have no intention of doing something in character thanks to the attack on my film set making it impossible for me to work alone and the lack of enthusiasm by a public suckered into sitting staring at other people having a life instead of having one themselves. That isn’t my problem, it’s theirs.