So as another week comes to a close and with shopping day imminent I find myself playing the weekly student version of ready steady cook. This week the items I have left to concoct a master piece are:

A small plate of grated cheese
A nectarine
A half eaten, cold pizza slice
Pasta sauce
Milk

I’m not going to lie I have faced far bigger challenges and come out of the other side passing with flying colours (the week where I had a half a bottle of Jack Daniels and a banana was an all time classic) so I’m not particularly phased by the task at hand.

However, one of the ingredients today did get me thinking, quite a lot in fact. So much so that my thinking, like it often does, spiralled out of control until I was pondering over far more important issues than ready steady cook (No offence intended Ainsley Harriot.) I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, the ingredient in question was milk.

Now in my opinion, milk is up there with toast as the most under rated thing ever. It’s ridiculous how much we use it in fact with cereal, tea, and white Russians just a few examples of its importance. Where in gods name would we be without these things?! It must surely be one of the most commonly used things in the world. This leads me to my point, yes believe it or not I have one. Who discovered milk? Who had the balls to go over to their mates and admit ‘Hey lads, I was just playing with that cows udders over there and this weird shit came out, its pretty good.’ Now correct me if I’m wrong but in no point in history has it been acceptable to be participating in certain activities with a cow and I can not see any other way of making such a discovery.

So like a true professional I decided to do some research and delve deeper into the subject. Turns out, milk was found in the early fifteenth century in Turkey during a time that was named the ‘exploration period.’ It was in this time that Christopher Columbus was busy getting lost and stumbling upon new places with funny languages and foods setting up many of the world’s current trading routes and connections. Inspired by this our chirpy Turkish farmer probably fancied getting involved in the action of ‘exploration’ and thought he’d make the best out of what he had, rolling up his sleeves and heading towards his anxious looking cow.

I’m almost 100 percent sure that when he told people about his discovery he was either laughed at for the rest of his life or the rest of his life was short lived. This has been the pattern for many of our great discoveries and innovators such as Darwin and Newton who were famously criticised by spectacle people of their time. People are always scared of something different and life changing. These people became legends of history because they stuck with their idea and kept plugging away at it until people could no longer frown upon them. As a scriptwriter I feel I can take many lessons from this.

I’m a firm believer that everyone has at least one good idea or discovery in them and everyone has the potential to be creative. At some point in life you will strike upon something that will ultimately be your signature item. The hard part is sticking with it and believing in yourself enough to sell it to other people and keep throwing it in peoples faces until they can’t refuse it anymore.

I told you I had a point.

Oh crap the milks off, turns out I can’t use it in my concoction anyway. What might have been hey?

So here I am again wondering what I can do with myself in order to feel useful. Its amazing how often you can get this feeling as a student with the same question often cropping up, if University is the time of opportunities should I really be watching a repeat of Deal or No Deal whilst searching on the internet trying to find where Noel Edmunds gets his shirts from? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a very productive person and although I hate to brag here our the highlights from my list of accomplishments in this last week:

Built a large tower shaped object entirely out of Jaffa Cakes then as a finale ate the top one with out toppling the building.
Finally managed to sit through the whole of the film ‘The Deer Hunter’ without falling asleep.
Successfully sold ‘The Deer Hunter’ DVD to LES008 on ebay for a terrific price of £6.58.
Got a real six letter word on Countdown.
Realized that releasing a venomous snake into the flat to solve the rat problem has merely acted as a catalyst for a slightly bigger problem.

I’m sure you’ll agree that is quite a sterling list and many of you will be saying to yourselves ‘well where do you go from here? Can things get much better?’ The answer believe it or not is yes for I am an ambitious go getter who refuses to rest on my laurels. Instead, for the benefit of this blog I am setting myself new targets to achieve as soon as possible. Now I’m also a realist so some of these may seem quite easy but just remember I got a six letter word on countdown* so technically I should be putting my feet up on a SAGA holiday satisfied with my life right now:

New targets:
Win an Oscar within one year
Rig it so I’m sat next to Rachael Weiz at the award ceremony
Woo Rachael Weiz.
Record a Christmas number one.
Convince Television executives to bring back Gladiators.
Do something exciting on a shoe string budget.
Get a seven letter word on Countdown.

These targets are aided by the production company I have just created with two other pals called ‘Ten Pesos’ (The name stems from a long and embarrassing story regarding a hot waitress on a recent holiday) and the band/duo/guitar appreciation society I am in which I won’t advertise now because it would be rather desperate. So whatever you do, don’t go and look on myspace.com/trilbys and listen to the great music on offer.

Our production company is currently working on its first big piece at the moment and on Saturday we get to wake up bright and early at half six in the morning to go shoot a scene involving a crazy, drunk Scotsman and a crazy golf course which should be exciting. Everything on the project seems to be going well at the moment so with a bit of luck the Oscar may be in the bag sooner than planned and me and Rachael Weiz will be discussing wallpaper colours for the spare room before you know it.

As for the other targets, the Christmas number one will obviously be aided by the band who will also hopefully help the ‘do something exciting on a shoe string budget’ idea. My plan so far involves walking round England with nothing more than a back pack and guitar stopping where we feel like, playing where we feel like and just generally taking in England. It’s such a hippie idea I can almost see Jimmy Hendrix winking at me from above. My plan then is to get as many people to walk with us as possible, getting us media attention which means we can make a live demand to bring back Gladiators which will obviously turn the wheels in motion.

As for seven words in Countdown. That’s nothing more than a pipe dream really.


*The six letter word was ‘sorted’