Three Days In and It's All Going Pear Shaped...

2008 has gotten off to an absolutely cracking start, courtesy of some pathological bad luck:

* Man-sized flu from Christmas day onwards – believe me, I was iller than a skip full of Beastie Boys CDs.
* The gear box on my car gave up the ghost. £1136 later, it’s fixed, but it looks like I’ll have to sell an internal organ to pay for it – what’s the going rate for a liver these days?
* New Year’s Eve – hooray! New Year’s Day – food poisoning!
* Dentist’s appointment yesterday. I hate the dentist even more than my mother hates the Krankies.

With all this in mind, I thought I’d better get my METLAB script in before my PC got hit by a stray meteorite.

I’ve also decided to go for the TAPS Finding the Writer’s Voice thing, so we’ll see how that pans out. According to the TAPS guidelines, it’s advisable to apply for funding through ScreenSouth. Right, sounds good to me. After downloading the training bursary application form from the ScreenSouth site, the first thing that strikes me is that you need to attach a ‘Career Plan’. Oh dear. This might take a bit longer than I thought. Also, reading through the RIFE guidelines, it states “all applicants must have applied to Skillset for a bursary before applying to Screen South.” Oh. OK then.

So it’s onto Skillset to discover that I probably won’t get any funding from this source, which is no great shakes. But the ScreenSouth application form states that I have to attach three copies of my Skillset submission. Hmmm.

Attempting to unravel the vagaries of ScreenSouth application forms is perhaps not the best way to start 2008. That said, the TAPS course is only £500 – what’s the going rate for a bit of bone marrow these days?