I’m not sure where to go. I’m free. I’m very, very tired. I’m relaxing. Thursday was a success. I get to Cardiff and get a lift to Canton with my father immediately. We wait for 30 minutes for Teilo to get back in touch as I’m meant to pick up the Pizzaman episodes on discs from him. The plan is to then go to pick up my mother from work and drop both my father and mother home so I can go to Penarth to have tea with my cousins. I get a little impatient as Teilo doesn’t get in touch so I decide to do the next part of my journey. As a back up I asked Gareth Sturgess the Pizzaman editor to drop the series onto DVD but I made the mistake of leaving it too long to ask and he wasn’t able to do it although he e-mails me as I’m going to pick up my mother that he is starting to do it at that moment. There are no guarantees that he’ll have it finished in time for me to get to Newport and back.
En route to my mother I also get a text from Teilo to say he’s actually at home on the other side of Cardiff. His phone’s battery had died earlier on. I get to mum and then drop mum and dad home so I can take the car. I go to Teilo’s home to realise he’s now living above a florist. I get the Z1 HDV camera, tripod and the discs from him and head to Penarth. I’m on a bit of a schedule as if I’m five minutes late I’ll be stuck in traffic for best part of an hour. I see it ahead but it’s moving continuously and I feel I’m lucky with the lights.
At my cousin’s home it’s really great to spend some time with them. I have an hour there before I’ve got to get myself to Cardiff. During my tea of scrambled egg and beans, which I don’t feel is quite enough for me, I’ve also not eaten properly all day and was looking forward to a decent feeding that never comes, Gareth the editor texts to say the DVD will be ready in an hour. This puts me in quite a predicament, I could leave immediately and get to Newport and the evening in time or I could honour my word of staying for an hour with a part of my family I feel I’ve neglected due to Pizzaman for the best part of two year, and with children two years is a long time to have no real contact. Of course I stay. I learn something very important. Pizzaman may not have worked due to parental control. Censorship is regulated by a national body on the internet, that being the mum and dads of this world making sure their children are not adversely influenced by images or videos on the internet. I find this out when my cousin Jenny tells me she’s been reading my facebook messages and I ask if she’s seen the series. Instead of an answer from her there is a subtle but very quick ‘no’ from Jenny’s step father. This says it all to me and I realise that getting into school’s was almost an impossibility for Pizzaman. It was never going to explode very easily at all, our task quashed by something so far out of our control that if I wanted to do any better I needed to invent a kid’s version You Tube.
Thankful for the lesson I say my goodbyes and jump into the car. I call Gareth to see if the DVD will be ready anytime soon. He says it will be so I say I’m on my way and take his post code. I hang up and call James Morris who I’ve been in touch with all day letting him know about bands and artists I’ve found, to tell him I’m nipping to Newport. He tells me he needs a DVD player so I hang up and call my folks to bring their spare one. I’m amazed how disorganised James is and fear that the night will happen only a few times and fizzle. I hope it doesn’t. I then drive as fast as I can to Newport, time is very tight. I’m all go go go. I’m using my iPhone as a sat nav so going a little slower than I want to in order not to crash whilst following it. I finally get there and hear a voice calling me as I walk in the wrong direction. Gareth with the DVD saying one of the episodes doesn’t play properly so has dropped it onto another disc. I tell him I love him and get back into the car. I have 15 minutes to get to Buffalo Bar in Cardiff. I call James to say I’ll be there in 20.
I race the motorway and get there to meet my parents who help with the kit and I go off and park over the road running myself back to the bar from the car. I find James standing on a stool adjusting the projector with no luck. The video image is fuzzy and buttons are pressed to no avail. I run back to the car to get my laptop in case its the DVD player. I get back and James is still on the stool, for a moment there it comes into focus perfectly. I go to the DVD player again and fiddle with the wires they’d plugged into the back, presto it becomes a crisp picture. We tape the wire into a position that will hold it in place to replicate the image on the screen. With that done James asks if I’m all ready to go. I say yes and he asks if I could announced the start downstairs in the bar. I raise my voice and feel like I’m at a church fate as I bellow ‘ladies and gentleman’. People make their way up.
CT and Hilly from Radio Cardiff jump up onto the stage and I go with them feeling a bit like a gooseberry with nothing to say. I ask that they bring Teilo up there as well. He comes to stand next to me as CT & Hilly introduce the night, I whisper to Teilo that I have no idea why we’re on the stage at that point. Then we’re properly introduced to the crowd of about 50 people and we say our thank-yous to cast and crew and audience. I then run to the DVD player and press play and there it is, our creation on the big screen.
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