The Radiohead of Comedy? Hope so!

Happy Friday!

This week I believe in OK Foiled

People talk about the difficult second album, but what about the third?

Studious readers of this newsletter will know that Beth and I are in the throes of writing Series 3 of breakout hit BBC Radio Wales sitcom Foiled. (I'm pretty sure I can use the term 'breakout hit' thanks to our repeat on Radio 4 Extra last year.)

Over the past three years, we have developed enormously as writers of sitcomedy. Broadly one could sum up the progress as psychological, from scatterbrained panic in the first series, through sophomoric eustress in series two, right up to this year's waaaaay too casual late start.

Fingers crossed that our trajectory as writers is following the course of everyone's favourite emo-rockers, Radiohead.

Our first radio series was very much a Pablo Honey - an enjoyable collection with some terrific moments, but very much the sound of a group of people figuring out who they are and what on earth they're supposed to be doing.

Extended Metaphor Tracks: Prove Yourself, swiftly followed by I Can't.

Our second series was The Bends - emerging from the zeitgeist with a confident sound that draws attention from some of the industry's biggest names.

Stretched Metaphor Tracks: Writing: Sulk. Recording: Nice Dream.

Third time around, we'd absolutely love to present for your listening pleasure the OK Computer of radio comedy - as rule-breaking as it is ground-breaking; as rabidly reviewed as it is devoured by an adoring public.

But, frankly, this analogy is growing thin, and we haven't got two years to write the bloody thing.

Tortured Metaphor Tracks: Fitter, Happier - and almost certainly very soon Climbing Up The Walls.

Having said that, we're feeling pretty Lucky about our ideas for episodes one and three, and if we get anywhere even half close to the artistic and commercial success of Radiohead's third album then one day, maybe, just maybe, Beth and I can finally launch our own line of commemorative beach towels, RRP £35.00.

If you like this sort of thing, then you'll probably also like my back catalogue of over 500 posts, all found at davidcharles.info.

SYLVA

It is natural for a man to feel an aweful and religious terror when placed in the centre of a thick wood. John Evelyn (1664)

I'm not the first to notice that trees are operating on a completely different time scale to us puny humans.

Take this wild cherry, for example, just now coming into blossom in the park outside my house. She's about as old as I, and yet still doesn't have her own BBC radio sitcom.

Some trees - most trees - live lives that are unfathomable on our human scale.

What could I possibly have in common with a Norman gent of the Middle Ages? And yet, only twenty minutes' cycle from my blossoming park is the Domesday Oak, a portly 8 metres in girth, perhaps trodden into the ground by one of the conquerors themselves.

There's a yew in Wiltshire that's been carbon dated to 2,000 BC.

We gaze in awe at the Pyramids, Stonehenge and other man-made wonders of the ancient world, but forget the astonishing ancient bark living and breathing beside us still.

To recall our Shelleyan ponderings of last week:

'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Nothing beside remains, Shelley might have written, except a stand of oak trees, a churchyard yew, a scattering of larch, a copse of juniper and pine, a mighty beech and a 6,000 tonne quaking aspen.

I've published 5 books, including stories of hitch-hiking from London to Ben Nevis, and cycling 4,110 miles around Britain. Visit my tiny book shop.

The ebooks are Pay What You Want, so you choose the price tag. Can't say fairer than that.

Ah, the weekend! The fond and final resting place of hangovers and housework. But a recent study has unearthed a convenient life-hack that could help you return to work on Monday morning with more of a spring in your step.

Three researchers at the sinister-sounding UCLA Anderson School of Management have discovered that treating your weekends as if they were holidays is enough to give your brain the kind of psychological break that it needs to reset and refresh - even if you do only just survive the hangover and housework.

Their life-hacking instruction is straight-forward:

To the extent possible, think in ways and behave in ways as though you were on vacation.

Compared to a control group, the weekend-vacationers returned to work happier. Bingo!

As the research paper concludes:

Thus, time-poor Americans may be able to enjoy the happiness from vacation without actually having to take additional time off.

Or, indeed, without their overlords and masters actually having to pay the serfs sufficient sums so they can take, god forbid, an actual holiday.

Much love, - dc

CREDITS

David Charles wrote this newsletter. David is co-writer of BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, and also writes for The Bike Project, Elevate and Thighs of Steel. He can be found at davidcharles.info and no longer on Twitter.

WORD OF THE WEEK

DYLANESQUE

Resembling or reminiscent of Bob Dylan or his work, esp. his songs or records, which are characterized by poetic, often enigmatic, lyrics, a distinctive, abrasive vocal delivery, and music rooted in traditional American styles, such as folk, blues, and country

Added to the Oxford English Dictionary a couple of months ago, and first attested in the Yale Daily News in 1964. See also: Dylanology, Bryanology.