Lager Time Paul Cree

Greetings, bonjour, what’s happening? Welcome to Lager Time. This is the final edition in this series I’ve been writing, based on quotes from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations book. For each chapter, I selected one quote, then wrote something inspired by the quote. This piece is from Book 12, entitled On Renewal. If you like it, there’s 11 more in the archives. I’m taking a little break for a while, but rest assured I’ll be back soon. Enjoy
P.S – If you’re enjoying this, if you haven’t already, you can subtribe here and if you think someone else might like it, please be sure to let them know. Much apricated, Paul
If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings, bonjoour, what’s happening. This is the penultimate episode / blog in this series where I’ve been getting stuck into the Meditations book, and writing bits based off quotes from each of the 12 books.
'Just as those who try to block your progress along the straight path of reason will not be able to divert you from principled action, so you must not let them knock you out of your good will towards them. Rather you should watch yourself equally on both fronts, keeping not only a stability of judgement and action but also a mild response to those who try to stop you or are otherwise disaffected. To be angry with them is no less a weakness than to abandon your course of action and capitulate in panic. Both amount equally to desertion of duty – either being frightened into retreat, or setting yourself at odds with your natural kinsmen and friends.'
BOOK 11 – 9
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
Love Scripted show, @ Call and response, ACTA Bristol 30th May 2024
https://acta-bristol.com/whats-on/call-response/
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

What is my directing mind to me? What am I turning it into now, what use am I making of it? Is it drained of intelligence? Is it divorced and broken off from society? Is it so interfused and welded to the flesh that it sways with its tides?
BOOK 10 – 24
If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy
Love Scripted @ ACTA, Bristol May 30th
https://acta-bristol.com/whats-on/call-response/#more-24704
Piped Piper show @ Southbank Centre, London 31st May – 2nd June
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/family-young-people/pied-piper-hip-hop-family-musical
‘Oh no my sandwiches’ Video loop
PMA -Persil advert


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

Look then at what is happening now. Only the intelligent creatures have forgotten the urge to be unified with each other: only here will you have no confluence
BOOK 9 - 9.3
Based on what I witnessed and experienced, growing up around Horley and Crawley, there was a lot of low-level isms - racism, sexism, classism, homophobia - ism and probably more isms - maybe even Marxism, but I didn’t know what that was until after I’d left the place, and too many people had done alright off of Maggie Thatcher and bought their council houses for that ever to take hold. There was one guy I remember, who was the father of a kid I went to cubs with and a nice man. He had a long beard and wore sandals with his socks; maybe he was a communist lone-wolf, quietly and unsuccessfully trying to lead local workers away from Benidorm, towards a glorious workers revolution. Alas, I digress.  
Most of the racism, seemed to me, to take two forms: the first being jokes: which mainly saw Pakistanis, reduced to the P-word and serving as the main ingredient for crass punchlines, sometimes just puns on typical names, sometimes about skin-colour and culture. The P-word would get thrown around a lot, and was often just a lazy, very ignorant, catch-all term for brown and also darker-skinned people in general, not just limited to Asians: this could include people from Greek, Turkish, middle eastern or Portuguese backgrounds, or sometimes it was just aimed solely at Muslims. Perhaps this was relative to the area I grew up in, as Crawley had large Indian and Pakistani communities. It also had a big Irish community, and there were plenty of jokes about them too.
Some of these jokes were fairly innocuous, some were plain nasty, and sometimes they weren’t even jokes, it would just be the P-word hurled casually out of a car window, speeding passed some ordinary person just going about their day.
The second form would take the lazy parroting of thought-lacking negative tropes, to diagnose broader social-ills, like immigrants our taking our jobs etc. I heard these sorts of ones quite a lot. My guess was, looking back, that a lot of these statements, or accusations, were sometimes made out of fear - fear of losing something, like employment, or identity, but more often than not, like the above jokes, were made innocuously and in ignorance, with very little thought given to the consequences of saying those things.
When I was in cadets, I once got caught telling a P-word joke to another kid, and was made to stand-up by the commanding officer, in front of the group and given a severe bollocking. He was a white guy, but he was really angry about it, and fair enough, though I meant nothing by it, I learned my lesson. I remember feeling ashamed, and wished I hadn’t said it. I certainly wasn’t thinking about what the kid sat in ear-shot of me, who was from a Sri-Lanken background, might be thinking or feeling.
There was a third and much nastier form too, which from what I saw, was a lot rarer, but I encountered a few people who would probably fit into this category – and that is those who actually believed in the supremacy of white people, but more relevantly, had a severe hatred of those that weren’t them. That also included gay people, Jews and the Irish. There was a pub in Crawley which I forget the name of, which me and my mates would often drive passed, which had a reputation for housing BNP meetings; we never went in to validate those claims, we just knew to stay well away. The couple of people who I came across, who would fit into this category, were as you might imagine, pretty scary. There was occasionally one or two of them in the pubs I’d drink in; and there were always stories that accompanied them - doing jail-time in this prison or that, or running with the Chelsea hooligan firms in the 80’s. One of them had a spiders-Webb tatoo on his forehead. Again, just steered well clear of them.
Though Horley was predominately white, Crawley was a lot mo

Greetings, bonjour, what's happening
This week, I look at a quote form Book 8 of Marcus Aurelius's Mediitations, talking about computer games and not ever completing them
On Eating That Marshmallow
In the constitution of the rational being I can see no virtue that counters justice: but I do see the counter to pleasure – self-control.
BOOK 8 – 39

If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work
Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
www.paulcree.co.uk/shop
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
https://ko-fi.com/paulcree


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings, bonjour, what's happening?
Welcome to Lager Time.
This week's episode is called On Good Help vs Bad help, and is inspired by a quote from book 7 of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 
Enjoy
BUY-ME-A-LAGER - https://ko-fi.com/paulcree
The Suburban Book: - https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/thesuburban
Romeo & Julliet @ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/


Get full access to Lager Time at cree.substack.com/subscribe