The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2019 - Issue 26

bite red carpet ty to join in. Even when invited to camp with the others, he is refused access to four of the tents, told they are full but finally finds an empty one. That night, one of the tents is having a party (which was a bit hilarious), but he is not invited and is left watch- ing from afar. As the narrator talks about loneliness, sadness, and depression being a state of the mind, the boy decides there and then he would change his own fate. “Right then, in that moment, while staring into the vast blackness of the universe, I realise just how insignificant my problems are,” the narrator added. “Those kids, the bullying, the names they called me, they made me feel like nothing is just a bump on the road of life. They were fragments of a summer that is ready to finish.” The film ends with a positive vibe in which the narrator stresses that no matter how bad a situation is, nothing lasts forever. In reality, this may be easier said than done but in this case, when the rain ends, they say you’ll be able to see the stars. The closing remarks tell us that we all need to learn to look to the future [as] expectations are socially confined. “Be happy with who you are and live in the moment. Who you are and what’s expected of you is just someone else’s perception.” The finale of the evening was Family Matters , a short film based on a true story about the struggles of Angela as she battles through the harassment of her partner’s drug addiction and the effects it has on their daughter, Lucy, and their future. This thought-provoking dramatic film really pulled on the heart- strings and highlighted what can happen when a person’s drug habit, especially someone close to you, can affect both you and the peo- ple that you love. Whilst some of us have never been in such situations, it must be difficult to acknowledge the adverse effects that someone’s actions can bring into your life until it is severely threatened. What do you do when your part- ner is being roughed up by local thugs because he owes them money for drugs? How can you protect your child when unbeknown to you, she is considering doing self-harm because she doesn’t know how to voice her concerns? Written by Elaine Eaglestone and Cheryl Neve, the story is based on Elaine’s experience with her children’s father who was a heroin addict. Her partner for 19 years, she explained that the journey through those years was hard. She had a business to run, was raising two children and had to deal with her partner’s problems on a daily basis. Not only did Elaine have to reveal the details of her experience but she also had to cast the actors including Debra Tennant as herself and Simon Gibbons as her ex-partner. Actor Simon Gibbons used his prior experience of playing a drug addict