Gigs, Good times, Publications, Rants, Rambles and Frustrations

Sunday 21st October 2012

My cold has come back with a fucking vengeance. Snotty on stage last night. Don’t like being close to people at gigs and shaking hands when I’m loaded with germs. Woke about nine this morning and surprisingly Jenni was all full of energy and up out to the shop for juice and cigarettes.

Had a great time at JibbaJabba last night. Jen had been anxious about it all day, not having the big PA and other logistical hassles but it turned out to be one of the best attended gigs in ages. Claire Murphy Morgan did some autobiographical schooldays stuff which had humour and tension in the delivery. Radikal Queen did the best stuff I’ve seen from her, very impressive. Chris’s songs went down really well and Fernando’s set was a riot from start to finish, aided by the fact that the audience member on stage blitzed out of her head was an easy guinea pig for his hilarity. The open mic stuff was great. Really pleased to get a poem in each section. All very old pieces, two of which I’d never done before in Newcastle. One piece I’ve never done anywhere! Wanted to get over 75 gigs in this year but don’t think I’ll beat last year’s total. We could do Scratch this evening but I’ve no new performance stuff memorized.

Looks like a nice day out there. Think we should maybe sample some of the sunshine. 9.38 am.

We were up rather early this morning. A trip to the corner shop turned into a full-blown visit to Gateshead town centre. Came back after a bacon sandwich, armed with goodies to eat, read and watch. Jen got two WW11 books from the charity shop. I got two horror films from Poundland. Stephen King and Johnny Darko. We had an easy pie and mash lunch, apple pie and custard, crisps, pork pies for tea. Would’ve been a cakey tea but I forgot the cake. Didn’t watch anything until Big Bang Theory at six, very funny sitcom. Love watching it at Jenni’s place.

Seems to take longer and longer to get through the emails of stuff when I return home after a night away. It’s cold in the house. Should’ve put the heating on as soon as I got back; the pen will hardly move across the page.

I’m getting tired of this year’s journal. I’m tired of writing in a printed diary book. Either a smaller page next year or reverting to regular notebooks altogether like I used in the 90s. Want to be able to write as much or as little as I like in them. Had a look at some on Paperchase website. We’ll see.

I got published in Beautiful Scruffiness today. A prose vignette character sketch plus a highly positive review of Shades. Mentioned Stephen Clark’s artwork as well.

“To get money you must spend it” – so said Titus Maccius  Plautus, a BC Roman playwright. I know what he means. Whenever I spend on good items, particularly supporting local authors’ books or events, I get surprise payments in my bank account and job offers. How does it work? Maybe speculate to accumulate. The law of attraction.

Anyway, it’s been an okay sort of day and I’m going to make tomorrow count on the workshop prepping. 11.27pm.

Monday 22^nd October 2012

Why I’ll Only Be Buying Books at Regional Launches for the Foreseeable Future

Buddy Wakefield Gentleman Practice, Flash Fiction 72 Short Short Stories, , Tony Williams All the Bananas I’ve never Eaten, Carolyn Jess Cooke The Boy Who Could See Demons, Writing Routes Handbook, Lydia Davis Collected Stories, Steve Pottinger Shattered, Stephen J Clark In Delirium’s Circle, Ash Dickinson Slinky Espadrilles, Poetry Review Autumn 2012, Beautiful Scruffiness Issue 5, Poetry and Story Therapy Handbook, Writing Works Handbook, A Samuel Beckett Reader, Gavin Baddeley and Danni Filth Gospel of Filth, Armstrong and Miller Book, Steve Pottinger Kissing It All, Juliana Hatfield When I Grow up, Philip Hensher The Missing Ink, Stevie Chick Spray Paint The Walls The Black Flag Story, Wanda Coleman Native in a Strange Land, Dominic Berry Wizard, Dominic Berry Tomorrow I Will Go Dancing, Tristine Rainer Your Life Story, Richard W Hardwick Andalucia, Richard W Hardwick Kicked Out, Mary Karr The Liars Club, Rachael H Dixon Slippery Souls, George Beahm Bedazzled, James Corden and Ruth Jones Gavin and Stacy, Natalie Goldberg Top of my Lungs, WN Herbert Writing Poetry, Evel Knievel Life of Evel, Adele Olivia Gladwell Catamania, Rachael North Out of the Tunnel, Katie Metcalfe Anorexia A Stranger in the Family, Toyah Wilcox Diary of a Facelift, Easington Writers Footprints at the Water’s Edge, Liz Lochead True Confessions, Holly Lisle Midnight Rain, Dean Koontz Velocity, Henry Rollins Fanatic, Henry Rollins Fanatic Vol 2, Henry Rollins Fanatic Vol 3, Stephen Berkoff Graft Tales of an Actor, Steven Berkoff Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent, Bob Beagrie Glass Characters, Maggie Estep Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals, Maggie Estep Diary of an Emotional Idiot, Maggie Estep Soft Maniacs, Stephen J Clark The Satyr, Natalie Goldberg Banana Rose, Mort Castle Writing Horror, Emilie Autumn Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in… - Arthur Schopenhauer

DREAM: An art installation on a street consisting of huge cardboard boxes stacked in rows with the aid of a forklift truck One stack falls over. Next we see a guy hanging from a ledge about sixty feed in the air, his colleagues trying to secure other stacks of boxes around him. A huge intercity coach of school kids pulls into a car park on a council estate. No-one gets on, nobody gets off. There’s a knock at my door. I open it. Completely forgot about the meeting at 1.30pm. The man walks into my house. He’s waiting for the others and I can’t remember his name…

I’m feeling pretty stoked. Have read a good portion of Beautiful Scruffiness and am totally taken by the vintage look of it. Love the typewriter font and the colour artwork throughout. It’s great to see work in there by the likes of Bob Beagrie, Rose Drew and David R Morgan alongside newcomers such as Julie Edgell. I like the mix of surreal and grit, the earthy and the magical, it’s good to see it previewed online but I am eager to get my hands on a hard copy. A beautiful piece of work. Katie Metcalfe and her team of artists and production staff have created something that deserves a wide audience. This magazine has renewed my interest in small press magazines which has been on the wane in recent years due to focus on spoken word. I need to be getting involved in publishing again. 10.02pm.

Tuesday 25th October 2012

This time nine years ago I was heavily into trials biking and part-way through 118 days of successive riding whatever the weather. If it was raining I’d ride on waste ground near Castleside; if it was dry I’d be in the quarry for an hour. On days when it snowed, I’d push the bike over to the caves near the Hownsgill viaduct and ride inside for a while. On a few occasions there’d be plates of rock shattered on the ground near where I’d ridden the previous day. I’d look up to the roof of the cave and see where the pieces had fallen from. No bike or brainshell would withstand such an impact. But I was seriously obsessed with meeting my daily quota. Picking up a pen every morning and filling a few sides of A4 with the first words that fall from my mind is peanuts in comparison. I am not super talented. I have tenacity, I come from endurance. The ability to withstand adverse conditions. With writing, you mainly have to just turn up and be receptive to what’s around you, become comfortable with letting words form. It’s not rocket science. And it’s not like you have to be plotting a novel either. It’s great fun, when you’ve been practice-writing for a few months, to go back and see patterns emerging, recurring themes in the work. It’s how I put performance sets together. – stitching prose and verse fragments in sequence to form a narrative. It’s not the way everyone works but I like the act of discovery. I don’t go in for wall charts of possible fictional scenarios. I just push the words out, make use of my thoughts. Don’t try too hard, just show up.

Yesterday a long-term writer from Waddy rang to ask what she can do about a paralysed writing hand. I don’t know if physiotherapy will help out there; I suggested typing with her other hand and learning to do push a pen with it as well. The poet James Oates told me he lost the use of his writing hand when he lost half a finger and had to learn to write again. Took him about nine months I think. When you’re a writer you find a way, the mind still wants to tell stories, express itself, regardless of what the hand says.

Yesterday I made a list of over fifty books acquired over the last couple of years that I haven’t gotten round to reading yet, not completely anyway. For this reason I should be okay financially next year because I’m not going to buy more until I’ve cleared the backlog. Its like Schopenhauer said: you see a book, are keen to acquire the knowledge it contains and assume because you buy the words you immediately assimilate the information. You don’t, it remains locked within the pages of the book until you have the time to read it and process it. Fifty books - that’s a full-time activity for someone with a poor short term memory. So no extra cash required for more books. Besides gig travel and on the road food, maybe a black tee shirt or pair of cargo pants here and there, I don’t spend money on much else these days. I aim to read and publish more in 2013 – I’m getting my resolutions in early. 8.44am.

Good session at Waddy today but I’m all worded out now. Wrote five vignettes from paintings by Edward Hopper. Had to dash at the end for the bus to Chester-le-Street. The session at MIND probably went better than I thought it did. Found it difficult to steer the session with video clips. Only wanted it to be a kick-start. Much prefer to just go with writing exercises. It took me two hours to get home this evening. My head is starting to hurt and I don’t really want to write anymore today. 10.01pm.

Wednesday 24th October 2012

On the blue 50 through the pissy streets of Durham to South Shields: some inconsiderate sod gets on and opens the window. You’re wearing a hat and coat, you fucking arsehole, if you’re hot take your fucking coat off!

Today I could really swing for someone. I’ve been awake since 4.00am and I’m a little frazzled. I’ve moved seats coz the twisty sod is getting my goat. I’m not really a people person. I psyche myself. On a good day it works fine but sometimes, like this week, I feel like I’m at breaking point and find it difficult to maintain the act. I really want to go back down the bus and slam that window shut. Now I have to sit with my coat and hat on. Two fucking weeks I’ve had this cold and it’s sods like those down there that don’t help by opening pissing windows!

I’ve no idea of the bus route, the windows are steaming up. I’ve burnt my mouth having to wolf down soup but hey, when you’ve got to dash… Hope that sod feels cold and shuts the window real soon.

Anyway, the reason I’m going to South Shields is for Lorna Windham’s book launch Deaths Disasters and Dastardly Deeds. It starts at two. Hope this bus isn’t late. I didn’t have time to check emails or facebook , no idea if Jenni is going. We are out to Zena Edwards spoken word night at Northern Stage this evening. And then there’s almost a week before the next workshop. I need a break from all the running around, all the fucking let-downs. Pig sick of putting up with lax attitudes that impact on my plans like a fucking sledgehammer in the face. I’m really not cut out for dealing with people. My empathy mask has cracks in it. Really need a few days in my little decompression chamber. The next few days I want to just tap away at my journal blog and get the poems edited for my chapbook.  I’m going to cut back a bit. Next year will be different. It’s hard to keep everything together. I need to keep doing the workshops, but sometimes they get really frustrating. Anyway, I’m done for half term, only the forms to fill in at the end.

My computer has made a few grunts when booting up of late. Hope it’s okay. And the light in the back bedroom keeps going off of its own accord. Suppose I’d best keep money aside for future repairs. Next year I’m not buying so many books. I’m not going to so many events. I want to publish stuff. I want to get on track. Feel like I’m floundering at present. Feel like I’m chasing my tail. Only five or six weeks then the winter to come up with new stuff for 2013. Determined to put out a full-length paperback. Don’t care if it doesn’t sell a single copy. I want to get a full-on journal book published. This page won’t be in it, of course.

Oh fuck, we’re back on the dual carriageway – wind blasting in from that fucking open window again. The cunts! They should have fucked off by now. 12.57pm.

Later: Great turnout for Lorna Windham’s Deaths, Disasters and Dastardly Deeds history book at South Shields Central Library. About a hundred people in the theatre. She did an hour on body snatchers, floods and French invasion. She is a great speaker. I bought a copy of the book and got it signed. Pleased I made the effort to attend. Made me feel somewhat human again after being in a grouch all day.

Really don’t have much to say as I’m smashed. It’s a shitty day weather-wise, Really pleased I don’t have to be anywhere after today until Friday evening when Jenni does Southpaw. I’m on the 27 to Newcastle now. Hope I don’t get a migraine. Might read some flash fiction or Lorna’s book. Seats are low steel-backed not conducive with catching forty winks but might try to sleep. So much for the sunshine. So much for the fucking heatwave. Might get a meal in Yates’s a bit later on. Good to have time to myself just to chill for a bit. 4.10pm.

Saw Tony Williams in Clayton Street chippy, says I can facebook him for gig updates. Just read from his book to students at Waddy this morning. Pleased I’m done for the week except to attend Southpaw on Friday. Awesome! 10.40pm.

WORKLOG: Woke at four this morning. Did my three pages and then some. Basically two lesson plans for Arts on Prescription. Didn’t get back to sleep so the session at Waddington Street wasn’t great. A recap week which is always stressful when four people ask different questions at the same time about something they missed. Managed to get through it anyway. Then off to South Shields for the launch of Lorna Windham’s  book. Did bits of sleep-deprivation induced vitriol throughout the day, went to Newcastle to do stationary browsing: metal ruler, 100gsm paper, 2013 journal. Attended Radikal Words spoken word night. Not work, but related. 10.35pm.

Thursday 25th October 2012

Good to have a long lie in. makes me feel human again. Fatigue is a killer and it makes me bitter, warps my senses and makes me a mean old bastard who whinges about everything. It’s good to not have to be active for a couple of days, good to not have to bother having a shave, or think about what clothes to wear, what time of day it is. Tyrannized by the clock. Always chasing my tail, double checking my movements. It’s not OCD, it’s purely covering my tracks coz I’m so absent-minded Always forgetting something. When you’re out the house up to fifteen hours you need lots of supplies – food, workbooks, session plans, student papers, money, bus pass, rough journal, batteries, pocket camcorder, memory stick… and there’s always something you with you’d brought – a novel, contact lenses, bank statement, a vital report. Anyway, I don’t have to bother with all that today.

It was good to see some of the poetry regulars at Northern Stage last night. Radikal Words put on a great event. Jeff Price is a great host with a laid back approach and seems totally at ease giving us a couple of his own highly entertaining poems from the page, a few jokes here and there. He keeps a tight ship. Bridie Jackson and the Arbour were fantastic. Cello, violin and acoustic guitar, belleplates and ethereal vocals with enchanting harmonies. Bob Beagrie performing poems set to music is a spellbinding experience and I love the way he mixes mythology and modernism in the true poetic-storytelling bardic tradition. Great stuff. David Johnson looks like the somewhat grumpy awkward geography teacher ambling round the comprehensive school in his slacks and chunky pullover, then these hilarious highly rhythmical narratives on middle-aged living come tumbling out of his mouth. Lots of innuendo and playful vulgarity pulled off with great vocal dexterity. A joy to watch. Mike Edwards is very unassuming offstage but through streetwise verse, full of slangy vernacular, his characters become animated with swagger and bravado and we see the wordplay and stagecraft of a top class performance poet. Zena Edwards is a musical spoken word artist with lots of vocal effects. Poignant stories about the overlooked and lonely; she also reads an air travel story and gives us some audience participation opportunities. I like her rap, hip-hop, jazzy rhythms and heartfelt commentary on social injustice. A wonderful evening courtesy of Radikal Words, Northern Stage and Apples and Snakes. Really pleased I went.

Friday 26th October 2012

Dreamt I was in a big warehouse making a big sculpture out of old bottles and cans. There was a huge wooden owl in the corner. A group of bemused electricians watched me at work in between rewiring something or other. Then it’s my front room. I’m busy working away and Stephen Clark is sleeping on the wall outside. Of course, soon as I know it’s him I let him in. Next I’m in the passenger seat of an estate car. Mam stops, gets out and transfers a half-full cardboard box of broken biscuits into a Tupperware box. A girl in the back is having a conversation about her computer going haywire. It’s that old favourite: hold the control key down whilst deleting a load of pix from Word  and the machine instead duplicates so you end up with a copy of a copy of a copy. Later I’m explaining to Mr Winter – who I’ve only spoken to once since school and that was down the River Derwent when he was leading an outward bound course while I was working out a trails training route on the rocks – how it’s possible to completely shag your pc just trying to delete a couple of dozen photos.

Had no idea how cold it is outside today. Jesus freezing fingers at the bus stop. And a gang of screeching schoolgirls wheezing and shrieking cackling laughing. Really annoying but rather funny at the same time.

   On the X70 to Gateshead. Tonight is Southpaw. Jenni is doing a set. And Aidan Clarke is doing a mega multi-cityscape poem from memory. It’s about twenty minutes long. And Mr Speeding is doing a few songs so it’ll be a good finale. Except that it won’t be the end. It’s Shaft’s last gig, but me and Jenni have already been asked to perform next month when Aidan and Annie take over as hosts. But that will be common knowledge by the time these words go public. I got very little done today despite being at the computer for much of it. Mainly just editing stuff and playing catch-up. Listened to Attila the Stockbroker and Adele Atkins. Now there’s a diverse musical experience.

   Fast approaching Gateshead. Spent the first part of this journey reading the metro. More revelations about Saville. And the BBC are implicated as well. Oh dear, is this the end of a respectable broadcasting institution? Doubt it. Jenni wasn’t feeling too good today. Hope she has a good gig. I had a bit of an online chitchat with John Chadwick about extreme sports. Jen had posted a clip of Newcastle street trials from 2006 featuring Danny MacAskell. The footage was new to me but it seemed really familiar. I rode with a bunch of great street riders one Sunday at Newcastle College and at a skatepark. John picked up on the skatepark and started pining online for more polyurethane-wheeled wild antics, despite, he says losing his balance. I still have balance, a strong requirement for biketrial, I have stamina – I rode 70 miles in a day on road last summer, but I no longer have agility. Ah well, we can but dream.

   At Lobley Hill now. And it’s dark. Clocks will be going back an hour tomorrow night so it’ll be pitch dark by half five. Lovely! Just in time for Halloween. And winter will be with us by this time next week – snow forecast. Just in time for Poetry Jam. Yay! – NOT!. Team Valley. 6.23pm.

Later: Prepped a reading for Southpaw at last minute. Great gig. 11.00pm

Saturday 27th October 2012

Didn’t expect to be onstage last night. When I reached Jenni’s I thought I’d be messing around on facebook while she put together the finishing touches of her outfit for the evening or a final rehearsal of her set. But no, poor Jenni laid up in bed unable to do her gig. I must have just left the house when she emailed to ask me to take her place. I gathered up copies of my books from the stock box and her shelves and started thinking about a set.

Many thanks to Shaft for hosting a superb Southpaw. Really pleased to be part of it. Some amazing performances at the Chillingham. Special thanks to Aidan Clarke for a copy of his epic World Wide Wait and for performing the poem sequence in it's entirety. Extra special thanks to Mark Speeding for playing one of my favourites and for getting me safely back to Consett through the horrendous conditions on the roads. Best Wishes to Shaft in his new creative ventures and I look forward to seeing people at the Chillingham again very soon.

Interesting journey back last night. Really bad conditions on the roads and Mark Speeding who was giving me a lift had a migraine. A blue Volvo in front of us was slipping and sliding for about five miles. Snow quite bad around Dipton and Leadgate. I wrote a big morning page ego fest about how I put my set together but didn’t want to reiterate.

Today has been basically me at the computer copying up text into the blank pages from my diary. Last year I had stray entries from rough books that never got transferred, I’m bang up to date in this one. Been listening to Marillion and The Mission today.

Late this afternoon I had an urge to check ebay for are Rollins titles. I’ve done this a few times since my auction defeat a couple of months ago. Imagine my surprise, as they say, when I found the book I was outbid on available for a lower price.

Haven’t heard anything from Jenni for a few hours. She was having domestic issues regarding clothing drying in time to get packed for a three day stay in Consett – or “Tombstone” as Mark Speeding has taken to calling our lovely little town.

I have nearly eighty thousand words in my journal file. Still got six months of entries to go before I can start pruning back the text. Really tired today. 7.41pm 

Sunday 28th Oct 2012

Sunday night in good old Moorside. Jenni is here and we have eaten all the bigly food, tried to refrain from polishing off a whole tube of Pringles after tea, watched four episodes of Big Bang Theory. 

Sunday evening in good old Moorside and what better soundtrack than “In League with Satan” by Geordie metalheads Venom. Jenni is running a workshop this Halloween and going to a rock night. I’m going to spend Wednesday watch horror films in Cellar twelve. Later: Watched the Sweeney, listened to Jill Tracy.

Wrote a long automatic piece in the morning pages. Not sure it’s any good. 9.05pm.

Monday 29th Oct 2012

Put together a set for the Fiction Burn: Night Before Halloween Special. Made a pamphlet of it. Jenni sat laughing at me playing with my scissors, Prittstick and craft knife. She has been doing prep for a ballooning workshop. Good that we can get on with our own stuff and then catch up for half an hour here and there. Going to watch an episode of New Tricks together. The cable for my laser printer arrived so now I will be able to make smudge-proof pamphlets. Hope tomorrow’s MIND workshop goes well. 8.59pm.

Tuesday 30th Oct 2012

78 to Chester le Street. Workshop well prepped. All the hand-outs, list of discussion points, some exercises. Showed Jenni the two films I’d chosen and she liked them.

Have eaten lots of food over the last couple of days. Have Nutragrain bars and egg mayonnaise sandwich to tide me over this afternoon. Workshop doesn’t finish till half six. Need to be in Newcastle for half seven. Tonight we are at Fiction Burn. I have a ten minute set of dark but not necessarily spooky pieces. Jenni is surprised that I’m not doing Diamonds of Death Street. I’m closing with “I’ve seen my name…” and Goth. Enough for now 3.38pm.

Later: Came away from MIND totally buzzing. Everyone who came last week turned up again. No resistance to exercises. Everybody wrote and read, people enjoyed “Too Shy”. I had twice as much material as needed. Feel we are really gelling now.

Great gig at Bar Loco. Great guests. Oonah Joslin with microfiction and a song from Averil White. Marie Lightman read a play extract by John Dixon. Tall tales & Short Stories guys were brilliant. Jeff Potts did his werewolf and jazzman Cometh pieces. Jenni did a more gothic set than mine. AJ McKenna had a dark sequence with a cover of Daddy by Plath. I enjoyed the humour of Stephen Frizzle, liked Emma’s stories and more. Didn’t expect to be closing the night. Pleased I had the book with me. Room was packed. Didn’t think my set was dark enough but people assured me it was. Talked to AJ about self-publishing. I think it’s perfectly legit and she should go for the pamphlet. Didn’t stay late as I wanted chips and pizza and this last bus home. Really tired now. 11.42pm.

Wednesday 31st Oct 2012

Like Jenni, I feel I had the best of Halloween last night. It was good to listen to Misfits for a while whilst typing this evening but the Stephen King film wasn’t brilliant. I’d have been better off with Dracula or Hellraiser. Never mind. Jenni posted a pic of me doing the Prince Charming stance with a white electrical tape stripe on my nose. Oonah Joslin posted some cracking pics from last night’s Fiction Burn. It’s almost Witching Hour but I need to be in bed soon. Another Ribena. 11.20pm.