Hey dear friends – apologies for the little hiatus. I’ve had a metric bumload of work to do (mostly creative and fun) plus a heavy cold that took me out of action for two weeks. November ended with a memorable run of gigs, including a lovely Bristol Old Vic show with Luke Kennard, Francesca Beard and Anna Freeman that I’d been looking forward to for months after seeing the line-up. Three of my favourite performers, but people who I don’t often get to watch.
Then we had the last Homework of the season, where we tried to put on a live chatshow. My goodness, it was weird and scary, but – as so often happens with Homework – I think, in the end, it worked! Writing topical gags turned out to be much harder than it looks, but aside from that, we took some big creative risks and had a whale of a time. For those of you who missed it, I ended up interviewing our surprise guest, Mr Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo supremo and creator of Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. He rarely speaks to Western journalists, so it was an eventful interview, full of revelations, including the fact that Mr Miyamoto isn’t very good at guessing the length and width of objects.
Homework will be back next year, probably with even more ill-conceived ideas that burn brightly for a single night then vanish.
On the Friday, Aisle16 took part in Pagematch, a poetry night inside a wrestling ring at the Roundhouse theatre. To close the night we battled each other in various wrestling personae. It was fun and brutal, you guys! I think some of the audience were a bit worried for us. I’d definitely do it again. Luke won, and deservedly so, although I think it could’ve easily gone to Joe Dunthorne as well for his dignified, underplayed style and uncompromising finishing moves.
I am looking forward to 2014. My full show, Pub Stuntman, has been sort of ticking away in the background for a while. Poems get added and removed from the set depending on my mood. You will certainly get some more chances to see me live, doing various things. There are other projects in the pipeline that I’ll give you a heads-up on as and when dates or definite news gets confirmed. I’m working hard, is what I’m saying, kids.
Don’t forget you can hear me on Future Radio every Tuesday from 9:30-midday. You can listen online, if you’re not in Norwich. I play good music and I talk nonsense and interact with listeners live.
The only other thing to mention is that I’m going to experiment with dialing back the uncompromising blog schedule just a touch. It was getting so it dominated my workload for the week. Death Of 1000 Cuts will remain weekly, but I’m pretty sure nobody is going to shed thick, salty tears if I don’t post a new crappy first-draft of a poem up every single Wednesday. I’ll post Welcome To The Fantasy Zone updates as and when I have them, but they may not be every week – they take quite a while to compile, and it was getting to be a chore. I don’t want that to happen. So yeah – they’ll definitely continue, but I’ll be focusing on sanity over quantity.
I’m pretty sure this ‘news’ will not prompt a single howl of dissent, which suggests that it’s the right thing to do. I want to make sure that I prioritise well, which in my case means writing new poems and cracking on with all this horribly time-consuming, low-yield ‘fiction’.