Busy, busy…

Having decided in January that I would post more stuff during 2016, March has so far been a bit of a barren patch. That’s not particularly because I haven’t done anything, more the fact that I’ve been busy with other things. I’ve submitted a couple of poems to a competition organised by my writing group (which will eventually pop up here) and started to build a group blog site (and document instructions for the creation of Gravatar accounts for members). At the moment, I’m the only one with any blogging experience but the others are interested in having a go. Setting up a blog can seem a bit daunting (particularly to those who remember the pre-internet age) so I’m going to try and ease them into it by creating a blog and then inviting them to join as ‘Authors’. This means that they will be able to upload, edit and publish their writing to the group blog without worrying too much about the admin / themes etc.  More information on user roles can be found here. Hopefully, they will take to it well and maybe create blogs of their own.

The last writers’ group meeting at the start of the month was a workshop on getting inside the head of an animal. Not literally, of course. That would have been messy. And probably illegal. We had a series of photographs to pick from and I went for the one depicting a seagull getting a really close look at last year’s Australian MotoGP (read it here). We also had a pop at writing about the time when the Tower of London (you know, the big old castle near Tower Bridge) held a menagerie of exotic animals, including a polar bear (read it here). A bloody polar bear, the biggest land carnivore on the planet, lived in a castle in the middle of medieval London and they let it go fishing in the Thames! Again, we only had 15-20 minutes each time to create something from scratch and I have once more categorised them under ‘instant writing’: take a theme and just add water (usually panicky sweat, but tears of pain will work too; actual urination is frowned upon but piss-taking is allowed).

I also wrote a short piece for our local village newsletter, after the new editor had accidentally passed on one of those warning hoaxes about hotel key cards holding your credit card information (they don’t). So I thought I might as well pop that on the blog too (here…)

Finally, the other thing that has been keeping me occupied (as well as actual paid-job-work-stuff, which has also been fairly busy, tsk!) is the fact that I’ve got a part in a local amateur production of “One Man, Two Guvnors” which originally starred James Corden. It’s terribly, terribly funny and rather rude in places. I play Alan, a wannabe actor and I’m hamming it to high heaven, dahling. Performances in early May, so things may go pretty quiet on here around then as I cack myself trying to learn my lines.