Yak wanted
As you can probably tell from this less-than-quarterly entry, I’ve been proper busy. I am not a writer. A writer’s writer I mean. I took a solemn vow as an impressionable teenager to NEVER get involved with anything creative. It’s just, well… dangerous.
This may have had something to do with my dad (who was very much a writer’s writer) having a writer’s tantrum and throwing a box full of copies of his latest book from an upstairs window, narrowly missing my daydreams below.
Now that I have finally caved in and become him, or rather a less well read, less connected, less successful ( in writing terms) version of him, it occurs to me that I really ought to have a box of books in my arsenal ready to throw out of a window.
This would, inevitably, be wonderful therapy for the sheer frustration encountered when trying to find someone to print me a simple, inexpensive, black and white, thirty pages poetry booklet. I’ve done the e-book. Easy. I just want to gently hand a few hard copies to hapless friends without killing them.
In this wonderfully technological age, it should, I foolishly assume, be a simple matter of searching, clicking and ordering online. Never before has there been such an array of technological wizardry available.
I tell you, to get this PERFECTLY SIMPLE job done, it would be easier to go into my shed yesterday, reconstruct from memory I do not possess, an exact copy of the original Gutenberg press, from half set Galician yak fudge.
Books though. Pah!
Cheese again?
Well! Look at that! Christmas decorations up already means I am legally allowed to plug our Christmas single in aid of clean drinking water again :)
As I said last year, it carries a severe cheesy warning so please spread it if you like it.
Download it from iTunes or Amazon mp3 and help us build more of these little beauties!
Changing Tune
Occasionally (today) I get a running order for a show I have submitted material to and I am happy to report my get-rich-incredibly-slowly scheme is taking effect. I really want to spend what time I can spare on shows writing topical sketches but they are always calling for songs as a matter of priority so that’s what tends to get the bulk of my effort.
The thing is, as possibly Elton John and maybe Kiki Dee once sang, ‘I got the music in me’, having spent much of childhood sitting under a small grand piano watching my Dad’s feet operating the pedals and putting the brakes on poor old Beethoven.
If I force myself to recall, the only real form of entertainment, after weak teacher baiting during some dark school years, was changing the words to the hymns at mass from things like ‘Oh God, our help in ages past’ to ‘Oh God, Oh help, don’t make this last’. The problem was always how to avoid being caught sniggering by the slightly Nazi order of brethren who ran the place, but I now consider it was a pretty good grounding in the sweet (and I would argue, God-ordained, or we may as well all give up now) art of parody.
To me it seems a perfectly natural thing anyone can do but perhaps not. Can you hear alternative lyrics to well known songs? When G W Bush was in office I heard the Beach Boys singing Barbara Ann and thought, ‘That sounds a lot like ‘bomb Iran”. A quick scribble later and the thing almost wrote itself and was sold.
I suppose it is an advantage to have visited a theatre at least once in your life to get a feel of what is and what is not possible on a stage but do give it a go if only so that I can crack on with them there sketches.
Statement from the Beeb
Latest from the BBC :
“At no time whatsoever was any child left unsupervised on the premises with a scary character”
Quick Bjog
In case anyone thought I had pegged out after my last entry, I haven’t. It’s just [insert random excuse for not blogging lately] well I have rediscovered the running bug.
I was always a short distance sprinter at my loathsome school so when the penny dropped that I was running for the glory of the evil place, I put a stop to it by feigning a more permanent injury than simply having had the honour of seeing my knee bone after a slicing incident. Running has always given the sensation of freedom so after learning to go beyond the inevitable stitch, I did some distance runs and then somehow forgot it was a good thing to be doing. Or maybe it was just the mashing of both knees playing 5-a-side and being told sternly by doctors not to play anything ever again.
Running Joke
When I was 25 I ran a couple of half marathons, mainly in celebration of the fact I had two functioning knees back then. Now, ahumpff years later and with a little help from a surgeon, the knees still function and in April I managed to run six miles for Sportrelief with my neighbour.
This same neighbour suggested we needed to build on what I had thought was my swansong to athleticism so now I find we are entered in a half marathon later this month.
We are running in aid of two charities, mine being The Behcets Syndrome Society, supporting a friend with this horrible and rare illness, and my neighbour is running for Pancreatic Cancer UK.
If anyone would like to sponsor us for either of these charities, here are the links:
Vote for Whirred Nerd and WIN admiration
