A week of writing…

Evening folks.  I am doing a post tonight to save Sunday’s post turning into a huge essay…

This week I’ve been working my butt off…and have to tell you all about it!  Thank goodness I’m on summer holidays from teaching at the moment is all I can say, otherwise I don’t know how I would fit it all in.  My main problem is that when Chris was away I ordered Game of Thrones Season 2 to keep me occupied – which I have confessed to in previous blog posts (I got obsessed and was watching it non stop every evening).  What I don’t think I admitted to is that I also bought Season 6 and 7 of Desperate Housewives and I’ve been holding onto my self control by my fingernails this week.  I’ve had lots of writing things to do and I’ve had to restrain myself from watching non stop Desperate Housewives.  I also recently discovered Audible – I don’t want this to turn into an advert for Audible – but it’s amazing!  I downloaded it to my mobile phone and I can listen as I’m driving – I’ve just finished listening to ‘Dominion’ by C.J. Sansom.  Fantastic book.

On Monday I spent a huge part of the day and most of the evening working on my script for ‘Cartographers’.  On Monday I managed to get ten minutes worth of material down which I was fairly pleased with.

On Tuesday I went to Lancaster Train Station which I’ve been commissioned to write some poems about.  I had quite a successful trip and met the train guard that I met eight years ago when I first came up here for my interview.  A very nice man – he was telling me that he was meant to retire last year but he loves his job so much he asked them if he could carry on.

I went straight from Lancaster to Grasmere to the Wordsworth Trust to see Michael Symmons Roberts and James Lasdun read.  I must admit I knew nothing about James Lasdun’s poetry and was mainly going to see Michael read – he is one of my fave poets and a Very Nice Bloke too- he was my tutor on the MA at Manchester Met and has always impressed me with his professionalism and knowledge about poetry as well as his own writing being great of course.  Michael was as fabulous as I thought he would be – his readings are very intense, very reserved  – I think his is quiet poetry – it does not shout or draw attention to itself, but it is insistent and memorable.  James Lasdun was very very funny – very self deprecating and even though I swore I would not buy any more poetry books as I have so many to read and catch up on, I bought his book.  So my oath of abstinance from buying more books lasted – ooh – all of five minutes.

On Wednesday I was taking part in a training day at the Wordsworth Trust with John Siddique, Anne Caldwell, Andrew McMillan and Clare Shaw.  We are going to be leading poetry workshops for secondary school pupils based around the collections of objects and manuscripts at the Wordsworth Trust – the project is called ‘Real Live Writers’ and you can find more information about it here https://wordsworth.org.uk/learn/educational-visits/live-writers.html – if you are a teacher and want to book a workshop for your class, or if you are a friend and want to be nosy and see what I’m up to!

On Thursday I did more work on ‘Cartographers’ – met a friend for lunch, took the dogs for a walk, posted out two pamphlets which had been bought hrough the magic paypal button on the blog – my finest hour -working out how to do that.

And that brings me to today – which is Friday.  Today I got up late, went for lunch with the hubby and we then got the bus to Askam with the dogs and walked back to Barrow along the beach.  It took about two and a half hours and on the way we saw what we think was a small dolphin with its eyes eaten out.

But I’m not going to leave you with that image!  No, I have some good news!  Today I confirmed *some*details of the residential courses I’ll be running in 2014 – but if you want to find out, you will have to head over to the ‘Residential Courses’ page.  Which I haven’t writtten yet.  So give me a minute after you finish reading this!!

And tomorrow I will be reading at Ulverston Breastfeeding Festival.  I am a warmup act for Hollie McNish – who is going to be fab.  Kate Davis will also be warming up too – more details at http://thebreastfeedingfestival.btck.co.uk/Festival2013/Somethingwedonttalkabout