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Bonjour mes amis. Long time no blog. I was at a school last week and the librarian commented that I hadn’t written for a while. It’s seemed like the most amazing effort to set down and pen a few lines. I’ve been hibernating: making up for lost time at home with the family and letting thoughts for next year gestate. Anywho, here’s where I’m at …

1. I’ll be going to Edinburgh next year for 5 days only. I’ll be doing a run of a new stand-up poetry show called: Jeremy, Who Drew Penisies on Everything (and other poems). I’ll also be looking to doing 5 nights of REVOLT!. I’m on the prestigious East to Edinburgh scheme, though because I’ve been so many times before the Arts Council are not funding me. Quite right too.

2. The 15 minute scratch I did of REVOLT! went ok. It’s certainly beyond me a a performer at the moment, but with more time to learn the script and bed it in we should get there. It’s certainly worth writing the next 15 mins to see where that takes us. I’ll be doing that over January with plans for a scratch of all 30 mins in early Feb.

3. Another season of HOMEWORK has passed. Our final show in November featured the charming Andrew Motion as guest. We return in May.

4. My first collection – Mondeo Man – is finished – I’m looking at publishing options at the moment.

5. I’m writing six 90 second poems about life in Hornchurch – a commission from Hornchurch’s Queens Theatre. I’m doing that over December. They will become guerrilla performances in various locations in Hornchurch on 11 Feb.

6. Early Feb is a bit of cut-off point for me btw as my wife and I are expecting our second (and LAST) child. Don’t know what we’re having yet, but all signs point to a baby of some sort.

and now a wintery poem for you all …

A143

The Waveney has burst its banks again,
the Earsham water meadows tiny seas
protesting at their walls. I put the peddle
to the floor, the Transit coughs its lungs,
then eats the Harleston bypass like it’s dirt.

Today’s a day for dumping and collecting;
for flinging black bin liners into skips,
and loading up the van with eBay finds;
our snapped and tatty plastic junk replaced
with solid wardrobe oak and yawning chests.

I clock two hundred blissful miles like this
past mounds of frozen beets and real ale pubs
past Redenhall’s resplendent hilltop church
near holy in the January sun,
a calm macadamising of the past.