Things in threes

All coming up in the next week, three duo gigs with different music buddies. Lots to look forward to.
Please come and join us if you're in Brighton.


Tomorrow - Sunday 27th May 8pm
Sitar and violin
I'm playing a set of new pieces with Garima.
We're sharing the gig with Nil and Scrying ylem.


Wednesday 30th May 8pm
Guitar and violin like you might never have heard them before.
A set with my favourite guitarist, Dave Allen.
We're sharing the gig with ACZ and the Static memories.


Saturday 2nd June 8pm
Double bass and violin
Gus Garside and I play in various combos, but this is a new venture.
We're sharing the gig with Sunsets over Whitehawk, The Y bend and Simon Drinkwater

The Coach House is a lovely small venue in a back street in Brighton. Great place to play and a great place to come and hear unusual gigs. Get there early as it is a small venue!! Put some £ in the donations pot at the door. Cash bar. It's near the hospital and Brighton College.

The Coach House
Down the side path
22 Walpole Road
BRIGHTON
BN2 0EA

Here's the link to the Coach House pages.

Found here

Walking down the steps to go for a paddle early this morning, flocks of white birds flew across old walls on the promenade. Guess someone had a big ladder or abseiled down from the railings!

I absolutely love this!

Picked in the drizzle

Picked in the drizzle, the last leeks and the first rhubarb came home and scented the kitchen. And although there are clumps of weeds taller than some of the crops, it's good to see the ground has enjoyed rain after rain. 

There are a couple of new projects on the way as well as the usual stuff we grow every year. Celeriac seedlings bought from a stall, looking a bit like parsley. I'm wondering how they'll ever grow into big, rough globes ready from the Autumn. Guess I'll find out!! And here are the broad beans we're trying for the first time. They seem to be doing well. It's good to learn what they like for support and to watch them do their thing, never having had them before. Not sure how long until that French style salad that I so love.

It's been so good to see and hear the bees happy in the apple tree and on the rosemary flowers. Guess they've sat out of the rain a bit like me these last few weeks. Making up for lost time.

Shore

That journey home from work, the evening stretching out that way you long for and have almost forgotten. As the bus swings down the hill past the station and joins a juddering queue of traffic, you catch a glimpse of the Downs that encircle the town, see a field of rape like a fluorescence against the purple slate of retreating storms, follow threads of hedgerows like rivers that run up and over hills.

It's a slow ride from here, start stop. Mainly stop. The sky seems to lift from the top floors of skyscrapers in a fast film sequence, reveals the top of the big wheel like a magician's scarf ta-daaa across a hint of optimistic blue.

The roundabout lets you lurch out of the traffic and it's foot down along the seafront and not sure if you see it or hear it first, it makes your day, low tide, far out, the perigee moon dragging the waves into a slow hush.

And you forget the hunger that has leaned on you for the last two hours. Once off the bus, you're running home, casting off your work, the jacket, the smartness that held your day. Old shoes, warm layers. Out. Grab the camera. Out. Out. Out. You make yourself look both ways before you chance the road.

And the mist is on the run with the tide, heading towards a white space where the sea and sky have fallen, only the wind brush of mackerel shallows between you and there. No-one else in sight.

That old jetty stands like a small crowd at the edge of the world. They wait as you walk towards them across dulled mirror sand, every sunrise shell flung open, pecked clean.

And once you gave in and slowed down, you saw those last uprights as sculpture against the light, felt the moment when the mud stirred, heard the sound flip back this way, felt the dampness on you cheeks, watched the mist turn back to shore.

In between

I'm listening to the rain pounding against the windows, slapping against leaves, not quite believing that I sat on a bench beside the wallflowers for an hour this afternoon, sleeves rolled up, squinting in the sun within the sound of cresting waves while I scribbled on page after page.

That was in between rain and more rain. Any break in the clouds, I've been out that door for a quick walk, but I haven't seen many breaks.

Every stem is drunk with green and the blackbird who had only clucked through this last year has taken to singing in my garden every morning and evening. And it's beautiful.

Yes, I'm sick of getting wet, of having shoes drying out in a row on the boiler and of weeds growing taller and more prolific than everything else. But today, pen and notebook got cracking how they like best and just that hour was enough to restore and refresh ideas that have spent far too many days indoors.

Projects have still been cranking along these last few weeks, but this is better better better.
Phew!

Thyme and driftwood

Talk about making the most of it. Any chance I've had this last week, I've been trying to head out the door. Only thing is, there haven't been too many chances. Battling through gales and torrential rain wasn't quite what I had in mind for me and my creative projects.

So lately, I've spent far too much time going over to the window to see if it has stopped yet. You know the sort of thing. Unsettled. Stuck indoors. Not the place for my best ideas to emerge from.

However, I've taken to tactics which have helped me through big projects in the past and have chomped away working for an hour at a time, sometimes getting carried away and realising that a whole dark morning has skimmed past me, pages and pages running with ink. 

Funny, that while I've been thinking that not much is happening, my big project has taken on a life of it's own and I seem to have 30 days of poetic threads sitting beside me.

The house seems to be very clean and tidy as well. I'm not sure how that happened except it was me who did it, must have been musing with duster or hoover in hand instead of walking the stormy beach.

In between storm clouds the shadows seem to be particularly inky.

Tonight

Tonight is World book night and you can check online to see if any events are planned in your neck of the woods by clicking here.

As you can see, my crate is here and I enjoyed opening up a stash of books by one of my absolute favourite writers - Notes from a small island by Bill Bryson. I love his work. He's one of the few writers who has the ability to make me laugh out loud. He also writes about the bizarre things we all find in everyday life and usually take no notice of. 

I've been giving out some books already today, but it's pouring with rain and my sunny day plan has been abandoned. But, I've left a few books on upstairs seats of buses as they drive around town. So, if you happen to sit down on a bus beside a lonely looking book, remember, it's yours!! If you find one, hope you enjoy it and pass it on.

Time for a beer

Friday night, and I so want a beer!! 

Last time I wrote here, I was planning on making a start with that notebook, finding the good bits and hauling them back out into the light again before I lose them. April's Napowrimo is the trigger that somehow makes me adopt more sensible writing habits than normal. At least that's how it's been other years. 

So, you might be thinking that it's gone so well that I want to celebrate with a beer as I settle into the weekend and put my feet up! 

Well, my poetry month plans have been put to one side because it seems that my muse has other ideas.

What's been happening instead is far more exciting and just makes me happy!! The big project I started work on last Summer has suddenly taken on another lease of life. Totally by surprise. 

After a scratch performance in December that was wonderful in showing me how the piece could come alive, I fell into a word frenzy and the words just let rip. But then it all went quiet. Very quiet. For a few months. Gulp!! Any attempts to work on the piece seemed to draw blanks. When I made space to focus on that piece one weekend, all I could do was gaze out of the window and watch the rain, oddly happy to be doing only that, while all my pages were laid out across the room and I knew it wasn't ready to happen.

Walking the beach yesterday, with no introduction, I was in scene 2, picturing the set, the characters, the drama, my heart pounding, every stone seeming to slow my feet down in their effort to get home. You know those 93 steps up from the beach? They felt like a thousand and I cursed every one.

So, back to those scenes, adding new ideas, rewording the dialogue, reviewing, rethinking. It all feels better. I'm so relieved that I've got on with what I've been wanting to be doing. Satisfied. Tired. Happy. Now, where's that beer?

* The shot is of the advertising hoarding outside a bar in Liverpool. Make your own mind up about the quote.

The haystack

This is what usually happens - I write in notebooks. Every day. A lot. Don't ask me how many words. I'd rather write them than count them. There's usually one main book and one tiny pocket book that receive everything as and when.

Streams of consciousness, ramblings, personal rantings, ideas for new pieces, names of books to read, little sketches, observations, extra bits for bigger works in progress, ridiculous questions to myself that I never seem to answer, not in words, anyway, writing that I scribble in the middle of the night and struggle to make sense of in the morning. You get the drift. What they also contain, if you can bear to trawl through them, are fledgling pieces that ran out of the pen when I was lost in some wonderful semi-conscious flow, lost in the moment. Sometimes radiant, sometimes ridiculously bold, they hide in haystacks of words. And sometimes, I lose them.

Attempts to work in more organised or logical ways make for BIG trouble. And over the years, I've come to see that me and my muse like this disorganised way best. But the task of re-reading completed volumes is often left to one side for too long and it makes me sad that the sparks have faded by the time I return.

April brings Napowrimo and although I don't post a poem on my blog every day, I do use the month as an exercise in keeping more on task with where these little ideas are. The coloured pens and post-it notes come out and I collect a piece from each day in a separate simple notebook with only 30 pages, rewrite the bits that sing out, each on their daily page.

Each year, the April pages have generated some of my most interesting work, some of which has found success with readers, audiences and even judges. Thousands of people creating poetry around the world seems to work a little bit of magic. Last April was a particularly strong one.

This April seems to have begun without me, so I'm about to take a deep breath and begin to sift through a 5 day haystack and see what I can find.

*
The picture is from one of the glass panels etched by Hector Whistler at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall

Days like these

Days like these, once you've started walking, you feel like you never want to stop.

Not enough hours spent in such places for me this week, but the longer days and our early blast of Summer sun make it all feel possible. There have been some gorgeously still mornings on the beach here in town, the kind of mornings where there's no horizon visible.

These shots were taken a few miles along the coast from here, from Seaford Head which is separated from that line of Seven Sisters by the River Cuckmere. Amazing that I caught that first view looking East how I like it best - with no-one else there!! 

This next one, looking down and West, changes with every season as erosion bites in. I wish I'd taken a shot of the same view every time to compare. That lone stack left on the beach diminishes each time I go there. But now I've taken the shot it makes me go a bit funny as I hadn't noticed those two people standing right at the edge!!