Not So Secret Gig

Colin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:29:39 +0000

Image: e-pint.com

Friday at last.

I spent most of yesterday in meetings, one of which I almost fell asleep in. It was a combination of the night before and the fact I could not work out why I had even been invited; I never said a word during the entire hour.

I forgot to mention The Specials kicked off their 30th anniversary tour at Newcastle on Wednesday night. My mate called me from the gig while I was out on the bevy to remind me. I’ll be at the second of two nights they are playing at the Glasgow Academy on Wednesday. To say I’m excited about it is an understatement – I never thought I would ever get to see them such was the rift that tore the band apart. More on this later.

I completed Day by AL Kennedy – finally. It’s a book I am glad I read but I never got as much from it as I’d expected. I can see why it won Book of the Year but I found it difficult going. I‘ve started reading Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo, one of the books I got at Christmas. I love Val’s approach and attitude, her humour too, and I had a craving for a good crime novel so off the shelf it came.

I received payment from the property website client that I half expected there to be a problem with. But no, everything went through fine and he is talking about a lot more work. I still have to finish off one of my clients, currently transferring away from Ghoulnet. This is a process made a whole lot easier now another company is handling the accounts after they went down the tubes.

Our team meeting is being held today at lunchtime in Clark’s Bar. I had suggested it as a joke when nobody could think of anywhere to go for lunch with our sister team who work for the same boss. Personally, I can’t think of anywhere better to spend a Friday lunchtime.

This evening I’m off to Glasgow to stay at my sisters, then it’s off to Hampden for the Scottish Cup semi final against Rangers. No blogging then, but I’ll be Twittering all the way.

Madness has announced they are going to play a gig at Newbury Racecourse on May 30th. The idea of a wee evening at the races followed by a stomp in the paddock has been muted between my horse loving chum, Dave, and me. We shall see what transpires.

Speaking of Madness, today sees the start of the Camden Crawl. It’s the biggest yet and in their 30th year Madness will be playing a secret gig somewhere in Camden Town. I happen to know – it’s outside the Dublin Castle on Parkway, 4pm, so get down there if you have a street ticket and do some skanking. You’ll need to get there early though.

Lots more information on the Crawl can be found at Spoonfed. Enjoy it if you’re going – wish I was there.

GOOD LUCK ST MIRREN FOR TOMORROW!!!!

Cheap and free e-books:

Selektion – FREE!
Brick by Brick – FREE!
Silly Poems for Wee People Vol.1 – FREE!
Fringe Fantastic – £3 (£5 OFF!!!)
Poolside Poetry – £3 (£2 OFF!!!)

Frustration

Colin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:34:47 +0000

Image: Martin Kingsley

Frustration was the word of the day; frustration with how everything changed slightly and yet had such a big impact on my plans. To start with, I missed the bus by 30 seconds because I left my sandwiches in the house and had to run back to get them. A good start, which left me with a walk into Leith and a wait for the “crammed” bus; no seats for the living dead.

My day job schedule changed negatively when I was told I would be required to attend an afternoon meeting. “No problem,” said I, and then discovered it ran for 5 hours from 12:30 in the afternoon. Nice. What with the 9:30 meeting already scheduled and the implementation I had to do at 11:30 for an hour, I had little time for anything else like food, or a lunchtime run at Blood Ties.

Not a happy chappy.

Still, I managed almost 1200 words, taking me over the half way mark, before I went out to my writers’ group in the evening. I almost never went, but having missed the last few I thought I should make the effort under the new regime.

I’m not sure if I’ll be back to many of the meetings on a regular basis; It’s not what I wanted from the group when it was first set up. Originally it was a meeting for writers to just get together and have a few pints, maybe chat about writing, publishing, life, whatever. Back then we hit the high of 14 writers turning out. Now there’s barely half a dozen and the format is to read out short stories or novel extracts, and probably rather selfishly, I find it rather dry and lacking in spirit. The stories were good – the guys who read last night are talented people – it’s just that giving critiques over a pint of Guinness isn’t what I had in mind.

I work all year on my writing, whether on holiday, evenings, or weekends, and the main social occasion for the year is the Edinburgh Book Festival. Other than that there’s nowhere else to network on a social level with other writers away from the pressure of deadlines and word counts. Which is why I need that kind of interaction; relaxed and informal, a wee drink and chat about the larger issues, not sentence structure and story arcs, subjects that I spend every other waking hour thinking about and working on.

It was fun while it lasted but things move on I suppose.

Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo)