2016 - going out with a bang ....

... literally! In a hurry yesterday morning I fell down a step in the garden that I'd forgotten we've got and landed up in a mess on some unbelievably hard concrete. We spent an interesting afternoon at the local community hospital (knowing that the main Accident Department twenty odd miles away was full to overflowing); the staff were wonderful - caring and very thorough. Somehow I have landed up with an unusual fracture of my right scapula - an injury more commonly seen if you come off a motorbike at 70mph or get rolled on by a car!

It's quickly become apparent that I'm not an accomplished typist with one finger on my left hand! This rather cocks up my writing plans for the next few weeks - I think my resolutions for the New Year may need to be amended accordingly this evening.

A Hopeful Christmas

As always it seems, Christmas news from around the world is far from what we
would wish. Destruction, fear and famine, anxiety for the future and sadness about the past - it's often hard to find any real "Christmas spirit". But two years ago, at a very difficult point in my father-in-law's life, a Quaker friend, an ex-student of his, sent in his Christmas card a bookmark with a Seamus Heaney quote. Since my father-in-law's death I have kept it on my desk and it's become a philosophy that I try to live by. Call it faith, call it the power of positive thinking, but I firmly believe that we have to look to the future with optimism that our actions can materially alter things, that we can make a difference in our own individual worlds.

Wherever you are, however this season finds you,

I wish you a hopeful Christmas and a peaceful 2017.

A Festive Evening Out

A hugely entertaining couple of hours yesterday evening hosted by St. Mary's Priory Church in Monmouth - "A Thousand Years Of Christmas", songs and readings performed by the soprano Sally Bradshaw and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and an outstanding poet. Richard Burton apart, I have not heard anyone read Dylan Thomas's prose so well - his Conversation About Christmas and Ghost Story had to be my favourite parts of the evening. Although I must say that "Christmas Cards" by Keith Watkyn amused me no end too - if you're struggling with writing the interminable annual updates to people you haven't seen for years (some of whom you haven't minded not seeing for years!) and could do with a break, do look it up, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Two good reads

I have just finished reading two excellent books - "Another World" by Pat Barker and "A Perfectly Good Man" by Patrick Gale. I rarely dissect novels in the way I remember having to do for A level English Literature at school (that approach almost put me off for life!) but I have spent some time in the last day or so identifying what it was about these two books that so intrigued me. In the Pat Barker I think it was the plot that carried me along, eager to see how a difficult family situation could resolve relatively harmoniously. In "A Perfectly Good Man" it was the characterization; the author had created characters about whom I came to really care. For me he achieved this by only gradually revealing their backgrounds and life events; he built up their complex natures not in a chronological fashion but by interspersing chapters on other periods in their lives with the basic narrative. I found it incredibly effective. If you're not familiar with Patrick Gale's writing, do check it out.

Jennie reading from
"My Grandmother Skating"

New Bohemians on Friday evening was certainly a good setting for the launch of Jennie Farley's poetry pamphlet, and musical interludes provided  by Geoff March and David Butcher and the busker Jodie added to the festive atmosphere. Thank you to Su Billington yet again for providing such a super venue! Another venue that lends itself well to poetry is Smokey Joes in Bennington Street in Cheltenham - if you're free at 7pm on Wednesday evening, December 14th, Anna Saunders, the Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, is the guest poet there for Poetry Cafe Refreshed. No doubt another fun, and interesting, evening.

Geoff and David

A Christmas Extravaganza

There's such a lot happening in the run-up to Christmas - and an awful lot of work that needs doing before then. It's definitely business before pleasure here if my first draft is going to meet the Christmas deadline. One thing I won't be missing though is the New Bohemians Christmas Extravaganza on Friday evening at which Jennie Farley will be launching her new poetry collection "My Grandmother Skating" (published by Indigo Dreams). Jennie certainly lives up to her reputation as a master story teller and the stories in this collection, based on myth and legend, family recollections and fancies, carry you effortlessly both to other worlds and to some surprising places in this one.

If you're free on Friday evening (December 9th), do join us at 7.30pm. at deepspace in Hamilton Street, Charlton Kings, in Cheltenham - £6.50 on the door for drinks, nibbles, music, friendly conversation and some seriously good poetry!