Still alive. Still here. Just. Mum got ill again, and family drama led to me spending a rather fraught and self-pitying night at the Angel View Inn, Gateshead (nice place, lovely staff, great food, but given the circs a place I never want to go to again), then decamping, after a long day of literally bumming around Newcastle, back to Michelle's place. I'm getting kind of sick of all this to-ing and fro-ing, though, so today I did something I've been meaning to get around to for ages: I got a form from the local Housing Office, to register my interest in moving into what we used to call a council house before corporations like Gentoo got in on the act. Soon, perhaps, you will experience me blogging from the freezing cold of my own personal Bedsit Hell. Exciting!
It's not all Morrissey-esque misery, though. After my day of experimental homelessness in the Toon, I went to the long-awaited Borders reunion drinking session at Tilly's theatre bar. A fine night in a fine venue and, after we decamped to the equally fine Bodega, a great deal of fantastic conversation was had on topics as diverse as the foibles of customers, the most disgusting things found behind bookshelves, and my role, as head of the Psychology & Social Sciences section (incorporating Erotica & Sexuality) as the Pornographer of Gateshead. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...so that was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise depressing weekend.
Another ray of sunshine is my upcoming visit to That London to do some poetry gigs, which is happening next week. I'll be reading at RAW Poetry in King's Cross on Monday the 4th; Poetry Unplugged at Covent Garden's Poetry Cafe on Tuesday the 5th; then it's up to Hebden Bridge for Write Out Loud's own 'read-around' session on Wednesday the 6th, before finishing up in Middlesbrough for the Black Light Engine Room's National Poetry Day extravaganza. It's a tornado of troubadouring which I'm privately referring to as the Cheap Date Poetry Tour, largely due to the fact that I am having to do it on as close to no budget as possible (and the fact that I will sleep with random members of the audience in return for a drink, obviously). And after which I will probably sleep right through for the remaining three days of my officially-sanctioned week's holiday...
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