Sundays are for blogging

So it seems that Sunday night is blog night. Why is that? Is it a look back over the week kind of a thing? I've always written a lot on Sundays - usually for Monday morning deadlines - but this is different. No deadlines here. Not even any obvious reason for doing it at all. A futile exercise? Perfect - the purest joy.
So this week...worried a lot about not writing anything significant or relevant or any good. Is that futile too? Some people tell me they love my poems and all the stuff around them (that'll be the waffle then, some of it is very meaningful). And when people laugh at the bits I think are funny it does feel great and as if my dream of being something like a female, non-smoking, Dave Allen might even come true. Sometimes. But there's no rush. And a lot of other stuff to think about besides me!!
Back to life...might even enjoy some of it.

Back up where we belong

So you see...I knew I'd feel better in a week or so! It is tricky being a person of extreme moods but when you get the hang of it and know it's coming it does get easier...a bit...
Last week was doom and gloom, this week is pretty good. Verona and I had a great time at the Amnesty International gig in Carnoustie. Poems went down really well and people said such nice things - it was really encouraging. It more than makes up for some of the less enthusiastic reactions from poetry magazine editors and the like. I've never liked snooty people who like keeping things high and mighty and away from those dirty masses....why should that change now?
Anyway it was a really enjoyable night with a lot of good musicians and friendly people. Beats a night full of miserable/incomprehensible and/or ranting poetry any time. Am I traitor? Quite probably. Am I afraid of competition? More likely I'm just arrogant (is that worse?). Does anyone care? No, most unlikely. Go to bed now? Yes, getting child to school on time is advisable. 'Don't fink too much' as my friend's cockney Mum always said. I will try that.

It doesn't take much

Some of the time I keep up a really good pretence and almost seem to be a person who knows what they are doing and is getting on with their life quite well. Other times the pretence is less successful. I find there are certain triggers which I should avoid because they show up the holes in my cover too well. These triggers are-
1. Coffee - I pretty much always avoid it now after too many problems in the past. Just one sip and the cracks start to show pretty quickly. Twitchy, nervous, desperate, me?
2. Driving - too competitive, too many unknowns, too bloody dangerous. Can't hack it. Have left kitchen, couldn't stand heat.
3. Radiohead - I really like the music but it's too much what my head sounds like when I am worrying, panicking or just generally bemoaning the terrible state of everything. It is too true for its own good. If I were stronger I could listen to it without being terrified of my own crapness but I'm not sure that is an option - well, not today anyhow. Maybe next week.
4. Airports and aeroplanes - even watching people in an airport on TV makes me feel ill. I am going to go and live in the shed out the back I think. It's quiet there. Well, unless the neighbours are in their hot tub listening to 80s soft rock, it is.
Things will be better in a few days...

Voices of the north

Had a great night on Friday at the charity concert at the Links in Montrose. So many great singers and songs! Verona and I did a song too but we were (just for a change) the 'least experienced in show' and really we just enjoyed hearing others show how it's done. Folk songs, songs from Violet Jacob poems, bothy ballads...a real mix from Jim Reid, Geordie and Joe, Phil Smith, the folk club regular band of jokers and, my favourites of the night, Marjorie and Thomas from Forfar. I just love unaccompanied singing when it's done with real passion and feeling...nothing like it. Unlike a lot of people at the concert I didn't grow up listening to this kind of music (I never know any of the songs when they say 'you'll all know this one'...I think they'd be appalled if they did know what songs I do know the words too...). Anyway, good to feel good...