I've been scribbling some words down and posting them on my new Tumblr blog today.
If you have a few moments to kill and want to read them, here they are.
Sparky is about our beloved cat. Our neighbour told us he saw him get hit by a car and run off at the weekend. We haven't seen him since and are naturally quite upset. And yes, I know I get my tenses mixed up in this one, but I'm grieving for my cat, so give me a break!
A poem about self destruction, by Me (I know, I'm ace at coming up with titles for these things) is pretty much as the title suggests. I was feeling sorry for myself and wrote it down.
Some nonsense about heaven was actually a lot of fun to write despite not making much sense or being very well written. What is it about? I don't know, something to do with heading out north of Heaven and finding peace on an island where 'angels and warriors rest'.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
A chat with Grace
Sometimes, the only reason you interview someone is because it is your job to get quotes and gather facts. This is fine in as much as you get the job done and your subject gets to say whatever it is they'd like to say a wider public, even if it isn't a terribly rewarding experience for either of you.
Other times, however, you interview someone because you've been enjoying their work, want to know more about them and find yourself in the privileged position of being able to call them up and ask them stuff.
On these occasions you'll usually find you have a much better interview on your hands, such as the one I did with Grace Solero earlier this morning.
It's always nice to get to chat to someone and tell them personally that you've been enjoying their music -as I have with Grace Solero's debut, New Moon- especially when they're as approachable and down-to-earth as Grace came across this morning, and I honestly felt that it was one of the better interviews I've done in a while.
We talked about her move to the UK from her native Italy and how the 'melting pot of cultures' attracted her to London.
We talked about the album of course, and I even got to quell my curiosity about that chant in Troops (it is just a chant, not some profound statement uttered in another language as I suspected it could be), a song that she admits is probably her favourite too.
We also got to talk about her plans to get Up North with the band for some gigs. Apparently, there's hopes of a tour in the new year, so I'll be keeping my eye out for that and looking forward to seeing Grace and her band in person if they do make it up here. Unless I happen to find myself in London before then, in which case I'll be taking up the offer a coffee!
Until then, I'll be typing up the interview tomorrow, hopefully getting it up on Monday, and sharing a link to it here and on Twitter later that day.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Why cats are much better than blogs...and other topics.
Whenever I don't blog for a while, a certain unexplained guilt yaps at my ankles in much the same way that my cat does when he hasn't been fed for a few hours.
It's fairly easy to get rid of a nagging cat. All I need to do is just feed him and run the risk of potential accussations that I spoil that fat little moggy, but it's not quite as easy to stop the persistent nagging that whispers in the back of your brain something to the effect of Oi, Blondie, your blog needs some attention.
Of course, I try to make it stop by convincing myself that I've been rather busy -too busy to blog at least- and that anybody who really has any time to update their blog obviously has too much of the stuff on their hands anyway.
Then I realise that can't be true.
After all, I've managed to keep this blog alive for the past two years, and it's not like I've never been busy before.
So I guess the only excuse I have now is that, though I have been busy, I've busy working on a number of random, unrelated projects all at the same time, none of which could provide sufficient inspiration for a coherent blog entry (I do write those occasionally!) of any reasonable length.
Still, I'm here now, and whilst I'm rambling on anyway, I might as well share a few updates.
- The Twitter presentation I mentioned last time was cancelled. It's been rearranged for this coming Wednesday, so I'll hopefully travelling to Leigh to talk to youth workers about the joys of tweeting.
- Speaking of Twitter, I finally got done with the videos from the first Preston Tweetup. The trials and tribulations could, and probably will, actually make a pretty coherent blog entry, though not just now. Ed has posted the clips on Blog Preston if you want to take a look. Quick word of advice though, to see them in better quality, click on the menu button in the bottom left of the clips and chose 'original size'.
- Tomorrow, I get to interview Italian singer, Grace Solero. I've been enjoying Grace's upcoming album New Moon for a couple of weeks now and I've got a whole bunch of questions I'm looking forward to asking her (like what, exactly, is that guy chanting in Troops?). What I'm not looking forward to is the telling off I'm likely to get from Mrs. Skoyles since I promised I'd spend the day with her and without doing a single scrap of work. Oops.
- Later this month, I'll be helping run some journalism workshops for young people. I've been involved in a few of these before, but this will be the first time I've ever had to take any kind of a lead on such things, so I'll let you know how that goes.
