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Monday 13 November 2017

Hibernation Is Not An Option



Monday 6th November 2017

Proofed a bit more of the revised ‘Laughter To Split Glass’ on the bus back from Jen's. Didn’t get home till almost midday. Checked messages and Facebook on desktop when settled upstairs. Four hours prepping sessions. Keyed in notes, read an atmospheric ghost story by Algernon Blackwood and a great urban creepy by Gary McMahon. Listened to three Marilyn Manson albums. Maybe I’m having my Halloween a week late… Really fucking cold. Overspent and don’t want to be shelling out for gas just yet, so I’m in bed by half-ten and the only item of clothing I’ve taken off is my fleece. Joggers are still tucked into socks. Long sleeve polo top tucked into joggers. Big woolly pompom hat pulled down over ears. I’d like to read something brilliant. Keeping pulp horror for bus rides. Would like to read Hubert Selby Junior’s ‘The Room’ again… Jen was in touch. I took her phone charger, mistaking it for my android cable. Bugger! Chuffed to get through my prep. Not struck on Mondays. Think tomorrow should be okay. 
10.47 pm. 


Tuesday 7th November 2017  

Up early, fully clothed. Quick porridge and chocolate spread – or swirl, in this case. Scroll of Facey-B on the tablet. Proofed final twenty pages of 'Laughter...', printed out an extra copy for the meeting with Sheila from Red Squirrel Press, then sorted myself for the Waddy workshop. Very few of the staff in today. Session okay. Used ‘Does She Like Word Games?’ by Wendy Cope to kickstart a look at sonnets, sestinas, limericks and tritinas. Then a bit of a one to one on forms for a festive greetings card and how to make a mini-zine. Read some of Graham Masterton’s ‘Garden of Evil’ on the bus. Good meeting with Sheila at the Lit & Phil. We saw that guy from nineties comedy ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ – Neil Pearson – who was there for some arts event. Then me and Jenni went to Tesco. Cleared out their reduced items shelves then back to hers for an episode of Lost in Space… Super swift 46 back to Consett. Read more of the novel, home to social media and cheese on toast. Ears ringing like hell. Sleeping in old clothes again. 11.00 pm. 


Wednesday 8th November 2017 

Out early for bank transactions and weekly allowance. Food at Barry’s Bargains so I don’t have to go out again until Saturday. Conversation at Waddy about music gigs and people who vote against their best interests. Session at Appletree was good – finished A2Z poem. Then back to Waddy and an hour of prep for evening class. Then an hour of 2017 fragments copy-ups. Evening good: Absurd words, inciting incident read backs, first/last lines, novel samples, starts to stories… ‘Garden of Evil’ on bus to Consett then an hour in Tesco: looked at music magazines, got copier paper and rest of the food to save a trip out before Saturday. I want two days to myself for my own stuff. Chuffed to find some striking prose in my NaNoWriMo 50,000 words from 2015. Good productive day. 11.50 pm. 


Thursday 9th November 2017 

Pretty cold day. heating hasn’t been on since Jenni was last here. And that’s months ago. Stone floor under the downstairs carpet. Probably warmer outside. Finished Graham Masterton’s ‘Garden of Evil’. It was okay except for a lull near the end after the big demon reveal – the ‘alive-dead’ people chasing protagonist and co – but picked up again in the final pages. Read the first eighty pages of Kathleen Kenny’s ‘The Satellites of Jupiter’. Present tense, first person family narrative of young girl set in late nineteen fifties / early sixties Newcastle. Episodic, maybe autobiographical. Over four-hundred and sixty pages, but I’ll try to fit it into gaps here and there. Also read some Lydia Lunch stuff from ‘Adulterer’s Anonymous’ this evening and extremely graphic vignette’s from Michael R. Gira’s ‘The Consumer’. Short, sharp shocks to the system – very influential in my mid-twenties. Back to bed with woolly hat and raging tinnitus. 10.57 pm. 


Friday 10th November 2017 

Listened to four Alison Moyet albums back to back whilst catching up on admin. If I hadn’t already overspent I’d try to get a ticket to see her at York Barbican on the 19th. But I’ll catch her again if she comes around in a couple of years from now. Haven’t read much – just the opening chapter of ‘The Concrete Grove’ by Gary McMahon on an Amazon preview. And some bits and pieces by Jessie Lynn McMains. Oh, and a couple of Jarboe interviews from 2014/16. Feel a bit done in, to be honest. Very distracted. ‘I Write’ by Albert Huffstickler came up as a post in my memory feed from a couple of years ago. I had a look online for his chapbooks, but the only few available were collectables around a hundred dollars each. I published ‘Huff’ in the very first issue of ‘Moodswing’ back in 2001. The mag is listed in his papers held at Texas State University: seventeen boxes of publications, letters and manuscripts - be great to see them all. 11.35 pm. 


Saturday 11th November 2017 

from Morning Pages:

A guy steps out of a doorway and sets down a little skateboard in a shopping precinct and pushes off. Only goes about five feet then stops, picks the board up and walks. A few moments later he tries again, but has to stop coz he runs the risk of colliding with a baby buggy. I see this whilst walking past a sports shop. I pick up a kids' kipper board from a display and throw the cost to a shop assistant and say Keep the change. Next thing I'm coasting along the street, in and out of shoppers, doing tic-tacs all old skool, popping up kerbs, doing little footbrakes to slow me out of harm's way. Before long I'm suburban and nipping in and out of terraces then the wheels become little tractor tyres and I'm all terrain, going up grass verges, carving round dirt mounds and over tree roots and it's totally brilliant. Next thing, I'm awake fully clothed in bed in November and am so stoked I want to longboard around Moorside, but of course I won't coz this time of year I've got about as much agility as a frozen corpse. But damn! That dream was great. Set me up for the day, that has. Fucking ace! 

Chuffed to write a good account of my dream this morning. Thanks to all who put likes on Facebook. Had steak pie and veg then cracked on with 'Anomalies 1989-2014' this afternoon. Whittled the standard version down from 180 pages to one-hundred and forty. Good to hear the band ‘Flipper’ for the first time. Bought a new thermal hat in Moorside, walked to Consett then read the first chapter of John Fante’s ‘Ask The Dust’ on the bus to Jen’s. Fante was Bukowksi’s favourite author but it’s taken me twenty-five years to get round to checking him out. Me and Jenni had fun laughing at dodgy coat hangers and listening to a toy Dalek bark what sounded like expletive-loaded commands. Went out for chips. Started watching Taggart when we got back but it’s a bit slow. 10.32 pm. 


Sunday 12th November 2017

Morning pages weren’t as good as yesterday but still recorded the humour between me and Jen pretty well. Had chip butties for breakfast then watched Columbo and Diagnosis Murder. Off to Tesco for dinner supplies, then a bit of Elaine Page’s radio show. Ran some book edits past Jenni for an hour. Thanks for catching my slipped tense and dodgy semicolons; and thumbs-up for layout edit on a poem about Jenni on page twenty-six – which just happens to be her lucky number. Listened to Elton John and Bernie Taupin on the Johnny Walker Show, had cherry pie and custard twice. Watched Sheridan Smith perform some of her favourite songs, then a game show, Big Bang Theory and more Elton John. I'll read a bit more John Fante on the bus to Consett then walk home. 10.34 pm.

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