Hectic End of the Season

Chaos! Trying to rehearse for a headline spot at Epicentre Book Cafe's spoken word evening Word Command next week, hosted by the cultured and intrepid Bryce Dumont, sorting out next week's radio show, the Storyclub tonight (which we'll be trying to record some of), preparing for the writing and sound workshops the week after next, trying to get the next Edition of Spoken/Written off by the end of the week, attending the Apples & Snakes / Cyprus Well hosted network meeting this weekend, and hosting Spoken/Written stalls before some of the evening events at the Exeter Poetry Festival this week and weekend...! Plus it happens to be the time of year when all the props and gear needs sorting out and mending after a full summer of hard use, and then of course the fact that the garden needs attention and things could be tidier in general having hardly been here until this last week and a half! All this and 'The Book of Convictions', the fourth in The Books of...Trilogy of serial poem chapbooks is being put together even as I type! When will I get a moment to e-mail the friend I most want to catch up with, finish making the Cabinet of Curiosities and continue with the other craft projects in hand? As for sitting in the garden to eat a meal - in this amazing late summery weather too! but there's just not the time... Writing more of 'The History of this House in Twenty Objects' will just have to be squeezed in at random stolen moments...isn't most writing?

II

This is the time of year when Majical Youth (theatre and production company who work at many festivals including organizing areas in the Kidz Field at Glastonbury, the craft area at the Beautiful Days, the Kid's Field at the Buddhafield Festival, stuff for Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, and others) invite all their crew and others who have worked with or for them over the season to come to their base in West Wales for a big party/small festival, which also involves renovating their kit from carnival stuff and costumes to craft gear and vehicles... What a great idea. I sometimes wish I could arrange the Collective to all come and spend a weekend at HQ doing the same! But as we're a rather smaller operation, guess who most of the clearing up and clearing out falls to? Yep....

III

But at least the storytelling van is now emptied and swept (ready for wood collecting duty and tip runs - if you share space with artists there's ALWAYS more stuff to throw away!), and most of the props are about where they should be or will live until needed...most of the craft gear sorted...still some of the fabric and leather to go...garden mostly cleared of random willow annoyingly lashing you as you try to get to the compost bin...most of the costumes put away, homes still needing to be found for the new things... And there's a pterodactyl covered in red wax standing outside waiting to be let in...(the less said about the goblin falling asleep against the wings of a green demon, the better...)