I’ve spent the last couple of hours editing a poem by Elvis McGonagall for his forthcoming Nasty Little Press pamphlet. I’ve been working on the title poem Mostly Dreich. The opening line is “Dark lours the tempest that howls overhead.” It feels appropriate, my feet have been cold for days now. Can you imagine how weather like this must have felt in the olden days, like the 1970s? I barely want to carry on and I have an iPad. How did you all survive?

New Year’s Eve, eh? Not having a big one, obvs. Going to stay in with my wife, in-laws and a couple of mates. Russel Howard will probably be on BBC3, so that’s something, eh? Personally I just want this period of festive fun over and done with. I’ve done my reflecting (see previous blog, that’s about as reflective as I get) and I want to get on with things. I’m not a good relaxer and I don’t see why I should have to be. My life is quite lazy enough without having to build in periods of rest and leisure.

I think a lot of people in my sort of positon feel the same. My poet mates aren’t very good at time off either. We have turned our hobby, our fun thing, into a career and we’re pretty happy just to keep on at it all year round. I have gone through periods of rejecting this natural inclination – of declaring myself in need of more robust compartmentalising – but now I don’t know, why fight it?

So bring on the new year and work and travel and new things.

Yesterday, a friend said I could stay with him in Oxford when I’m gigging there in late Jan (details tbc, keep your eyes on the gigs page poetry lovers!). Without really thinking I replied with the single phrase “wickedy-woo-wah.” I used to be cooler than this. Yet these days I seem to take delight in being as cringe-worthy as I can.

I also used to care about my appearance. Yet now I write this wearing yesterday’s shirt which has baby snot on one shoulder, tomato sauce down the front and, on the other shoulder, a rare sort of paste formed from ginger biscuit and baby dribble. I’ve also shaved all my hair off because “I can’t be fucked.” Some days I feel sort of retired; that I’m over the hump of middle age and slowly drifting towards a mediocre dotage. I’m 29 for fuck’s sake!

Actually, that may be the problem: 29. I’ll be 30 in two weeks. In my mind I’ve substituted “30″ for “dotage.” I realise that this is preposterous and I should stress this not a crisis. I mean, I’m not sad about it or anything. I’m just aware that something is ending. I think with one child you can in some ways carry on living a version of the life you had before. Now with the second child imminent, due only a few weeks after my 30th birthday, I think the sub-conscious I usually do so well to suppress is trying to tell me my youth is truly over. And there’s nothing awful about that. I’ve had a good innings.

In fact I’ve spent the last few years embracing the sort of life one settles into in their thirties: marriage, mortgage, countryside, children. But now with the inevitability of time stacked against me I do have the slight twinge of losing something I shall miss. An almost-feeling that I shouldn’t have rushed to kick my twenties into touch. Ach, ’tis nothing but nostalgia I suppose, and at least I am ahead of the game in terms of being thirty. Still I shall miss those years of starting out and lying in. And besides, no one is making me pile on the pounds and say “wickedy-woo-wah” – sometimes I’m just a bit of a nob, and I doubt age can do anything about that.

It’s bloody miserable in Bungay today. The wind is howling and it makes me want to climb inside my rolltop desk and hide until March. Can’t though, that’d be weird. And I’d die.

My son (2.5 years old) is watching Peppa Pig – short, animated tales about a 4 year old pig. The narrator sounds ever so slightly sarcastic, which provides some light relief for the parents. It’s not what I want to watch. I want to watch something heavy and important, ideally set in the 1920s/30s. Not the new(ish) adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. That made me want to rip out my own eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch it anymore. In the end I just turned it off.

Everyone’s a bit ill in this house. My son has a constant cold and my wife has the pregnancy aches and pains. I’m just a bit fed up. Oh dear, Peppa has just lost her shoes in the garden. I have six poems to write about Hornchurch by 12 January. I haven’t written any yet. But I have tidied my desk, so that’s something. I have also written a script of sorts that links together 10 new poems which will form the basis of my new show. I think I will call the show Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything (and other poems). Then I can have a self-important picture of myself on the poster with a cartoon cock drawn on my forehead. Though, as I write that, I start to wonder exactly why I would want to.

Peppa and her family have gone to Windy Castle now. Maybe I should go and do some parenting.

I’ve been on The Isle of Man for a week now. I’ve been going into the secondary schools here and doing my thing. I perform for about an hour in the morning, which usually means I am on stage by 9am, which can often be a challenge for both me and the audience! I then follow up the performance with two workshops, each lasting about 2 hours.

It’s gone pretty well. The performances have been well received and there’s been some great working coming out of the workshops. On Thursday I had to resist writing a few of the kids’ lines down and nicking them. I say “kids”, they’re not really kids, I mostly work with years 10, 11 an 6th form. In fact on Tuesday I was at the college and there even a few mature students in the workshops. I like working with older students, they are more confident to chat about the poems and we get some really conversations going.

On Friday I did my show, plus about 30 mins of new material in the first half, at the Villa Marina here in Douglas. Both bits went well. I’m feeling pretty hopeful that I’ll have a new hour’s worth of material by Edinburgh next year. I’m not going for longer than a few days, but it’ll be good to have a brand new show.

I’m also expecting to have a theatre show ready by then. I’m working on a piece called REVOLT! I’ll be scratching 15 mins of it on 19th November at Rich Mix in London, check the gigs page. It’s a dual narrative – one set in present day London around the summer riots, the other following the story of the Peasant’s Revolt from Fobbing in Essex to central London. Both deal with corruption, duplicity and uprising. Neither is a black and white story of goodies and baddies.

I’m writing the 2011 story in ottava rima, like I did Lucien Gore, and I’ve completed about 8 mins (160 lines) this week. The 1381 narrative is written in the Anglo Saxon style of alliterative lines. I’ve made a bit of a start in that and I’m excited to do more. I actually think that’ll be the easier of the two styles to do. Below is some ottava rima from the 2011 narrative, we’re at the beginning, a series of little vignettes of pre-riot Britain:

Let’s start our story in the present day,
well, cast your minds back, say a month or three,
before the heat of youth rampaged its way
down gap-toothed high streets – angry, cruel and free.
In Britain, where we’re keen they Have Their Say.
In Britain, with our Big Society.
Before the Sky News choppers churn and whirr
let’s listen to an average Friday’s burr.

So London first (why not?) that town’s a beast:
the mouths of Oxford Circus breathing out
a smoke of suits and buttered skin. Up east
horns honk at Shoreditch High Street, dickheads spout
abuse from vans; while underground they’re greased
with sweat and slapped on tubes where adverts tout
apologies from banks with shitty grins
or vitamins. A dearth of litter bins

mean right-wing rags accumulate on seats
parading cancer causes, ubermensch
and ghostly girls strangled on their own streets:
Found with one breast exposed, concern is drenched
in gory details, then reduced to Tweets.
What price a victim’s shame when you can quench
the idle curiosities of millions
preserve it all in columns of opinion?

And every front page headline sings the chorus
of Brookes and Coulson writhing on their swords
The media serpent playing Ouroboros:
it eats itself to fill the Stop Press boards.
The lengths they’ll go to just so they don’t bore us!
The depths they go for tit-bits for their hoards
of hateful kids, insatiable and callous
raised on Schaudenfreude, sex and malice.

But come now, it’s not late enough for that.
Meet Nick, a journalist, the measured type
his paper shuns the tabloid rat-a-tat
of scandal, lies, skullduggery and hype
or so they claim, though still they have their spats,
occasionally some doggerel and tripe,
but mostly they were good and Nick had dreamed
of writing for them since his early teens.

Which, I should say, were not that long ago
young Nick is young, I’m guessing twenty-four,
right now, he’s drinking in the Barley Mow
with mates. They’re idealistic, talking war,
Murdoch and Arab Spring but not for show
they’re galvanised by change and want some more.
They talk of ’82, of ’68
Tweet apathy to rights until its late.

Then half-sloshed in his room as grime core scrobbles
Nick bashes out a blog, all left-wing gristle
while bottles smash on Cardiff’s carless cobbles
and shirtless blokes shout fuming, mad epistles
(well, Coldplay songs) as post-work geezers gobble
kebabs while trying to protect their whistles.
A hundred farm boys piss down safety glass
a woman pulls her knickers out her arse.

As thirty-something birds in York alight
a train all wearing Shelagh’s Hen Do tees
a lipstick pink, they plough the muggy night
in search of sickly shots and DJ-ed cheese;
of hairy-chested lads who like a fight;
of somewhere dark to get down on their knees
and spill their liquored guts like summer rain
to clear them out so they can start again.

While up the road in Terrington Samantha
Trample runs her MP’s surgery
blue rinse brigade not fussed about the bankers
just gypsy sites and NIMBY-ism pleas.
A few congratulate or simply thank her
(she’s just been the made the junior secretary
for home affairs), life’s good, so say the polls
last one of these, and then she’s off on hols.

She glances briefly at her Twitter app
that nit-wit from The Guardian has spammed
her feed again with bolshy, pious crap
re her expenses. Christ, you’d think I’d scammed
the needy of their dinner. Trample taps
ineptly at the screen, Well I’ll be damned
if this will spoil my night. She presses block
@NickTheDigger’s angry missives stop.

Find out what happens on 19th November at Riot Act at Rich Mix. My words will be backed by visuals creates by Zara Hayes who I worked with on The Seven Ages of Love on Channel 4.

On Friday I headed to BH to record a few minutes of poetry alongside my fellow Saturday Live poets. It was much fun indeed, lovely as always to see the gang. The programme is being aired on Thursday 6th October for National Poetry Day. More info here.

I had a great time in Guangzhou, it was sad to leave on Sunday. My thanks go out to Grace and Susan of The British Council, Professor Hu and all the other poets we met and worked with there.

I slept in on Sunday morning, I had stayed up late the night before watching a Poliakoff TV play called Gideon’s Daughter. Mainly because I thought Emily Blunt was foxy in The Adjustment Bureau, but it was shit. Not even Bill Nighy and Miranda Richardson could save it from its own self importance. Certainly not worth missing breakfast for, which I almost did. Thankfully Cesca had ordered a coffee for me and I got the last sausage.

We flew to Chengdu, another city of around 14 million people. Officially that is, that’s registered workers, there’s likely to be around 17 million. We ventured out on our own and went to a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel. There were no English menus, but the young waiter had a few words of English and we gestured and pointed with friendly smiles and had a great meal. No one made us feel stupid or impolite, there was a genuine desire to communicate on both sides and we came away feeling better about life and our fellow human beings.

Back in the hotel I tried and failed to watch the Grand Prix. We were now in a Holiday Inn Express and the wifi was a lot slower than at The Garden Hotel in Guangzhou. In the end I sulked on my bed and watched live timings on my iPad app. Very very sad.

Our restaurant experience was much more typical of the following two days than my lack of grand prix, a more accurate omen, as we have had an amazing time. On Monday we went to White Night bar. White Night is owned by Zhai Yongming, a famous Chinese poet, and wouldn’t feel out of place in Shoreditch, it has an art gallery/shop and small library attached, brown leather sofas and at the far end a stage.

We met Zhai, the event’s host Pan Libing and three translators. My translator was Erika. “I think I have to be drunk to translate your poems” she laughed as we met. We were the spend the next two afternoons working with the translators and three Chinese poets in sharpening up the translations of each others poems ahead of a performance on Tuesday night. The poet assigned to work with me, Liao Hui, couldn’t make most of these sessions so I worked with Erica and Pan.

“I’m worried my translations are like a primary school child is talking,” Erica said, “Pan will help make them more like poetry again.” We spent two and a half hours working on The Drunk Train. It is impossible for the metre and rhyme to be translated into Mandarin. They do use rhyme in Chinese poetry, but as the language is tonal and not accentual like ours metre is a different story. Still, we had great fun talking out the cultural references, images and meanings of the poem. Erica was brilliant and Pan did her best to impose poetry on my decidedly unpoetic style.

It was a fascinating process. Sure, I definitely enjoyed talking in great detail about my own work but it was mainly exhilarating to communicate so deeply with these Chinese people. Language is such huge barrier it’s easier to forget just how much we are alike. It was great to pick our way through difficult sentences; to laugh with them. And it wasn’t all about me – we also translated Liao Huis poems into English. There were calm meditations on inner life, often drawing on Buddhism. The trick was to communicate these feelings of emptiness and calm without drifting into the realms of English cliches. I was pleased with the results, adding a touch of the colloquial to them.

Later on stage during a salon Professor Zhao Yiheng said that the biggest problem with translation is that the metaphors become cliched in another language. As a total novice at translation (well, worse than novice, I don’t even speak another language) I felt qualified to half disagree. I said maybe you can never truly translate precisely and make the work good, but you can translate and re-create. Now that just seems obvious. Still, it was better than just shrugging which was the only other option I felt I had open to me.

Back at the hotel I showered and went to bed EARLY. Get me.

Tuesday was our last day in Chengdu, and indeed in China. We finished translating in the afternoon then went shopping for tourist tat. It turns out almost anything can be branded with a panda, so with a bags laden with panda tea sets, panda chop sticks, panda thermoses, panda fridge magnets, panda t-shirts and panda vegetable peelers we went off a for a final dinner.

The food has been superb. Chnegdu is in Sezchuan Province and the food is famously spicy. In our local restaurant we pointed as gorgeous looking dishes on other tables, our young waiter winced. “Too hot, I think,” he would say. I was well up for it, but Francesca and Aoife less so. The spicy food is not just chilli overdoses either. They achieve a hotness with pepper, celery, ginger and garlic. Your tongue vibrates afterwards.

Our trip ended with a performance, the three of us and the Chinese poets. Hosted by Pan, introduced by Zhai. Our new translations were on screens as we performed. Performance poetry as we know it does not really exist in China, when I launched into The Drunk Train there was a genuine buzz in the bar. It was really exciting for me. Some translations worked better than others. It was surreal to be referencing “Don’t mention the war” and Bhangra and Maidenhead in a back street of Chengdu.

After the gig we sat on the stage, drank beer and talked to Zhai about her travels around the world, her trips to Edinburgh. Taylor from The British Council translated. Her colleague Jenny told us about how she played Chinese harp with The Gorillaz in Hong Kong and Manchester. It felt exciting, 16 year old me would have been proud.

Here’s a thing I approve of, incense in toilets:

All the events have been really proper here, with my ugly mug plastered on large boards outside.

On Saturday Francesca and I went exploring, breaking away from the dual carriageway and hotel land to see a slice of the real Guangzhou, it was really exciting, strange and beautiful:

In the afternoon we were taken to The Canton Tower, at 600 odd metres it’s the tallest building in the world. It’s not finished yet so we could only go up 433m, only. It was pretty cool:

Saturday night was The Poetry Gala at The Pearl River International Poetry Festival. It was held at a resort/compound full of hotels and expensive houses. I think this was because the festival is sponsored by a real estate company. It was an outdoor affair, amazing sound system, huge stage and pink and green light show. As we approached they were playing hard house, it felt like we were walking into a rave, I kept looking around for pills.

The poetry was a stark contrast to the music, but there was a stellar line up, top names from around China. There were about 20 photographers down the front (the Chinese are big on photography) and little children running about. I was surprised at the general attitude of the audience. One poet in the front row loudly answered his mobile phone during another’s performance, people chatted as the poets read their poems on stage. Strangely they seemed a lot more attentive when we were on, even though here was no translation for my two pieces. Or perhaps the sound was so good that I just didn’t notice the chatting and phone answering, in which case I guess it didn’t matter.

It was a strange experience performing with the knowledge that most of what you say will not be understood, but something about being able to shout my ballads into the night thousands of miles away from the world they were written about was exhilarating.

We got back at 11pm shattered.

On Friday we did our first two events. Both were at the Guangdong Foreign Studies University. In the afternoon we each gave a talk and then did 10 or so minutes of poems. The talk was translated as we went along. I did mine on ballads. I basically took two bits from the show and did them straight without the jokes. I was pretty rewarding finding that my comedy show could actually double as a lecture at a university. I still manage to get the LAZY joke about Yeats in, which was nice as I got a good laugh. I would stop after each slide and allow the translator to fill in the non-English speakers. However, most people spoke good English and seemed to be more tuned into what I was saying.

The poems had been translated beforehand and printed in the (very beautiful) programme for the event. I did Barlow Burton and Chip Shop. I hadn’t intended to do two ‘sadder’ pieces but the had been a mix up. It didn’t actually matter because although I also did chip shop last night there was no translation and I don’t think people really followed, so it was good to give it a good outing on Friday.

We then went to dinner with a cheery bunch of Chinese poets, chatted about everything from the one child policy to the Oulipo. It was then back to the lecture hall for a seminar: five Chinese poets, Aoife, Francesca and I and Professor Hu from Peking University as chair. Professor Hu is great btw, very funny, always joking. He’s one of the most distinguished poets of his generation, but he has a cheeky grin a bit like my mate Gommy.

My impatient nature made the seminar quite frustrating for me. We and Chinese poets spoke in English and every time one of us spoke it was translated into Mandarin, which more often than not took twice the time the original English had taken. This meant by the time we came round to answer the fairly complex questions I had forgotten half of it. Still, it was interesting and the students asked excellent questions. Afterwards we chatted informally to them. One girl I spoke to saw the political power of satire and performance poetry. “We need this here,” she said, “no paper trail.” I performed Dudley Livingstone the next night aware that nothing of the sort could exist in China without serious repercussions.

I’m only in bloody China, innit.

So after a week at home with the missus and Dribble Boy I packed my £1 charity shop faux-leather case and headed for Heathrow once more. Terminal 4 this time, which I like. I always want to get Oysters and champagne but usually opt for Garfunkel’s scampi and a pint of watered-down Stella. Flew Air France first to Charles De Gualle and then onto Guagzhou (pronounced guang-joe). It’s hot here, about 28 degrees during the say and humid enough to swim at night. We’re staying in The Garden Hotel, which I guess equates to a four star plus hotel by English standards. Facilities wise, that is, the quality of everything is much higher. The breakfast buffet is immense, everything from hash browns to dim-sums via cheese, German sausage and pak-choi. I had two breakfasts this morning in fact, the hotel one and then more dim sums with Grace and Susan from The British Council in Guangzhou. I bloody love breakfast.

We went on a sight-seeing trip today, which I was initially not really up for given I have woken up at half three. However, it was pretty good fun. I’m here with fellow UK poets Francesca Beard and Aoife Mannix, so I’m in good company. We went to Foshan, which is the home town of Bruce Lee. Actually town isn’t right, it’s all just city. The city sprawls as far as you can see and beyond. We drove for 45 mins today without any sign of it letting up, crossed rivers, left Guangzhou and still the sprawl sprawls. This is a city of 14 million and it’s nearly all new, very little from pre-war. The ‘opening-up’ happened in 1992, but being so close to Hong Kong this area began to experiment with the free market before then and the city grew immensely.

Our sight-seeing involved us: visiting the temple where Bruce Lee’s master trained him; taking loads of pictures; trying our hand at making ceramics. My tile was cool and Wharhol-esque. Francesca’s looked a bit like a vagina. It was actually a river in a basin leading down to the sea, or so she claims.

Here are some things I know about China:

1) They still have ring pulls on their cans
2) Chinese poets used to be paid by the state, a pittance, like everyone else, but it was a legit job with the salary. Then the ‘opening-up’ happened and there was not money in poetry, many poets gave it up to become businessmen. “Poets used to high status” a journalist tells us, “a women would even be proud to marry a poet.”
3) The Chinese seem unable to make a dish without sprinkling just a little bit of pig on it. I love it. Vegetarian Aoife, less keen.
4) You can’t go on Twitter here so I have a large amount of epiphanal discharge building up in my brain. Something’s gotta give.
5) Everything is cheap here, except beer. That’s still cheaper than back home, 50p a can.
6) No coins from what I can work out, they have notes worth 50p.
7) Their statues of threatening men and gods all look really funny.

I went for a swim on the roof today. Win. The hotel is really spoiling us. I had a a sweet sauna too.

We start our work tomorrow. I’m reading my poems in front of 400 people. They’re translated in the program for non-English speakers. As you can imagine a lot of people speak English here.

Right, spent. Bed calls.

We’re back home today. We did our final performance for Overload Festival last night. It was at The Wheeler Centre and was perhaps my favourite of the gigs we’re done. The audience were really responsive and they even went for Jean Claude Gendarme. My brother said he wasn’t sure if the ‘Allo ‘Allo reference would work in Australia but I reckon it worked even better than at home.

We did The Poetry Take-Away at The Rose Lane Artist’s Market yesterday afternoon and walking through the streets of Fitzroy afterwards I had that falling in love moment with Melbourne. I’d love to spend some more time here. There’s even a part of me that wants to pack the family up and move here for a few years. It’s an exciting, intelligent, artistic and beautiful city. I feel very lucky have been give this opportunity to spend some time here. Many thanks to Writers’ Centre Norwich for organising this trip, to Melbourne Writers’ Festival for hosting us, to The Red Room in Sydney and to The Overload Festival for the three gigs we have done with them this weekend. Blight here we come.

Oh Lordy. I’ve been a long time away now. I feel like I’ve been a lovely hot bath for 6 weeks, and sure, why wouldn’t you want to be in a hot bath? It’s great, it’s relaxing, you’re not having to face the realities of life, but y’know after a while you want to get out and get on with things, even if it means having to do a tax return or change a nappy. I miss my family. I miss taking the rubbish out. I miss washing up. I miss driving my wife places when bus doesn’t come. I miss ringing Yanny Mac and talking about nothing to distract him from his cleaning. I miss cooking. I miss normality.

We leave here on Monday night and we’re back to dear old Blighty on Tuesday afternoon. I then have a week at home (punctuated by two gigs – one with brilliant Byron Vincent in Diss and another of Cynical Ballads at the Soho Theatre in London) before heading off to China for more hotels and international poetry readings. I’m not moaning blog faithful, I’m not. It’s brilliantly exciting. I just don’t want to loose my mind in all of this.

Some good news: The boffins at The British Comedy Guide have been syndicating all the reviews from Edinburgh and have placed Cynical Ballads in their top 25 best reviewed shows of the WHOLE FRINGE. In fact, having looked through the list (which is unordered) me thinks I would have been in the top five of that. I know it’s not pleasant to boast. But what else is a blog for. I was FUCKING CHUFFED with that.

I’ve done a couple of gigs for The Overload Poetry Festival this weekend. The good folk at Overload have made us feel very welcome. I especially enjoyed hearing Geoff Lemon. He’s a top bloke too. We have one more gig tonight. Hannah, Tim and I doing 30 mins each at The Wheeler Centre. That’ll be an excellent end to our trip. Then we have plane food to look forward to. Yay!

G Apostrophe Day Cobbers

I’m in Sydney. I’ve touched the Opera House, drank a can of Mother (Australian Relentless) in the Botanical Gardens and got bored and depressed by tat in Paddy’s Markets. I’ve done a really fun gig at The Clubhouse, hosted by the lovely folk of the Red Room Company. I’ve drank lovely coffee. I’ve seen a cardboard cut-out of my favourite comedian in a Virgin Mobile store, Paul Foot’s Lost in Translation moment as Robin Da Hood, I haven’t’ seen the adverts but I reckoned he’ll have done a good job of them. Even though, Robin Da Hood, really??!! Hmm, what else have I done? Skyped with my two year old son who got frustrated he couldn’t cuddle the computer. I’ve had a bit of a homesick cry, eaten great sushi, sat in the park and marvelled at the sun, and quipped with Tim Clare to the point of Hannah Jane Walker having to leave the room. So mostly good fun, especially the quipping.

We’re back orf to Melbourne tomorrow for the Overload Poetry Festival this weekend. I like Sydney, but I much prefer Melbourne, which ranks up there with Prague and Edinburgh as the best cities I’ve been to. I’d live there, if I didn’t already live in the best place in the world – namely Bungay in North Suffolk. I’m missing the homestead – the water meadows, the Green Dragon, the print works and common, but most of all my lovely terraced house and long, rickety garden, my wife and my son. Adventures are great, but you need to come home again.

I’m listening to The Cure, which perhaps explains why I’m being all gooey and nostalgic, The Cure makes me all fluttery and like I’m in a film. Here are 3 Cure facts:

1) The Cure are from Crawley. FACT.
2) I’ve eaten a Pizza Hut alone in Crawley, it was lush. FACT.
3) Daisy Goodwin named ‘Just Like Heaven’ as her ‘Inheritance Track’ on Saturday Live but only because she turned me during a break and said: “what’s a Cure track, I want to say a Cure track.” And the only one that sprang to mind under pressure was “Just Like Heaven.” I should have said “10.15 Saturday Night” that would have made us both sound cool. Or better yet made one up that was an innuendo. Tee-hee-hee. FACT.

Um …. I don’t have a lot to say for myself, can you tell? Our apartment is on 30th floor, which is great, it makes me feel American. It makes me think of Rob Lowe in Wayne’s World: “it costs a lot to live this free.” Everytime we go onto our balcony I have to resist saying, “hey Cassandra, y’know from this height … you can could really hock a loogie on someone.” I don’t think I have ever loved a film as much as I love Wayne’s World. It makes Citizen Kane look like the shit it is.

Right I’m going to the lobby to post this …

and the tap drips … drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip …

Having a bloody great time in Melbourne. It’s a brilliant, exciting city. It’s just been voted the most liveable city in the world and I can see why. I would say that after Norwich it probably (Norwich, you will always be my favourite city).

I did Cynical Ballads last night at The Toff in Town to a 100-odd punters. It felt great. Turns out I’ve missed it.

I’ve spent the morning working at The Wheeler Centre, a kind of hub for literature resources and literary agencies and NGOs. I got some good work done for Nasty Little Press. I’m preparing pamphlets by Elvis McGonagall and Nic Aubury. Both will be in physical form around November time. Plus an Intro from Lizzy Dening and perhaps another ‘show’ book – more on that later.

I’m currently on one of Melbourne’s excellent trams heading to meet my brother. It’s his birthday today and he’s traveled down from Brisbane where he lives. We’re going to play crazy golf and eat steak. Win.

Tomorrow we head to Sydney for a gig. I’ve been asked how one can get tickets for our Sydney gig, I’m not currently sure, but they will be available on the door. So if you’re unsure just turn up.

Right, steak time. See ya.

Greetings from Down Under Poms!

It’s day time here and you’re still shrouded in darkness. MENTAL!

It’s been a topsy-turvy few days. We left Edinburgh at about 11pm on Sunday night towing the Poetry Take-Away behind us. It only fell off once, so that was good. We drove through the night, which was fucking horrible, with only about 90 minutes kip at Wetherby services and lots of frayed nerves and Relentless. I had about four hours at home, which were pretty fraught too, tears before nap time etc etc. At 4pm on Monday we (Tim Clare, me and Laura Stimson from Writers’ Centre Norwich) got a taxi to Heathrow. I ate crisps and drank more Relentless. At Heathrow we met up with Hannah Jane Walker and our little crew of intrepid antipodean adventurers was formed.

The first flight (12 hours to Hong Kong) was easy, we were so tired from the previous night we slept all the way there, with a brief break from the Zs to eat the plane food, which we have all developed a taste for. The second flight was a mere 8 hours. Between naps I watched bad James Bond films and ate more delicious, nutrias plane food. Hurrah!

We got to Melbourne on Wednesday morning and despite feeling pretty tired I am now at least fully on Australian time. Having said that, everyday feels like a week and I have the strange sensation of feeling like I’ve been here forever and also not really able to come to terms with the fact that I left Edinburgh almost a week ago.

On the work front, Tim and I did a gig to 180 teenagers yesterday which went really well, we were even asked to pose for photos and sign autographs. Feeling pretty full of ourselves we ate like kings at Nandos and went out for a few drinks last night. There was a free bar for festival (this is Melbourne Writers’ Festival) authors in a lovely bar in the north part of town. Tim and I had to slip away for an hour or two to do an interview on ABC Victoria at about 8m, which we enjoyed thoroughly. The presenter Derek was an old pro (I don’t mean prostitute) and made us feel very comfortable indeed. Back at the party we hooked up with Hannah and Laura, who was beating us on the wine, and quipped our way through to midnight and a taxi home.

In other news I got a five star review from Broadway Baby for the Edinburgh show. Not much good to me now, but nice nevertheless.

I’ve got nothing on today so I might go and visit Albert Park, where they race the F1 cars and eat now Nandos. Good-byes!