Just a quickie this, on the offchance that anyone out in Livejournal land can help ( Read more... )

Thursday afternoon ends with a wry comment from a Welsh lady at an employment agency I’m attempting to register with ( Read more... )

I visited the opticians for the first time in a year today for an eye test. The results were as depressing as expected. My eyesight has deteriorated further still since the last check - I'm now officially hopelessly short-sighted, and unable to read even the top line of any chart without the aid of specs or contact lenses ( Read more... )

The poetry trials continue. Last night was the turn of a new open mic night, “Poetry at Folgate Street” in a pub called “The Poet” (appropriately enough) in Shoreditch ( Read more... )

As most of you will probably be able to deduce from the long gaps between entries on this journal, nothing much is happening in my life at present. A standard crawl through an average day involves me sending my CV to more agencies, attempting to ring and ‘bother’ more of the said agencies, reading a bit, writing a little, taking a walk to the ( Read more... )

I was back in London again yesterday evening, this time to attend an open mic called “The Human Zoo” (unfortunately not connected to the Tommy Boyd unscreened radio phone in show of the same name) at the Urban Bar in Whitechapel ( Read more... )

You can never go home again. This is especially true if your hometown - or adopted hometown, if your parents moved out there when you were too young to sensibly object - is one you never very much liked in the first place ( Read more... )

Last night I dreamt that the Beatles had reformed, and by some peculiar fluke I had been asked by Paul and Ringo to play bass guitar. I remember feeling very nervous and unworthy, and generally very grateful to have been asked, and said as much to the visiting television journalists ( Read more... )

I left Montreal airport at 11:15pm on Friday. My emotions were a combination of sadness and elation - sad in that I’d be leaving my wife Amanda behind for a month, and also a house that (with the exception of a continually paranoid Sherpai hound) has been incredibly welcoming, but happy in that I’d be returning to see my friends and family ( Read more... )

We went to see the Hershey's chocolate factory today. Actually, I've got a cold, and to be perfectly honest that's all I can summon up the enthusiasm to write. We went to see the Hershey's chocolate factory. It had chocolate in it. And people making chocolate. It glooped out of all these metal machines, and moved down all these little ( Read more... )