Marvels and Improv Magickings
Gosh, I’m back in the real world today, quite exhausted and wild-eyed from a week away in Dorset. It has been an incredible five days of improvisation in a place I would never normally visit – a very strange culty place (oh yeah, literally a cult -check out the dude who set it up – I have no faith in rich gurus) – but all that was quite avoidable since we were doing improv with sixty other amazing people.
It’s really very nice to be home with my Marilyn, Merly and stuff though.
♥ This week’s scribbles
Wednesday Slightly Broken: Soul Searching with John Cremer A great week but fuck me, some of it was tough.
Thursday The Desert Crystals Part 22 “Dead Air” There’s something out there.
Friday Book Review: Feast and Famine by Adrian Tchaikovsky A fabulous book of short stories.
Updates on my thrilling life
Writing
Well last week went really well, mainly because I got to have a good old rant on Tuesday and did all the rest of my writing on Wednesday on the train to Gillingham (Dorset – apparently that’s important). I love writing on the train, and I love that we have the technology to do it. Brilliant species, providing we agree that my tablet is better than bears. I’m back in the swing of Desert Crystals after that catastrophic week or so ago (it feels like I’ve been away for a month) and the story is cruising along horribly/well.
This week is already almost devastated by my total lack of planning over the weekend. I made lots of notes on improv workshops though… in a notebook. Yes, I used a pen for the first time in ages. It’s a particularly lovely little moleskin notebook with a Lego brick in the front (happy present!) and my handwriting in it is truly appalling. I’m going to try to write about the improv wonders…
Writing? Read it – we have Pub Poetry tomorrow – Tuesday 24th September – which will be a grand chance to read your funny stuff and listen to comic spoken word / poetry / prose. Martin and I shall beat poeting…
Tuesday Things I Hate: Fucking Adverts An unnecessary rant about how offensive I find advertising to be.
Thursday The Desert Crystals Part 21 “Nascent Horrors” It’s in his eyes…
Friday Film Review Shorties: White House Down / Riddick (2013) Two bad films.
Zero activity. Sadface. Well, I did talk at length about Lego with a very nice chap called Josh from Bristol’s improv scene.
Improv Comedy
I almost have no words for how exciting and terrifying the last five days have been with The Maydays down in Dorset. A five day residential improv festival is exactly as awesome and knackering as it sounds! Four workshops a day with shows, jams and a showcase. I’met so many really funny and creative people who I’m desperate to play with again that I’ve become rather overwhelmed by it all. I’ve done things as diverse as improvised Shakespeare, singing in the dark, doing a show with a man wearing nothing but one of my socks, staring in a man’s eyes for an hour, consuming a lady’s wombmeat, fighting off daddy longlegses and bellowing mock-Nazi songs at night (I blame new merchants of the grotesque Necrotic Sausage buddies Sam and Jules).
It’s been one hell of a week and I’ve no idea when I’ll manage to document it all or track everyone down on t’web. I can do little right now but thank The Maydays and friends for their fine workshops, comedy and companionship.
Books
As you might imagine I’ve not really done much reading either… but I am most of the way through the first of Jim Butcher‘s fantasy series – The Furies of Calderon. It’s not as fun as the Dresden Files, but it’s got a rare fantasy vibe that I’ve been loving under the duvet at night.
Events and Excitement
Nottingham Comedy Festival: Pub Poetry – Tuesday 24th September
7.30pm at the Canalhouse, Nottingham.
Open mic comic poetry and spoken word for everyone (in a pub).
Nottingham Comedy Festival: MissImp in Action – Friday 27th September
Nottingham Comedy Festival: MissImp in Action – Friday 27th September8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.
The Great Nottinghamshire Show – Saturday 28th & Sunday 29th September
Smithy Row, The Market Square, Nottingham.
Saturday:
11.00-11.30am on the Main Stage
12.50-13.30pm on the Mini Stage
Sunday:
3.15-4.00pm on the Main Stage
0 thoughts on “We Have A Problem With Books”
I’m with you on all counts.
This is an amazing post and one that I feel I could have written, minus the humor, readability, and references to A levels. Interestingly, we also have very similar reading tastes and opinions. While I haven’t read everything that you have, I agree with all you said about those I did read. The only place we diverge is that I live in an apartment and had I not decided long ago to get rid of some books when the sheer volume of them reached a critical mass I would surely be dead, crushed under a huge pile of heavy tomes. Although I do miss certain editions I once had, overall it has worked out pretty well for me.
A couple of notes. The Doctor Who book was likely Planet of the Spiders (a less inspired title I can not imagine) and while you’re right about the later Hitchhiker books, the sequence at Milliways in the 2nd book is my favorite part of the “trilogy.”
And lastly, I also still have my copy of the Hardy Boys Survival manual and once tried to make a survival kit like they describe in the book. However, I much prefer an earlier Hardy Boys spinoff, The Hardy Boys Detective Manual, in hardcover, which came out a few years earlier, and had so many great detecting tips. all sadly useless now in the internet era.
We clearly are the finest of people! I have recently declined the opportunity to take all the books I left at my Dad’s house when I left home. It was difficult, but partly from not having seen them for years I managed to get it down from 400 or so to a mere hundredish. I don’t know where I’m going to put them…
Ah yes, that sounds exactly as terrifying a title as I recall. I seem to remember that the cover of Planet of The Spiders was too horrible for me to even want to touch. You make a good point about Milliways. It’s possible I’m conflating several of the THGGTTG books into one.
Ah! I had no idea they did more manuals. I don’t know where I got the Survival Manual, but I suspect it was a marvellous second hand bookshop in Burton on Trent that had a charming Dachshund named Carl who would bark until stroked.