Lunch with Julia and website planning

Ye gods, but it took me all morning to sort out my emails and it wasn’t as if there were that many. They just seemed to be a rehash of the stuff I’d dealt with the week before, but obviously no-one has been paying attention to my highly-intelligent and focused (double ha!) responses. Either that or they see it’s an email from me and delete it as a reflex mechanism. Sigh.

Anyway, I sent round an email about my desperately exciting and incredibly readable poetry collection, “A Stranger’s Table” (http://www.poetrymonthly.com), and got a response of … um … zilch. Poetry is obviously – at least with the University – a dying art. Though, to be fair, the Dean of Students did come out and flick through it, admiring the alcoholic cover before handing it back saying he never read poetry. Double sigh.

The only bright point was lunch with Julia (http://greatleveller.blogspot.com), during which we put the film, writing and University worlds to rights. Hell, somebody has to. And she has faithfully promised me that this time she has actually done her UniSWriters’ homework for tomorrow’s meeting – so please bring it, Julia!

And, nobly and doggedly, I did keep dropping the words “poetry” and “collection” into my afternoon emails and conversations, but I fear I am flogging the proverbial in the workspace. I suspect that I’ll end up doing what I usually do and forcing people to have them as birthday presents for the next few years. Thank goodness I only ordered fifty! But, aha, that'll show 'em ... Indeed the life of a poet is a weary trudge … now where’s my garret?

Tonight, Lord H is at his theology course, looking at the ethics of just wars and refugees. Hmm, certainly enough there to keep them going for a couple of hours – and really I suspect they could probably fill a couple of months with the subject … Whilst he’s out, I shall type up the poem I drafted yesterday evening on difficult grandfathers and how to get rid of them, and look at finalising character studies and planning initial blogs for the upcoming “Pink Champagne and Apple Juice” website. I’d like to get some writing on “The Gifting” done too but suspect that’ll have to wait for a while yet. Ideally I’d like to get 100,000 words done by the end of March, but whether that will happen or not is in the lap of the gods. As ever.

And I've just finished reading a couple of books:

1. Shameless by Paul Burston (http://www.myspace.com/paulburston) - which is a nice, frothy romp through the drug/gay dens of the city, with a hint of heat underneath. Enjoyable too.

2. Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel. Sigh. Didn't really get on with this one, though I did (much to my surprise) finish it. Colin was a great character and I think we should have concentrated entirely on him and his marriage, and therefore ditched the highly irritating MC completely. Hmm, not a great success then ...

Today’s nice things:

1. Lunch with Julia
2. Typing up a new poem
3. Fiddling round with the new website.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk