No Point in Not Being Friends

I am going to be reading at the second no point in not being friends night.

It starts at 8pm, in the Basement Bar of the Deaf Institute, just off Oxford Road in Manchester.

There will be fiction and poetry from: Annie Clarkson, Emma Unsworth, Zack Wilson, Richard Barrett, Chris Killen and Michael Halmshaw, a video-reading from Sam Pink, plus lots more things TBC.

It's free, and it should be fun and interesting. I don't think anyone will be wearing berets or anything like that. Today, I had a beret placed on my head as a joke. I didn't get to see what it looked like, but I am sure it scored 2 out of 10 in the 'amusing' stakes. I think I'll smile every time I see someone wearing a beret from now on. I think I do that already. I've just decided on the story I'm going to read. I think, anyway. I am a bit nervous, but I am mostly excited. I am looking forward to hearing all the people above 'do' their thing. I think it will be a brilliant night.

Jealous of Outdoor Walkways

I watched a lot of Grand Designs yesterday. I used to watch it all the time, but gave up when I realised it would be a good long while before I would be building my own house. But it was on yesterday, and it must've been Grand Designs Day or something, because episode followed episode followed episode. It was great. It was grand.

I live in a rented house. I will be living in a rented house for quite a few years to come. I like the house I live in. It's three storeys tall, old and rickety, and it has a lot of heart. It is also next to a funeral parlour. The funeral parlour is an amazing building. It has outdoor walkways connecting parts of it, and loads of adjoining buildings and secret bits.


They have CCTV cameras, so I've only ventured into the yard once. I got a close up look at the coffin chute, and also got to see the side of our house, and all the flowers that are growing on the walls of it that I never knew were there.


I think if the funeral parlour was a house, it would be great to live in. Our house used to be part of the funeral parlour, but I don't think they did any "dead body" stuff in it. The owner just used to live here. I think.

I'm thinking about home a lot. We are putting HOME together tonight, so we can print it this week and hopefully get it all bound before the last minute, this time. We'll see. There's a lot going on. But I think it will all be okay.

Captain Casio

Tomorrow I am doing writing at a summer school. I think it will be fun, but I am also a bit nervous. I’ve had to come up with a superhero identity. My superpower is the ability to stop time, obviously, so my name had to somehow reflect that. The best I could come up with was Captain Casio, though I’m not even sure Casio make watches anymore. I think they are all about the keyboards nowadays. Oh well. My costume, I think, will be a clock worn over my normal clothes, just like Flavor Flav. I think he’d be okay with that.

It’s taken a bit of planning. There is a tear in the space-time continuum scheduled for 11:20 am, or thereabouts. I hope 8 year olds are still cool with suspending disbelief. I’m a bit worried they might just see it as a chance to have a cigarette break.

Being That Person

Last night was the launch of this little bugger, and I mean the book not the man. Mr Michael 'Fierce' Frearson released his first collection of poetry, Being That Person, to a packed house on a Saturday night in the city centre. Despite the crazy sub-tropical heat, Big Blue Coffee Co. was full to the brim with a fine assortment of party people. There were many fine poets and lovely musicians and funny funny bastards. Me and my fellow TTOs did our first collaborative piece, too, which was a new thing for us. We kept it short and sweet this time. The highlight of the evening had to be Fierce's rendition of Howl, accompanied by Poppa Fierce on double bass, both of them decked out in full Beatnik attire. With the lights dimmed and the aroma of freshly ground coffee in the air, it was easy to transpose the scene to '50's San Francisco. Everybody was definitely 'digging' it.

The book is our third TTO publication. You'll be able to buy it from here in the very near future. Biff likes to do the "organising" of that kind of stuff, so I'll leave it alone. It comes with a Mini Fierce, a badge and a very special ID card. And we figured out a much better method of binding for this one. It meant that sewing 100 books on the night before the launch was a piece of cake. (The previous method involved using a miniature clothes-peg to 'hold' the thread while the knot was being tied.) We are now bookbinding machines.

A Messy Room is a Happy Room

If your living space is a reflection of your state of mind, then I am clothes draped on chairs, a menagerie of empty glasses, a confetti of shoes and a big blue furry cushion. I am also more books than I will ever read, a hundred and one pens, scraps of paper with “important” things scrawled across their surface, a flowery sleeping bag, and a desk heaped high with a landscape of paper, cotton reels, travel bags, more pens, shoeboxes of ephemera, more clothes and a blue bonnet-style sun hat that turns me into a Victorian lady explorer when placed on my head.

My best place for writing is bed. It is a gigantic expanse of crisp white cotton, and it loves me. I try and filter out the complete rest of the room, and focus on the whiteness and sometimes I wish all the other stuff wasn’t there at all, ever. My housemate has few things, and these things he keeps immaculate. His room is a shrine to tidiness. His room is a small point in the universe of this house that has an order to it. And his life is ordered, too. You can set your watch by him. You can map out exactly what he will do before he even does it.

I would like to have a little less of the tornado-stricken about the room. But unless I happen across a magic Narnia-style wardrobe whereby I can transfer all my “clutter” to this other place for storage and thus have a spotless room, then it isn’t going to happen. The most I can hope for is an empty desk or an empty floor. And I have already resigned myself to that fact that it’s probably never going to be both.

It was time for a photo

I took this picture on the way to an airport. I like how you can't tell if it's dawn or dusk. I am drawn to landscapes. I used a long exposure to try and capture the car headlights as just lines. It makes it feel emptier. I have been reading about myth today. About how myths have been interpreted and used in different ways from the Paleolithic to the modern day. I have spent the day lost in books and stories, and I have found it meditative and inspiring. I really love having the house to myself.

The Knack

I have not done any internet writing lately. I have done shedloads of in-my-book-with-a-pen writing, though. It has been great. It has been a bit fantastic, actually. I thought I had lost the knack. I was worried the stories had all deserted me. But they were just waiting for me to get away from my computer. I will remember this next time.

Sh went quiet. In part, I think, to let people catch up. Fifty chapters is a lot to read. But two weeks is long enough and there’s a new installment, finally. You can read it here.

There’s been lots going on behind the scenes at TTO, too. Fierce’s book launch is a week on Saturday. The proofs are being printed on Monday, and we will be binding it hopefully that night.

Then on Tuesday it's a trip to Leicester for Drew Gummerson’s Me And Mickie James launch. I think that will be a fun evening. I think, also, that there will be free wine. Which is always good.

We are piecing HOME together, too. It’s still open for submissions till the end of July, so if you have a story/poem/collection of words loosely based on the theme 'Home', then send it to
home [at] timetravelopps.co.uk You know you want to.