A night in...

Three consecutive nights down at the theatre, supporting PlayWrite. The best piece - of 28 slices of new writing - was a comedy about sheep. I was right about the TV appearance and my allotted screen time was somewhere in the region of six seconds. I gesticulated wildly towards the bottom of the screen. Mother: "You weren't on for long, were you?" The actual clip is here.

Don't look north...

I might make a fleeting appearance on the Humber's version of Look North jabbering on about new writing and Hull Truck tonight, if I've avoided the cutting room floor and they could salvage any words I might have said between the stuttering. If you're interested - and if you are you must be my mother - you can see it here give or take a few hyperlinks. This is one of several regular pieces about Truck as the new building braces itself for the company's arrival and also coincides with the venue's three-night long PlayWrite festival, which I'll be attending as a paying member of the public and not in the hope of someone coming up to me to tell me they saw me on the telly stammering for 6.7 seconds, nor to nobble all these new writers rising through the ranks (although, hey, there's an idea!).

Concrete block...

The new home for Hull Truck has well and truly made its mark on the skyline now. I've been promised a site tour soon which will be pretty useful given that I'm writing some new pieces with the intention of them being performed in what is, right now, just a hefty slab of concrete in my mind. A quick glance at a contract reminded me that I need to get my finger out soon. Unfortunately, this nonsense that I'm involved with during the day to ensure that I can at least make some token inroads into the outstanding bills is getting in the way of any creative thinking right now.

To town for some lunch. We were a party of six and the order at this simple tavern selling simple Sunday fayre seemed very simple to deliver to simple old me. Somehow, they (the tavern) managed to mess things up. The waitress seemed to pin the blame on me for incorrectly ordering food that I didn't want, despite me holding in my hands a piece of paper (ie an itemised bill) that suggested that I knew exactly what I was doing. I started to tell her where she'd gone wrong when she walked off, citing "this food I'm holding in my hands is getting cold while you make up your mind what you want. I'll take it back to the kitchen" as an excuse for her about turn. Which stopped me in my tracks before I could let a tirade of Larry Davidisms spring forth. Shame. It would have been fun. We got our revenge by stealing lots of sachets of sauce.

Listening: Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles; The Kooks - Konk.

Shameless self-promotion #2,389...

Another "official" blog by me is now up on the Hull Truck website here. No prizes awarded to the first person that notices how adept I am at recycling words.

Go, Lewis Hamilton, go! No! No! What am I saying? Motorsports are even more tedious than rugby union!

Tags: On A Shout, blogs, Hull Truck

Shameless self promotion # 1,078...

My latest 'official' blog is now online at the Hull Truck website here.

Tags: Hull FC. writing, Hull Truck, On A Shout

Omnipresence...

As if all these tedious ramblings aren't enough, I now have yet more web presence and more blog space, over on the Hull Truck website, where I am, rather retrospectively in the first instance, harping on about where the idea for On A Shout materialised. In a hasty decision mumbled across a green room, I have pledged to write an entry at least once a month for the venue between now and the first night and I anticipate a huge response from the public!

Met eldest son in town. He's 15 tomorrow so I handed over the necessary in exchange for five minutes of his valuable time. We ate hot dogs, which are touted at Hull's major shopping mall as 'the taste of Europe', although, of course, we now associate hot dogs with ball parks and obese Americans, rather than the more svelt European. My hot dog was topped with chopped dried onions, an addition that quickly dropped off as soon as I started eating. In the mall I also managed to catch sight of a pair of trainers that my daughter is insisting we buy for the baby, as she's keen to indoctrinate unborn children with her personal brand preferences. Daughter reckons that if she had size 1.5 feet she would wear these herself, although I think that's the kind of behaviour that would probably get a 17-year-old girl laughed at (velcro? at your age?) and, if she did have size 1.5 feet, I'd've made her join the circus and she wouldn't be able to afford such luxurious footwear.