Geezer comes into shop...

For those of worried that I was ballooning my way across the eastern counties I have actually made it to the gym today. Well almost. It is so long since I’ve been I was quite sat down in Frankie and Benny’s, ordered a dinosaurTM t-bone streak and two pints of Dos Equis, the first just for thirst, before I quite realised I wasn’t in the gym.

No matter. I did make it. And the first thing I saw, ‘Buy four pints of Stella and get a pizza free.’

No word of a lie. David Lloyd Gym. Meridian Pleasure Park. It’s a dream.

Today being a pay-day and also my first day off work I minced my way into town. First port of call was BBC Radio Leicester. They are interviewing me next Friday, 8th August, 3pm (listen here) and I thought I’d drop off a copy of my book. I love the BBC (see early posts) so I’m looking forward to it.

In my head it will be just like that Clint Eastwood film where he plays a radio DJ and the woman becomes obsessed with him. Play Misty For Me. I am already arranging to have my hair blown dry into a similar style. Although I will not be the DJ and I’m not quite sure who is going to be obsessed with who.

That’s the beauty of live radio! Anything can happen.

Two days after that I am at Leicester’s Summer Sundae festival. You can catch me 2:50pm being interviewed with Welsh poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne on the ‘deckchairs’.
Thing I am most looking forward to. This is the ‘deckchairs’. Will they be like deckchairs? Or are ‘deckchairs’ very different.

Joe is doing some poetry earlier so I’m also looking forward to that. And also Fish is doing some poetry too. And I’m also looking forward to that.

Last week I had my ears syringed. I will be able to hear this poetry.



This week there was a really nice review of Me and Mickie James over on Gaydarnation, and I’ve seen a couple of other nice ones too. I’ve put up a list on my website. And I was also interviewed for Chroma, and found that you can read my interview for Dazed and Confused here.

Oh, and the cover for The Global Village in which I have a story is up and running.
I wonder what I’ll do when all this is over the phone stops ringing. Actually my phone almost never rings.

So, I wonder what I’ll do when the metaphorical phone stops ringing. Maybe I’ll get back to reading. I bought 8 books today. In the style of Nick Hornby I’ll tell you what they are:

1. Lovers and Losers - Paul Burston

2. The Oxford Murders - Guillermo Martinez

3. The Beach - Alex Garland (I’ve read this before when I was in Australia but a friend of mine was talking about it to me last week and then today I found myself in a second hand bookshop and there it was.

There was some comedy dialogue in the bookshop. Geezer comes in. Plonks down plastic bag on counter. ‘Do you buy old books?’
‘Depends what they are.’
Geezer looking round like a geezer. ‘It’s by a don.’
‘Ah John Donne, the poet.’
‘No a don.’
‘Adon?’
This goes on for a while.
Geezer ‘It’s from 1890. Some poetry. Got a Latin name but it’s not in Latin. Written by an MP. He went mad. Wrote the poetry first, of course.’
‘Of course.’)

4. The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch. (I read quite a lot of her when I was in America. She was on a course. Her writing. Not her. She’s quite mad.)

5. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami (a new book by my favourite writer. The title is a play on a Raymond Carver title. Yeah!)

6. Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg (he is a fellow, along with me, ‘Win A Book’ choice on Pulp.net. So marketing does work!)

7. City of Thieves - David Benioff (I read his short story collection ‘When The Nines Roll Over. Fab)

8. The Good Angel of Death - Andrey Kurkov. (By the man who wrote about the penguins.)

And I’m also writing a new short story for the Time Travel Opportunists who I met at my launch. Actually I’m more thinking about it than writing it. But it’s there in my head. Wacky Races.

Ciao.