Summer Sundae

I was scheduled to appear at the Summer Sundae festival last week. The night before I found myself sitting bolt upright. (A strange sensation at best as I rarely find myself positioned in the shape of clichés - flat as a plank, best foot forward, round as a balloon on its way to the moon.)

‘Would anyone attend a spoken word and poetry tent at a music festival?’

So it was more than a little relief when I turned up and saw the sides of the tent bulging in the shape of various body parts pressed against its insides.

I was being interviewed with Joe Dunthorne. I’d known Joe since about 2004 from the Abctales website (parts of both our recently published books first appeared on there) but it was the first time I’d met him in the flesh.

‘When you were writing did you imagine that it would lead to this rock and roll lifestyle, festivals etc?’ asked the interviewer.

Cut to last night, Saturday night, I was at work, in the office, nine p.m. One of the women went out for chips. I didn’t have the money for chips! (I wrote a story about chips once.) So I ate my sandwich, just cheese (no spread as I didn’t have any) and no tomato as my one remaining tomato was mouldy.

This is my rock and roll lifestyle.

No chips. No life. No tomato.

Joe was also at the festival in his other hat as a performance poet. The Oulipo Poets. And they did a series of poems (univocalisms) with each poem using only one vowel. As many consonants as you please, but only one vowel.

They have inspired me.

I am going to write a novel using only one vowel, ‘i’. The novel is going to be about a cowboy called Chip. The title is provisionally ‘Chip Hits Big’. I am currently trying to work out how to get across the fact that Chip is a cowboy as obviously I can’t use ‘cowboy’. Cowboy has not only one but two ‘o’s in it.

Actually, the title suggests that Chip is a boxer i.e - he hits big. So perhaps Chip could be a boxer. A Kiwi boxer (or ‘bixer’ as they say in New Zealand) told in the first person.

I think I’ve got it!

Oh, writing, what would I do without you?

Date for your diary - August 26th 3:30pm - my story Teeth is going to be on Radio 4

And I was mentioned in the Guardian blog about band novels.

Currently reading - The Night Watch, Sarah Waters

Currently listening to - Oracular Spectacular, MGMT