Inventors of the shish kebab

I’m not sure this is factually correct…

The MK poet…who isn’t

Don’t tell anyone – but I moved out of MK over the weekend!

Life Plan Stage 3: Step 1. Completed.
Life Plan Stage 3: Still running.

April and the change cometh…

So, Facebook and Twitter have destroyed my enthusiasm in connection with blogging and distracted my attention away to the world of 140 characters or less.  The lazy man’s blogging ensnares the lazy man; how predictable!

We’ve had all sorts of things triggering my Google alerts about Milton Keynes in the last month due to Google Street View descending on us.  When it came down my road I happened to be at home and I spotted it with just enough time to spare so I could pin myself to the window of my apartment like one of those stick-on Garfields you see suckered to the back of people’s cars (or a generally redundant “baby on board” sign – you get the picture).  I have no idea if I will appear on their pictures but I thought it might be funny and gave it my best shot. 

When the Street View car went down one of the local suburbs and the locals spotted it if the newspapers are to be believed they all rushed out and blocked its way.  There was no actual mention of pitchforks or wickermen. Amusingly most news agencies referred to the area – Broughton – as a village “just outside Milton Keynes”.  Most locals scoff at this description because Broughton stopped being a village outside Milton Keynes about 20 years ago and is now mostly a sprawling new housing development well within the environs of good old MK.  As the increasingly interesting Rory Cellan-Jones said via his Twitter account and various online blogs it was slightly ironic that the “villagers” stand against Google’s street photography resulted in half a ton of news crews arriving on their doorstep and broadcasting pictures of their closely-guarded private front doors to all and sundry possibly making them for a brief time one of the most world-famous streets with the possible exception of the home The Rover’s Return.  In the final analysis their whole argument did seem fairly daft; that it would provide a tool for burglers to case the properties at a safe distance.  Who knows?

Anyway, I’m off being a poet again tomorrow (Easter Saturday), first stop the centre:mk (a.k.a. Central Milton Keynes shopping centre) for poetry busking and then in the evening I’m up performing , judging and generally mingling and being useful at The Poetry Kapow.  May, in particular, seems to be a whole month of lots and lots of performances and gigs.  There does seem to be some kind of poetic renaissance going on around these parts.  Woop woop!

Work is going well – sorry if you’ve been hit by the recession – we seem to be hitting an upward curve and have been given bottles of champagne (a sign of a HUGE order being signed) twice in the last 30 days plus champers and cakes on another occasion too.  There are still customers out there for people like us so it seems.

Oh, and I wrote a daft poem for the BBC the other day – perhaps we should spare a thought for the feelings of telephone boxes and give them our love.  Read it here.

Blog desert

I feel I really ought to write  something here.  To be honest I’m spending all my computer-fiddling time on Facebook and Twitter at the moment – plus being a bit overly prolific with the poetry.

I’ll come back soon.  Honest.

Remind me to tell you about:

• Poetry busking.
• Lisa coming here again next week. 
• Me being an “award winning poet” (apparently my award is ‘on the way’).
• Some of my poems being published.
• One poem in particular taking on a life of its own and fulfilling my dreams for it.  Yay.  Fly my pretty, fly.
• Cheese-grater leg-iron lion.
• Putting things on the Elf Shelf.

Happiness is a new frontier…

More news coming soon.  It’ll be worth waiting for..promise.

Do the mashed patata

Warning: I’m feeling in an inspired mood this weekend – I’m *actually* going to blog plus I have three new poems to finish and two blog posts: one about my excellent Christmas with Lisa and the other about some poetry gigs I’ve performed at including the ever-excellent Poetry Kapow, an eventful Tin Angel, and lastly (for now) the launch night of the outrageously successful Tongue in Chic Poets night.

I’m a tad biased about the last one, given that I am one of the founder members (blame the draw of a snowy pub) and I’m also the webmaster – but it really did rock that night!  It’s looking more and more like a new poetic renaissance has arrived in the Milton Keynes area with all of the established events turning out a pretty decent crowd with a brilliance of diverse work of the best quality.

Monkey Kettle is branching out a little more into music, a contest no less and there are several regular nights coming up two of which I will be performing at: “From Bard to Verse” in Stony Stratford – part of the Stony Words thing and I will be slipping out during the week to meet up with The Shaman of The North at “Raising the Arwen” to do some ever-so-bizarre poetical stuff

Meanwhile, via the ever-lovely Floaty Katja’s Facebook posting; something to make you smile.  Ironically I’ve just moved from T-Mobile to 3 Mobile.

All I want for Christmas is youuuuuuuuu

[EDIT: Yes yes yes, I know - *still* not got around to blogging about Omaha.  Soon, ok?]

Tomorrow I blog about Christmas in Omaha.  With pictures, soppyness and everything.  Suffice to say: best Christmas for a very long time.  She is very special and I am so lucky.

Merry Christmas!

Greetings one and all. 

So – I’M IN AMERICA!!!  Nebraska, to be precise.

For those that don’t know I am spending Christmas with the lovely Lisa, her daughter Brit and my two new adopted dogs: Ginger and Molly.

This is the best Christmas I can remember for a very long time.  I flew in Christmas Eve, 8 hours with a 5am GMT start ending with a brilliantly festive evening at 23:00 CST – a full 26 of your human hours later.  Mmmm, jet laggy.  Heh heh.  We are having the best time ever.  Today (Boxing day to the British or ”the day after Christmas day” to the Americans) we are driving to Kansas to meet Lisa’s youngest brother Chris and his family.  John, the other brother, sent a shipping order of lovely baked things like iced buns, Kolache – think Stollen without the marzipan, and other such lovelies like peanut brittle.  I am doing the lion’s share of the driving – on the “wrong” side of the road.  Be afraid Mid-Western America, be very afraid.  I’ll update the blog later on details of Kansas, Christmas Presents, Snow Boots (it’s minus 11 here!!!) and where most of the world’s sugar supply is eaten.

The flight took me over Greenland, Canada and Northern America flying ‘down’ across the Dakotas (I think).  The only time I did not see snow on the ground was in the UK.  I have now seen real-life iceburgs.  HUGE iceburgs.  Canada appears to be completely empty apart from  6 people and a dog.  In fact, I’m not even sure it was a dog.

Geographical note: Nebraska looks a lot like Norfolk, UK, from the air only with far far less houses.  It’s only until you get to one of the cities you start to see a population density greater than one ‘house’ per mile.  In some places a lot less than that.  The reason that American houses are bigger than European houses is that there is 4000 times the spare land to build on.  America is, to put it crudely: bloody massive.

It’s been fun going to some of the local supermarkets like Walgreen’s.  I am getting used to people stopping dead in their tracks and staring at me.  It appears that an obviously British accent like mine is a wonder to behold to your average Mid-Westerner.  The Walgreen’s checkout girl nearly expired with happiness when I showed her a British ten pound note and spoke about our pretty money versus the utilitarian color colour scheme of the US dollar.  People go all gooey-eyed and watch your lips move.  Heh heh.

Yesterday I got to speak to Mr and Mrs Bulldog.  We spoke at length about the joys of customs officers who open your baggage (they left a note saying “we checked your bags for contraband” – at least they tell you) and how airport bag checkers are not the greatest the greatest fans of Civil War Re-enactment. 

We are all so happy.  I hope you are too.  I’m off now to Kansas.  Now, where did I put my ruby slippers.

Merry Christmas.

The future’s so bright…

Poetry and plugging

Because I iz so busy n stuff innit: I’ve not got around to blogging about some recent fun (and I’m at work so I better not do it right now either).  Briefly:

• Champagne, in the morning, at work, twice in two weeks.  Huge new recession-proof deals  I think I made the right decision to work here.
• Pownce is closing, Revision3 laying people off and cancelling shows (despite Digg hiring the lead developer on the PHP project).  Not good news for the Web 2.0 world.  I’ve always been a little suspicious of anybody that has a business model which doesn’t extend beyond “we will sell advertising and be rich whilst doing some cool stuff”.
• Brilliant Birthday due to even more brilliant woman.
• My shining armour and white steed are safely back in the stable after riding to the rescue of several victims of rubbish ISPs.  (Breaking news: a text message this morning reveals there is more to do due to further ISP stupidity.  *edit* all fixed there too now*).  Warm and fuzzy feeling = on, setting = gas mark 6.
• I have been off to the wilds to freak people with my poetry whilst simultaneously becoming a founder-member and web-master of a local poetry group.
• The most recent gig was in Coventry at The Tin Angel.  A lovely venue with a wide selection of poets.  Four of us went up to “reprazent” the Milton Keyne’s ’sound’  (oh yes, I’m down with the lingo kidz big dog).  This is worthy of a blog post on its own so I’ll do that later…ish.

Which leads me on to the plugging.

Poetry gig: www.poetrykapow.co.uk Poetry Kapow is on this Sunday.  I will be performing but if that doesn’t curl your chest hairs there will be umpteen other VERY good poets with only one bad one allowed for the sake of diversity and because there is probably some European law that says we have to have a stinker in there too – I’m assuming it’s not me (one man’s genius is another man’s personality disorder personified) but you’ll never know if you don’t turn up.  Poetry Kapow is excellent.  Trust me.  Excellent music, poetry  and some other arty stuff.  Lots of different styles ranging from funny stand-up comedian-type poets through lyrical Byronesque master-pieces to profound tear-jerking thought-invaders.

No excuses now – if you’re anywhere near Wolverton, Milton Keynes get your wobbly bits down to see us all.  The bar is CHEAP and the consumption of absinthe and cheroots is no longer compulsory to enjoy the evening.  Honest.