Tuesday 21 August 2018

Bus Wencher

Long time no post, but l now have time to start again.
Right now I'm sitting on the 15 bus to town, will shortly change for the X7, and as these are not the snug, comfy, tall seats of the Gold buses they seem to have removed from my journey to work, I shall not be sleeping at any point in the journey unless the bus makes me. Which it probably will. Definitely on the way home anyway.
I have been using this travel time as an opportune occasion to get on with my sadly neglected TBR pile, currently enjoying Blood of Assassins by RJ Barker and feel much happier for it... Traveling by train is great, it's quick, but doesn't give you time. And I may have to get up half an hour earlier, but I get back into town quicker on the way home. The bendiness of time! Or the fact that the train is not so great: it's expensive, often late and despite the gratitude I have towards all the guys who helped me get to work on the scooter when my ankle was kaput, I just can't afford it right now. I'm saving £60 a month by traveling on the bus, baby! Sweet smackaroony!
The ankle is still very much making its presence felt in my life. Shoes are a mare. It hurts. I can't dance. Plus ca change. Running for the bus is a no no. Also, I remain quite the chubster. Haven't been swimming for a while though, and really, really must.
What have I been up to in the intervening wasteland of time?
Campaigning for the libraries was reduced to occasional angry tweets, as NCC passed the buck on the 21 libraries they want to close to 'groups' that didn't include Save Kingsthorpe Library, and slapped a big NDA on each of them. I've been keeping an eye on the politicos from the side, and watching the section 114 notices roll in accompanied by a lack of sensible financial decision-making subsequently. The ex- leader got all tired and emotional (which is the press way of saying she cray cray, like drunk cray cray, but not drunk. Though it would make sense if she was) and swore the Jeffrey et Al at the press about my young Tory fellow campaigner in the council chambers who was one of the few who delivered the et tu Brute blows that finished her off (and ushered in the equally complicit Matt Golby). That was funny. You know when you see steam coming out of the ears in cartoons? Like that. I think my young friend has quite the future in politics. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Anyway a small child took NCC to court over the library closures and won. Hooray! We now just have to see the way it plays out, but some dastardly moves are still going on, like the stripping of book stock, redundancies, cancellation of periodicals and newspapers, selling of gifted property assets (that were gifted with usage conditions, so definitely not on).



Also for the last few months, I have been organizing a festival!

View from my tent

Jimtom


Tré Ventour

Cameron Grace
  
Kezzabelle
That's the Bardic Picnic, which took place in Beckett's Park on 5th August. Still on the paperwork, report and financial side of stuff, so can't relax just yet, but what a magical day.

Quite frankly it was exhausting and I went just a tiny bit insane as I wibbled and almost fell off my coping pole. So much to organise, plus an almost straight 10 hours of MCing and performing on the day itself , whihc beats my previous longest gig of a couple of months ago by 6 hours (4 hours of storytelling at Kettering Museum - because I am a tour de force!). The sun show down, everyone enjoyed some awesome spoken word and music, and there was vegan ice cream and rhubarb cider  - heaven! A bijou crowd remained for my headline comedy performance at the end, clashing with Jono and the Uke Dealers, but I made them laugh and that's what mattered. Plus we made two fantastic new bards: Sami the 9th Bard of Northampton, and Coral McShane junior bard.

Sami



What else? Well I've been working on my downsized allotment plot. I had yellow courgete pasta for tea last night and will have homegrown lettuce on my sandwiched today! Spuds are nearly ready, plus I have more lettuce, beets, caulis, cabbage and kohlrabi on the way.



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