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The invisible writer

Hello. Now This hasn't been laziness on my part, I swer, I've actually been very jollly active recently, and there have been lots of exciting and stimulating events which I've yearned to mull over with you all. However the net's knackered. Ask Jim, he'll tell you. I've managed to get one of those rare windows of opportunities where the damn thing's running fine.

A time devoid of internet is a strange thing indeed. You start reading newspapers a lot more closely. Ceefax becomes your boon companion. Your shoulders slope less, you stand straighter and realise that you don't actually care a great deal about the current arguments and obsessions raging the web ( I have yet to go back to ILE to test this theory out). It's been constructive though I have embarked on (and completed) the task of indexing every poem I can ever recall writing (and writing onto the computer those old ones I've only got hard copy of or discovered thast disk is bust / corrupted / lost in a move / eaten by the Space Pope) / "tidied away somewhere"). A fair bit of graft but a necessary process before distilling the best ones for....well, the more astute of you out there will guess what I'm up to.

The Allen Fisher reading last week was good. Allen read well and engaged with the audience to an extent that almost saved the fact that his stuff is very, very hard to follow live. A quick pint in the Ship and Mitre afterwards turned into a lengthy conversation with one of my heroes, so what more can one ask for, really? The weekend was given another lift by the presence of the Stalybridge Faction (and at the risk of sounding self-indulgent, wasn't Saturday night great? I got all nostalgic) whom it is always spectacular to see. Beyond that there's nothing to see here. Yet.

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