Going Mad For A Bit

Image: bized.co.uk

It’s Monday morning, it’s cold outside, I’m leaving for work and I’m sore from the weekend. But best of all, I’m happy.

The last three days had much of what we have come to love about a Diners’ trip; endless laughter, non-stop slagging, ridiculous behaviour and an aperitif or two to whet our whistles. Our venue was the beautiful city of York, and we made ourselves known within two minutes of boarding the train.

The fun began at 07:50 as several bottles of Grolsch (it was on offer at the ‘offie’) were cracked open to the sound of the London-bound train’s wheels squealing out of Central Station into the dim light of a fresh Friday morning.

We arrived in York at 11:33 and after locating the hotel and dumping our bags, found a local pub—The Edinburgh Pub, would you believe—and tucked into some well-earned stodgy meals for lunch. There then followed a monster pub crawl around the bars of York; O’Neill’s, The Windmill, The Nags Head, The Artful Dodger, The Priory and The Parish to name but a few.

It was, as they say, an awesome trail of laughter and frolics, and it was therefore no wonder that by the end of the night I had got lost on the way back to the hotel, and had to locate the train station in order to persuade a taxi willing to take me the few hundred yards to where I knew my hotel was, but simply unable to find.

Saturday was a less lively day with my hangover amongst the worst of the group. That said, we ended up doing pretty much the same thing again —same pubs, same drinks, same people, different jokes. My donner kebab at the end of the night was well-earned!

It wasn’t a cultural trip as you can probably tell, and by late-morning on Sunday we found ourselves on the train back home. When the train switched at Waverly I bid the rest of The Diners farewell and jumped in a cab for home, where I proudly spent the next few hours lying on the couch under a rug and watching crap films and programmes on the telly.

It was that kind of weekend but I needed it. Yes, I feel tired and sore from all the stupidity and all the drinking, but hey, I only see my pals every now and then and I really needed to forget who I was for a few hours and just go mad for a bit. Mission accomplished. I took a few photos of the lads out and about but have still to upload them—tomorrow’s post will hopefully contain.

Time to wrap up January’s GDR:

Monthly GDR Review

Fiction
* Re-start writing Baccara Burning – done; 6 of 6 edited and moving forward once again
* Write one new short/flash story per month – not done
* Re-submit any rejected/recalled short stories – not done
* Submit more fiction/poetry competitions – not done

Poetry
* Write at least one poem per week – done
* Work on Silly Poems for Wee People Vol.2 – done

Editing
* Stay on top of RR submissions – not done
* Publish RR issue 9 for December 2009 – done

Freelance
* Create platform for client to sell arty products – not done; client not ready
* Get a few more gigs to review for NotW – advance gigs lined up through record label
* Keep up all websites updated and relevant – done
* Scotland’s Treasure for February – Album Review done; 1 pending
* SDR website for Feb issue – done and will be published today
* Catch up on all outstanding gig and album reviews (1 album; 4 reviews) – done

Reading & Learning
* The Kenneth William Diaries by Russell Davies – IP
* On Writing by Stephen King – IP
* One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson – not started

Non-Writing
* Re-launch diet – IP

Things That Turned Up
* The Bluegate Poets have recommended FF to its members

Submissions Made
None; several shortlisted for immediate submission though

Outstanding
Still a few short stories—need to chase these up this month and turn them around.
I’ve taken SLICK off the list since it has been so long that I have not heard back from the agencies concerned.

Successes
I’ve managed to get things going again, which I should regard as a positive. I’ve not managed to set aside as much time as I would have liked but it has been and extraordinary month in the day job and so I should take it as a success that I managed to get as much time as I did.

It was great to catch up and get renewed vitality and energy for BACCARA BURNING. My priority remains to complete my outstanding works of fiction and move forward with a new chapbook or two. It was equally as pleasurable to find a new location to write outside my home, something I need to take more advantage over if I am to get greater results from shorter spans of writing time.

It’s not a direct thing, but I feel more generally positive about my writing than I have done in the last few months. There’s been a quite a lot of upheaval in my private life and so just putting pen back on paper so regularly has been a great step towards having more writing in my life again.

Overall, and all things considered, it’s been as good a month as I could have hoped and I’m very pleased.

Failures
The only downside would be that I didn’t manage to make any more time but that’s a small one; other priorities took over and they are of the kind of thing that the time went to something more important. It’s been a good month overall and I don’t want to look at anything that could be twisted into a negative if I over-examined it.