It’s only the middle of January. So far this year my life’s changed quite a bit. Unexpectedly and most of it for the good. There’s still stuff to sort out, but when isn’t there? But most of it for the good.
It’s not just that it’s getting lighter, although that helps me massively. When it’s not pitch black at five o’clock I can see a point to being alive. That’s overly dramatic but those few weeks when you can’t see daylight at tea-time seem much, much longer than they possibly can be, and much more hopeless. Trendy Scandinavian affected daylight deficit ? SADD, as we call it? Maybe.
Two weekends ago I went to an Open Mic event in Woodbridge, at The Anchor. I’d been invited to perform some poetry at The Mariner by Justine de Mierre, who’s running one of her Tales and Tapas events on 29th January there. I was a bit nervous about it, so I thought I’d get a practice debut in first at the next open mic gig.
So I did. I ran through All Of Your S**t and Back To Ourselves. And while it didn’t have people swooning three other performers said it was good, I got invited to Woodbridge’s finest and most select soiree and only one person stopped speaking to me. Result! Nobody ever invited me to a soiree before.
So I’m doing more. One of the things about poetry is that it’s good therapy. If you get crossed in love you don’t just run down the contents of the biscuit tin (and we won’t talk about peanut butter ice-cream. It’s worth getting dumped for). You get new poems.
So tonight maybe I’ll get up behind the mic again. I’ll do All Of Your S**t and the other one again and maybe, just maybe a new one. It’s called In Silence. It’s about open mic gigs. Sort of.
