Christmas is Coming…

Winter has been rather chilly (no surprises there Radiohead) but the sun was glorious the week before.  Here are some photos I took whilst waiting at Worcester Park train station.  The skirt is from Primark.  I bought it and then realised it’s verging on the ‘midi’ which I didn’t think I’d like but it’s nice and floaty and whooshes around when you spin.

So, me and Matt have been posting these little cards around – you can grab one from two of my local libraries (Worcester Park and Sutton) as well as the Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre.

I’ve taken a few comparison shots of Christmas trees as I’m pretty proud of our tree this year 🙂  Mine is the one at the end, and you can see it all lit up on the left of this text.

A slight digression here, but I had my iPod on shuffle and found these two tracks went really well together: Enter Shikari’s Mothership, followed by Bloc Party’s Talons.  I’ve got them to listen to via YouTube just below…

Speaking of music… after buying tickets to see Rihanna in May for my birthday, the day finally came!  I went with my friend from uni, Josie, and some of her friends.  Calvin Harris began the night, get everyone going (well, some people going… as we worked our way through the crowd there were a few people standing very still and leaving piles of bags and coats for us to trip over).  The lady herself was, as expected, amazing!  Highlights include Rihanna playing the drums, pole-dancing as an art-form (along with her own rather saucy dancing) and the finale of Umbrella, ending a night of fantastic tunes.  It was also quite cool seeing all the different costume changes as well as witnessing someone who can keep breathing with all that singing and dancing.

In other news, I have had my haircut so that it’s no longer asymmetric.  I hadn’t had a cut for 7 months so I splashed out at Toni & Guy (Mustafa is expensive but he’s my favourite) and I know you’re “supposed” to go every 4-6 weeks or something but I’m going to leave it until May now.  I’m growing it out and I can’t wait!  I have a full fringe as well which I haven’t had since I was at Primary school or something!  I spent a few days in Norwich and Matt got me some lovely presents (he made me open some but I’ve saved a few) and below you can see the amazing picture he’s drawn off us 🙂

I came home to London to find my self-published book!  It had typos which I have hopefully sorted now but I’d really welcome some feedback.  When I get published by a publishing company (remaining positive and not saying ‘if’) I want it to be very visually exciting but I’ve just done the basic bones so that if people want to rip it apart for the poetry they can.  That said, if someone completely hated it, they probably wouldn’t like anything I did but I am welcoming any constructive criticism.

I’ve also got an eBook and priced them both quite cheaply.  The hard copy comes with extra poems and costs £2 more than the eBook.  Both are available here from Lulu by clicking here.  In about 6-8 weeks they’ll be available from other places like Amazon too.  Great if you end up with a new Kindle or Ipad in your stocking this year.  It’s Christmas in half an hour – so have a great time celebrating!

xxx

Hold Your Beliefs Lightly

Last week I saw my friend Siobhan Belingy for her birthday and she gave me this cool pink ring – it’s eyes move!  I also saw Grayson Perry’s exhibition at The British Museum and loved it!  My Gran and Siobhan had both said it was unmissable so I’m really glad I got to see it.  I loved the mix of old and new, Perry’s unique style (with the use of some of my favourite colours) and the use of text and poetry.  It also dealt with really interesting subject matters, and I’d really recommend it.  There’s a picture of the bike outside with my boyfriend Matt.  We also went to the East London Design Show (good but we had to pay to get in?!) and Winter Wonderland which was lovely but neither me or my boyfriend could afford even a bag of candy floss!

Lastly, on Tuesday I went to my last open mic night for some time at Herne Hill’s Half Moon pub for Needle & Thread.  I did some new material but stumbled quite a lot so wasn’t the best gig.

I’m now going into hiatus for a bit to concentrate on my MA work as the essays have been stressing me out.  I’ve got a few things in the pipe-line (I met up with another poet this night to discuss future event plans) but I’m not going to hit the open mic nights regularly until at least around May.  Also, Angel from Big Brother was performing at this open mic!  I don’t know if anyone else knew who she was but I’ve watched every year of Big Brother so I found it rather exciting! Me and Matt have been flyering and getting organised with that but him mum reckons we should be charging for them.  We’ve actually learnt a lot from doing it but it would be great if anyone knew how to get different shops selling them!  We could have made about £90-390 from them!

I’ll keep an update on what I’m up to other than not going to open mic events 🙂

xxx