At the year’s halfway point

My children’s exams are over.  For my son, a season of campouts and festivals has already begun. My daughter also has exciting, if slightly less grungy, plans.  Four years worth of scrawled-on paper, deep piles of exercise books, text books, files, revision cards, notebooks, stationery, bottles of Rescue Remedy, school uniforms, pots of lunch money have been recycled, returned, rearranged, cleared away, put into cupboards, banked, donated and, on a sunny Monday morning, like a scene from a Harry Potter film, our house seems to have magically set itself right.

On Friday, my daughter turned 18 and, last Wednesday, Andrew and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.  No more champagne, at least for a day or two.

Back to the poetry life for me.  I’m still working on completing a full collection and hope to be able to bring you some news about that soon.  And Other Poems is very much alive and singing.  Rishi Dastidar has been curating a selection of poems from The Complete Works III poets whose work will be published in a new Bloodaxe anthology later this year.  There are also new poems to read by Joey Connolly, Nancy Campbell and other exciting poets.  Do pop in from time to time.

And finally….

a tiny piece of exciting news.  BBC radio wrote to me, out of the blue, to say that they’d like to repeat my radio play The Songs that Houses Sing (first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2000!) on BBC Radio 4Extra.  I was delighted and extremely surprised to hear from them after all these years.  Perhaps one day I will write about my BBC adventures and how I thought my scriptwriting days were behind me.  Never say never, as many wise people have said on many occasions.  Needless to say, I *will* tell you when my play will be broadcast and post a link here.

Wishing everyone a happy week.