News (less flash) more tiny spark

So it has been a quietish week but I thought I’d do a little update all the same. Otherwise I’ll get that guilt thing and I’ll be thinking, Jesus, I better come up with something really good to blog about, I’ve been away for a while, maybe I should invent an injury? Say I eloped? Something to do with the Marshmallow Man… Anyway, I digress. I am a bit tired today though so I’m going to use lazy bullet-points, I feel worse about it than you do. 

»> I went to see the lovely @suzyjoinson read at the launch of Her Royal Majesty (edition 12) at the London Review of Books. It was a corking evening, I met the very charming @petermoore (his book, Damn His Blood, is out in four weeks) saw DW Wilson and Ross Sutherland read, ate a gluten free cupcake, feasted my ears on some violin and kora. 

»> I am running a lot and pumping a (very) little bit of iron and generally fantasizing I’m in a working-class-girl-turned-boxer movie. Occasionally one of the gym personal trainers will wheel their black lycra’d biceps in my direction, the conversation goes like this: 

Biceps (pulling Charles Atlas type poses): Seen you here a lot. 

Me (I cannot breathe. I think the last two minutes on the cross-trainer just disintegrated my large intestine) Gnnhmmmmggr

Biceps (Lunging): What are you in training for? 

Me (now just barely able to breathe, I think there is a chunk of lung stuck in my throat): I’m training to stay sane while my first book is published

Biceps (legs dangling, staring into a mirror while he does chin-ups): What was that?

Me (Finally able to breathe though the ability to walk will take around forty minutes to return) To eat pies, eat lots and lots of pies. 

Biceps runs off at the utterance of white carbs to say seven Hail Marys

»> I’ve been writing a first person article for a Sunday newspaper’s glossy magazine. I was enjoying it until I looked at the circulation figures (2 million) and gave myself the holy terrors. It’ll be published in July to coincide with Tony Hogan’s launch.

»> The lovely Jessica Patient posted this LOVELY review of Tony Hogan. How could she know that ‘awesome’ is my very most overused word (that and lovely)

»> I saw my first ladybird of the summer. It makes me glad of heart that stuff like this still makes me smile