The performance was amazing.  It’s only ten minutes into the day and pitch black nightime.  I walk home with   Derek Richards who as a musician played with Cleveland Watkiss and Courtney Pine and as a producer has played with everyone.   He came to the Shlo gig. 

I’ve recorded a voiceover about   a painting called the Desert which portrays  a lion dead in a desert. This painting is the source of the image/logo  used by Tate and Lyle throughout  slavery right up until the present day.   Beneath tate and lyles image/logo   is the line 
“Out of strength came forth sweetness”.  It’s in a file at home and the deadline has passed.Derek is the project manager and is picking up the file of the recording.

The Lion, in the quote,  comes from a story about Samson in the book cof Judges in The Bible.  The painting The Desert  hangs in Manchester Art Gallery and is now part of their Revealing Histories programe.  Derek came to the gig.  Derek got the file – hats off to his project management and dedication.  We talk music and say goodbye. At 1am I am asleep, The Journalist is asleep. The world service purrs in the background and the wold is right  until 5am when the alarm goes off and by 6am I am speeding down to Waterloo Station on my bke – it takes an hour. 

By 7am I am on a train to Southampton 150 miles  away  and at 10am I am on stage at Nuffield Theatre  with three hundred young people staring goggly eyed  at me.  I stare goggly eyed too.  Also on at this gig is Gilian Clarke J ohn Lyons and Paul Blizzard.  It’s a hay festival event and I get a 20^th aniversary hay festival moleskin notebook as a little thankyou gift.   Hay know how to treat their writers. I’m fed watered performed and pleased. It’s a good job and it’s been well done.

I like being around poets.  After a mamoth autograph signing book selling and an added workshop for teachers which was particualry enjoyable,  I get myself  back to london.  This was a fantastic day. Magic Happened as it did last night! I love my job.   My bike is parked near the south bank centre near waterloo station where my train comes in –  Waterloo. 

You can’t take the bike light off the back of my bike. It’s attached to the seat.  I’ve no
idea why,  but you can’t. Anyway some freakin friend of fagin  has not stolen my light. Hes only gone and stolen  the entire seat that was attached to it.  Grrrrreat. Just grrrreat!