Highlights of my week?  Spending time (the journalist and I)  with Anita Anand and Simon Singh was pretty wonderful.  Seeing Marcus Brigstock in the Cape Farewell offices was a blast.  Lovely man.  He came to see  The Cape Farewell team – we share an office and once  a few months ago   shared a ship to the arctic.  They’re good people to be around.

Meeting Mark Wallinger  in the Royal festival Hall was an honour. His Ebsfleet
horse was national news this week.  The people putting the project together are Futurecity
who just a few months opened my commission, a poem in a sculpture in the city
unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu.  Spoke to  futurecity too. There is a common
denominator in these people and it is not their notoriety.

Introducing Bellowhead’s splinter group FAUSTUS onto the stage mid afternoon was a blast too.  It was the opening of their dirty weekend (celebration of Valentines). And  taking
part in the making a short film about bees  for creative connections was a bit of fun.
This is how each day this past week has gone. I travel from Hackney to the Southbank  centre. At  5pm I get the tube to Hammersmith  and then at 8pm each day this week I walk out
onto in front of the audience and perform Why I Don’t Hate White people.
Afterwards  I have a diet coke and then get home for about eleven thirty. 

My film What if  was shown at The Natural History Museum at the launch
of  The  Darwin 200 series.  Spoke to BBC Saturday Live and will resume broadcasting with them post April 09.  Curtis Flowers from Warhorse at The National came to see the show which I am proud of and all the workers at the Southbank centre came too!!!   Curtis  from Manchester is a fine actor and was once in my play Storm produced at Contact
Theatre some ten or so years ago. Warhorse is directed by Tom Morris whose
partner is Kate McGrath who commissioned Why I Don’t Hate White People at the
lyric. Small world.

At the Lyric I circulated a poem of mine, Invisible Kisses,  to all the staff  for Valentines Day.   I find out this week that the play is going to Edinburgh and will be at The Southbank centre in July.  But last night (Saturday) was the final performance of this its first ever run. John McGrath the director came down. He is now the first director of the brand new National Theatre of Wales.  I’d trust him with my life. Jude came to the show too and stayed afterwards to chat for an hour. 

Now it is Sunday and I am packed and ready. Tomorrow I’m off to Canada,  to The Cultural Olympiad to read poetry at The Vancouver literature festival with some great great
musicians.  I’ll put some pictures up soon.  Thanks for reading this, if you did.  Peace. I write my blog so I have, in the absence of family,  a record, a memory. Low point of the week: leaving the journalist for Canada. Tomorrow she is in the national press talking about Obama.