Just back from Bridport in Dorset: a performance with Dreadlockalien & Friends. Dreadlock has been working with youngsters all week & gave us a selection, as well as his own passionate & energetic words, of their lively style: Eminem's granny, for example, showing that whippersnapper how to do it: "Yo think yo're bad, yo think yo're naughty? I've been rapping since nineteen-forty!"
Some of the local young poets, like these two, & their beatboxing support, performed live & brilliantly. Final highlight was the set by Elvis McGonnegal.
If you haven't seen him yet, your life is lacking. Who else could create a concept like 'Harry Potter and the Kitchen of Nightmares, by Gordon Ramsey' or 'Taking Tea with the Talliban, by Noel Coward' and perform in the persona of every major politician on the world stage, finally bringing the house down with a tirade against God for inventing James Blunt? Wonderful stuff.

Earlier this week, a meeting of Emily's writing group - always a delightful evening. Debby Holt read us a witty, slightly saucy, story which has been taken by the Sunday Express, Emily shared from her exquisitely expressed journals & I brought a story too.
Cinema trip next day, with Annabelle, Ben & Sheila, to see "The History Boys". A difficult one, this. Huge reverence for Alan Bennett, of course, but... Is it me or was that script too long, too wordy, and too discursive to make a good film? My favourite bit was the discussion of Hardy's compound verbs - is that weird? On the subject of quotes, the school production of Fame at the Merlin later that night used some interesting thoughts from Stanislavsky: “What is important to me is not the truth outside myself, but the truth within myself.”
A point to ponder, for a writer as well as an actor.
And now up to London with Peter to celebrate our first anniversary...