Do you want Drut'syla with that?

Last night I had a Drut'syla with my dinner. Now, my sybarite yeomen, you may now believe that this means I washed down the vitals with a large glass of fermented camels milk or that I enjoyed a side order of a filo parcel containing the highly spiced sweetmeats from a rare arctic mountain lion, but alas, you would be wrong.

Were this this the 1970's, at this point invite you to provide the answer on a postcard with the tantalising promise of a chance to win an empty gin bottle autographed by the Chuckle Brothers.

Sadly, times have moved on and such is society's clamour for instant gratification, the postcard is now longer viewed as an effective form of communication and the gin bottle was long since recycled. (see Note 1)

So, to keep you firmly focused on the matter in hand, I need to inform you that a Drut'syla is in fact a a storyteller from the Yiddish tradition.

Shonaleigh Cumbers is the aforementioned Drut'syla (See Note 2).

Last night, the Oundle Festival of Literature migrated to the outskirts of the town, to the banks of the River Nene, to provide us with 'Stories to Dine For'. The event actually served two purposes, one was the festival, the other was to have a nose around the Oundle Mill. (See Note 3)

The Oundle Mill has obviously been refurbished to a high standard. The food was OK too.

However, what I really enjoyed was the story telling. The best way to describe the stories themselves is Arabian Nights Tales with a bit of an edge. Given the derivation of the Arabian Nights Tales and that the Jewish tradition of the Drut'syla mixed into the complex nature of Middle Eastern politics it does seem rather an odd mix.

Not that it detracted from the stories. Having someone as obviously skilled and practiced as Shonaleigh deliver them was somehow nostalgic. That might seem an obscure way to describe it, but I think that is absolutely ages that somebody told me a story. The last time I remember having somebody tell me a story I must have been a child. Before bed, my father used to tell me stories of Coco the Clown and his mystical magical powers.

The atmosphere of Oundle Mill mixed with the story telling had an alchemy all of its own. The experience was really wonderful. I'm not sure that I needed the meal, it kind of got in the way, reduced the time for the stories and made it a late night for the middle of the working week. (see Note 4)

I am perhaps being a little picky about it because I get a touch grumpy when I don't get my sleep.

It was a great evening. The stories were enthralling and the atmosphere of the Mill added to the occasion.

It is just such a shame that the oral story telling tradition seems to be dying out. Shonaleigh believes there are only two other Drut'syla out there and so that particular story telling tradition is dying out.

Perhaps storytelling is something that Literary Festivals could look to encourage?

Note 1 : And such are the prices charged at The Oundle Mill for drinks, I can no longer afford to provide a substitute prize.

Note 2 : Not to be confused with an unfortunate fungal infection caught by rolling in damp lambswool with Albanian peasant girls.

Note 3 : The Oundle Mill seems to have been undergoing refurbishment for years. The sign at the entrance has been announcing an ever slipping opening date, but now it is open for business.

Note 4 : I get up just after 5:00 each morning, so as I type this I look a bit like a panda due to lack of sleep.

Much Ado About Pansies

It is possible that some of you may have been on expedition to the wilds of Manchester studying aboriginal termites. With your access to to civilisation, the internet, my blog and modern plumbing limited, you may not have realised that the Oundle Festival of Literature is going on.

For the Festival, there was a competition to write a piece for a Shakespeare event loosely based on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' or 'The Tempest'. I produced a piece based on a joke I saw on Judy's site. The links to anything remotely like Shakespeare were tenuous in the extreme. However, for reasons best known to the judges, they selected it to be performed.

I did promise that I would share the piece after the event had been completed. So, for those of you with any interest, please read on...

Much Ado about Pansies.

Lizzie and I were in the Rose and Thistle discussing our Greek holiday plans when, like the anti-hero from that Carly Simon song, ‘he’ walked in. Lizzie stopped talking mid-sentence, pupils dilating as she checked him out checking his immaculately tousled hair in the mirror.

He moved like a dancer across the room. A tight, white, T-shirt emphasised his tan and his muscular torso. The even tighter trousers causing Lizzie’s mouth to drop open – although his assets had surely been bolstered by a strategically placed sock. As he joined a crowded table, I knew that there would be no further discussions of sun kissed Greek beeches that night. Lizzie was a girl on a mission.

I’d been here before. Lizzie has the physical assets allowing her for one night to have almost any man she wants while I am usually left with his mate who can make one night feel like half a lifetime.

I watched as she sashayed to the ladies toilet. While nearly every man in the pub dribbled their beer, he remained stubbornly aloof. Half an hour later, she tried the predatory sashay with stumble and apologetic fumbling to remove spilt beer. That didn’t work either.

I mocked her efforts and told her she didn’t have a chance. Lizzie glared at me.

“I have £10 that says you can’t do any better!” She snapped.

Although I don’t have her love of bedroom gymnastics, she knew that I couldn’t resist a bet.

Over the next few weeks, I discovered his name, Patrick and that he worked in the same building as Lizzie and I. It didn’t take long to discover his routine and engineer meetings in the lift and the coffee shop. I even took to going for walks in the park where he went jogging at lunchtime, but my softly, softly approach drew the same blanks as Lizzie and her headlong assaults.

By the time we went on holiday, it looked as if neither of us would win that £10.
Once in Greece, Lizzie soon forgot about Patrick. Her attentions soon fell on an olive skinned tour guide who was more susceptible to her charms.

Unfortunately, this meant we had to sign up for all of his tours.

I can only get excited about old ruins for so long. On yet another trek through the remains of some ancient temple, I reached my limits. While the tour group bore the brunt of the sun, I took myself off into a wood, sitting on a log where I could watch the coach and sip at my bottle of water.

Suddenly I became aware that I wasn’t alone. This strange looking Greek guy was sat next to me. I tried to ignore him, but he was persistent. He thrust a bag of flowers in my hand. The bag was of the finest lace with this fantastic spider’s web design. He called them ‘Love in Idleness’, but anyone could see they were just pansies. He made the most ludicrous claims for them. I firmly and politely declined, but when I turned to hand them back, he was gone. I looked around for him but it was as if he had become invisible, so I just dropped the flowers in their pretty lace pouch into my handbag.

When we returned from holiday, Lizzie seemed to have lost interest in our little bet, but I wasn’t going to give in.

A week or so later I was walking in the park and I came across Patrick, dozing on a bench in the sunshine and I remembered the flowers. I didn’t believe the strange Greek guy’s claims for a moment, but hey, it was worth a shot. I took the flowers in the bag and squeezed them so the juice dripped onto his eyelids.

Patrick stirred and woke. He looked straight at me and he looked at me like no man ever has. He asked me to sit with him, but I rushed away, shouting over my shoulder that I would be in the Rose and Thistle on Friday night and that he should meet me there and give me his best line.

On the Friday, Patrick walked in to the Rose and Thistle and checked himself in the mirror. Lizzie nudged me, but I had already spotted him. He looked around the bar, spotted us at the table and walked over with a slow bounce in his step. He was wearing his tightest trousers and it looked like he’d stuffed them with an extra sock.

Lizzie was beside herself, nudging me and whispering ‘He’s coming over! He’s coming over!” His dark eyes were fixed on me. I tried to stay calm and nonchalant by sipping at my vodka and Red Bull. Reaching our table, Patrick leaned down and looked deep into my soul.

Patrick paused for effect before purring “For £20, I will do anything you want.”

I looked at Lizzie. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth was moving, but no words spilled out. Victory was mine!

I savoured the moment by memorising the sight of a totally flummoxed Lizzie and the amazing puce colour she was turning. Smiling, I reached into my purse and withdrew a crisp £20 note.

I took Patrick’s hand and slowly, seductively pressed the note into it.

“Patrick, you have made my night. Now...” I paused and licked my lips with the tip of my tongue “clean my flat."

...ooo000ooo...

I can only hope you feel it was worth the wait.

Shaken and Stirred

It seems that for the photographs on all of the Festival events, I will have to make do with pictures of the empty stage. It seems that performers don't like it when in mid-flow, some fat bald bloke jumps out of his seat and shouts 'CHEESE!".

Last night, I had the red carpet treatment for the first (And probably the only) public performance of my piece "Much Ado About Pansies". This took place at the Stahl Theatre in Oundle.

If truth be told, there were no paparazzi and no red carpet. I didn't even get a limo to drive me to the doors. The screaming fans had obviously been told the wrong date. So all in all, the new posh frock was a complete waste of money.

Shakespeare Unleashed was not.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually enjoyed it. The director, singers and actors had obviously worked hard to make sure that they did justice to the words and music. The performances were superb.

Special mention must go to Heather Diggle who did a marvellous job delivering my piece with such impeccable timing that she managed to draw out the laughs from the packed auditorium.

All of the pieces were delivered well. I was particularly impressed by Greg Wilkinson who despite only being in the Fifth Form at Oundle School produced a series of excellent presentations. None more so than his performance of "Mine" by Hilary Spiers, which was a first rate piece written for the event.

I left the event with a real spring in my step. It was a good night. OK, so it was a bit uncomfortable in having to stand up and face the audience when they asked the writers to take a bow, but the memory of watching Heather take my piece and make it look so good will live with me for a lifetime.

Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law

Somewhere in the string of blogs that I read (and sometimes comment upon) is a discussion that a group of us should get together and write our own wikipedia entry.

As everyone knows, it is terribly bad form to write your own entry on wikipedia, but if I did, then 'Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law' is probably how I would describe myself.

Yesterday, was the day of my presentation at the Oundle Festival of Literature on the art of the blog.

Throughout my life, I have been plagued by what is called the 'live demonstration' - which is why I spent so long making sure that I would be able to access all the sites I needed, because part of the two hour slot was supposed to be a session to allow the participants to start up their own blogs. The mystical Murphy stalks me, so I know that I need to make sure I cover off all eventualities.

One of the classmates couldn't access their email, but I had prepared for that. I made sure we could get to gmail and they could set up an email account.

I had made sure we could get to all of the sites we needed to get to (well, except for one, the food pornographer site which was banned as porn - which it ain't).

This time, I thought I had Murphy licked. All the computers had been tested, all the access checked, my presentation loaded, the projector work - I had every base covered and Murphy would be frozen out of the equation and forced to go to the Literary Treasure Hunt.

WRONG!

Sadly, there was just one thing I couldn't have predicted or prepared for. Someone at Multiply decided that 8:00 am EST was a great time for site maintenance! So when we sat down at 1:00 pm GMT we were greeted with a message, albeit a polite message, that the Multiply was unavailable!

The little pixies at Multiply weren't going to hurry their maintenance either (see Note 1). So in the end we were forced to abandon the setting up of new blogs and the poor people (who had actually paid for the privilege) were forced to listen to me spout.

Thankfully, I had a lot of material and there were a lot of really good questions from the floor (some of which I could answer!) which allowed the session to last the full two hours.

I think it went well. I hope it went well. I guess the real test is to see who does their homework and what new blogs for the festival get connected to my festival Multiply blog.

Note 1 : This is because computer maintenance on overtime has to follow a set for. Management notice when you start work and hence qualify for overtime payments, when the computers go unavailable. The know when you finish the overtime, because the computers come back on.

Computer technicians aren't daft. They come in, switch the computers off, then go and fetch themselves a coffee and a doughnut while raking in payment at time and a half.

Confessions of a Really Terrible Writer

I should point out that the Really Terrible Writer of the title refers to myself, not to Alexander McCall Smith, the speaker of the first event I attended at this year's Oundle Festival of Literature.

It comes from the opening words of Alexander's talk when he described his ability to 'partly play' the Bassoon in the Really Terrible Orchestra (helping the musically disadvantaged since 1995), where, unable to play any of the high notes, he is forced to wait for the music to descend to a level where he can pick up the score.

St. Peters Church was packed for the event. This was obviously a hot ticket and by all accounts, could have been sold out many times over. As I took my seat, I must admit that I was not at all sure what to expect. He is, after all,   Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and famous author, so anything could happen.

I wasn't disappointed. He spoke with great wit, warmth and a deprecating humour about a wide range of topics including his huge portfolio of work. Among the anecdotes he treated his audience with was an explanation of his affliction of being a serial novelist (although laying the blame partly at the door of his publisher who insisted that characters should marry at the end of books, not simply become engaged). We were told that nothing much happens in his books and he just didn't do car chases and the nearest he has come is a thrilling chase involving supermarket trolleys.

I admit to a fair amount of jealousy when he told us that he writes about 1000 words an hour (he treats writing the same way as walking a tightrope 'I just look straight ahead and never look down and just keep going') and complete a book in two months.

There were numerous other topics touched on and of course anecdotes from Botswana, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and his heroine, Precious Ramotswe.

At the end, there was a touching moment when the daughter of a man behind the SOS Children's Villages in Botswana asked a question. Alexander played a handsome tribute to her father as well as admitting that he drew on his visits there for some characters and the famous fruit cake in the stories.

All in all, a good evening. When I left, the book stall was in full swing and the signing queue was still snaking around the back of the church. As I turned up my collar and stepped out into the wind and the rain, I couldn't help agreeing with Alexander McCall Smith in bemoaning the lack of authors writing for the Dry Cleaning genre and wondering if I could ever put that right - although it would never be at 1000 words per hour.

As Saturday is fast approaching (tickets still available at reasonable prices and there will even be refreshments serves!), in the course of researching this entry, I came across the blog for the Really Terrible Orchestra.

 

And in the red corner...

There are flaws in my character, my perfective yeomen.

Yes, this is difficult to believe, but sadly there are matters on which I find it difficult to motivate myself to pontificate. Such is the problem with my 'chosen' topic of the day.

As I prepare for the ever-hastening arrival

of my session at the Oundle Festival of Literature, I have found it increasingly difficult to tackle the research for today’s post - political blogging.

Anyone with the stamina to follow my blogs will know that I am not averse to tackling the odd political topic, but I am with

Winston Churchill when it comes to our democratic structures when he said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

The 'problem' as I see it being that the British democratic system is based on an adversarial system. This means that we are often treated to politicians trying to score verbal points while other members of parliament bay like rabid dogs caught in a thunderstorm.

With the parliamentarians behaving like verbal street fighters at the big set pieces like

Prime Ministers Questions, it is easy to forget that most of the real work is done using reasoned debate be it in committees or the floor of the house.

The reason for my disquiet about the research on political blogging, is that when I go and read some of the political blogs out there, they seem totally pre-occupied with the verbal point scoring and very light on the reasoned debate and the provision of alternate solutions. This causes me to quickly lose interest and go back to my quest for diplomatic blogs.

However, it is political blogging that is by far the most mature of the on-line web logs. The recent

Presidential campaign in the US was characterised by the use of the internet and blogs to mobilise support, push issues up the political agenda and of course, raise funds for the candidates. In at least one instance, the use of blogs is credited with having set the political agenda which unseated the incumbent Republican Senator.

OK, so I have to provide you with a few interesting links. First port of call would have to be

Guido Fawkes, a very irreverent political blog that concentrates on the tittle-tattle of the Westminster village. Then there is the be-spectacled dome head, Nick Robinson, who writes one of the many different blogs that now appear on the BBC website. You could do worse than visit Ian Dale’s site which seems reasonable enough, but also includes some fantastic links in his blog.

As this is a kind of a political post, I would like to finish with a political comment of my own. At the moment there is a lot of fuss going on about the pension being drawn by

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former head of the disgraced RBS banking giant. After being forced to resign as the bank imploded under the weight of losses in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, Sir Fred chose to draw his pension. Now the world and their dog are crying foul and saying the money be returned.

This would set a most dangerous precedent. A pension is a contractual right that sits alongside your salary. It is not provided based on performance, but as part of your contract of employment. It is therefore a right. If the government start withdrawing a pension for an individual, it is setting a dangerous precedent that we could come to regret in future should some big corporate decide to use this precedent to their advantage.

You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

My excitement is building as the big day of my talk approaches. I know I keep harping on about it, but for me it seems a really big thing. I have been plucked from obscurity in my community and asked to pontificate on a something.

My regular aculeate yeomen will be nodding sagely as they will realise that I never like to let an opportunity to pontificate pass.

To try and do justice to the occasion, I have been out and about on the web trying to find a variety of interesting places that I can share with my paying audience in the hope that they feel that they have achieved the nirvana of consumerism, that of value for money.

So it was that I have been out there, burrowing into various places discovering little gems for delectation and delight, such as this little blog from a magistrate.

Unfortunately, I have drifted from my quest. I have been sidetracked back to the search for diplomatic blogs. It is just I find the idea of a diplomat writing a blog such an interesting idea after discovering the FCO blogs.

My immediate thought on this was to try and discover if there are diplomats from other countries out their and blogging. With the aid of my investigative yeomen, I discovered the US Department of State blog and a blog from a US diplomat in South Africa.

This is beginning to become an obsession. The dried frog pills don't halt it and the tin foil hat has failed to halt the frenzy. I need something to distract me away from this and back onto my quest for material ripe for pontification. Any ideas anyone?

Dancing to a Different Beat

I like to think I have a good sense of humour and that I can see the joke and laugh along with the best of them. Even after a few dried frog pills, my sense of humour remains intact and I can guffaw with the crowd. Occasionally, I find myself ploughing my own lone furrow when it comes to comedy. Sometimes I find the joke just too sad and tragic to join in.

A classic example is one of the running jokes in Dad’s Army. Whenever the platoon were called to attention, you get the crunch of the assembled Home Guard’s boots hitting the church hall floor in unison, followed, exactly half beat later, by the boots of Corporal Jack Jones. This got a laugh every time – except from me.

I always felt that the audience were laughing at the afflicted and that the humour was cruel and heartless. This isn’t because I have a particularly strong Political Correctness streak or that I never laugh at cruel and heartless jokes. It is because I felt for Corporal Jones and in a small way even envied him. Here was a guy that was always exactly half a beat late on the song score of life.

You see, my defoliated yeomen, I would kill to be exactly on a beat, be it half a beat late or not. I cannot carry a beat in a bucket, which makes me a hazard when it comes to dancing.

At junior school, when the playing fields were deemed unfit for outside games, the teachers decided that we would do Scottish Country Dancing. Out would come the school gramophone, on would go some Scottish music and the entire class would form up into sets and dance with grace, beauty and above all, timing - the entire class that is except for me. I would be blundering around to my own, totally random beat. I may not have had timing, but I tried to make up for it with enthusiasm. That, my syncopated yeomen, was a big mistake.

It didn’t take long for the sympathetic teachers to bandage up my classmates broken feet, retrieve lost teeth and stem the bleeding from numerous noses. Very sympathetically, they took me to one side and told me that I was ‘special’. That dancing was not for me. I was destined for higher things I should look after the record player, carve my name with a compass on the school piano – ANYTHING except try to dance. And so it began

In my youth, when disco was in full swing, I was banned from clubs from Minehead to Newbury. From Bournemouth to Oxford, bouncers were told on no account was I to be granted access to the dance floor.

I soon learned that if I wished to impress a young lady, I never asked them to dance. When I forgot myself and tried to strut my stuff the date usually ended up at the local casualty department with me applying a bag of frozen peas to some part of my soon to be ex-girlfriends anatomy while waiting for the X-ray machine to come free.

My wife is wise to my shortcomings in the gyratory arts. She knows not to drag me onto the dance floor until late in the night when I have consumed enough alcohol to temper my shortcomings. I must be the only person in the country whose dancing improves after copious amounts of the falling down juice. Even with alcohol dampening my natural instincts, when we take to the floor I am under strict instructions not to lift my feet more than half an inch from the floor and to keep my elbows welded to my sides at all times.

Of course, my wife has been known to abuse this knowledge to her own advantage. Some years ago, at some charity fundraiser, I was approached by a lady who I will call ‘A’ to avoid her any embarrassment. My wife and ‘A’ didn’t get on. Some weeks previously, ‘A’ had beaten my wife in the Mother’s Egg and Spoon race at the school sports day amid some claims cheating and the inappropriate use of Blu-Tac.

‘A’ asked me to dance. I politely declined.

“It’s OK, Simon.” My wife oozed. “Why don’t you and ‘A’ enjoy a quick Jive?”

“What?” I spluttered as visions of the headline ‘Bloodbath at charity event’ in the News of the World flashed before me eyes.

“Yes, dance with ‘A’!” My wife commanded with a set jaw and gritted teeth.

The steely determination in her eyes made me realise that I was stuck between a rock and several nights on the sofa. As I took the arm of ‘A’ and led her to the dance floor, I watched my wife leading those present who were dear to her to the safety of the bar.

It turned out that ‘A’ and her fellow dancers were lucky. Casualties were surprisingly light, probably due to the wine flowing freely during dinner and ‘A’ still being in good physical shape due to her training regime employed for the blue ribbon Egg and Spoon race.

As ‘A’ was loaded into the ambulance and the paramedics treated those who had failed to escape the floor in time, my wife looked on with a look of triumph and I vowed never to let her use me as an offensive weapon again.

At the weekend, I went to visit the location for my talk at Oundle Festival of Literature on the joy of blogs (See Note 1). During the post-reconnoitre pleasantries, Paula brought up the topic of salsa.

As Paula is a long standing resident of the town and the night of the fundraiser is still a subject of local gossip, I naturally took her to mean the spicy tomato dish and my thoughts started to wander to tortilla chips and chocolate chili.

Yet, she wasn’t. Despite everything, Paula was hoping that I would attend the Grevel Lindop event at the festival (See Note 2). Visions of my past misadventures flashed before my eyes. I imagined the headlines, remembered my restraining order and declined the invitation.

The poor woman must have thought me mad. I probably went a very strange colour and made my excuses and left. Forgive me Paula, I’m sorry that I rushed off like that. I hope that this blog entry goes a small way to make recompense for knocking the door off the hinges as I ran off.

Note 1 : For those of you who have somehow missed this earth shuddering event, it is on March 7^th in the Sir Peter Scott Building, Oundle School at 1:00pm. I promise I will not be dancing.

Note 2 : Grevel Lindop will be at the Festival on Friday 13 March, 7.30pm - 11.00pm at the 2 Acre Club in Oundle. Included in the event is a Salsa dancing lesson so bring along the partner of your choice and loosen those limbs.

Back to School

The date for my foray into presenting at the Oundle Festival of Literature is getting ever closer. As you know, I am doing a session on the blog on the 7th March at the St Peter Scott maths building at Oundle School.

With every passing day I am becoming more nervous, but today the nerves were that little bit worse because I had to go back to school. It is totally irrational, but whenever I walk into a school for whatever reason, I get nerves. Today was no exception.

Still, I steeled myself and approached the venue for the first time to sort out a few of the logistics.

It was probably a good idea to have had this little scouting raid as we did find a few issues with the access rights on the computers. According to the school's firewall, Multiply is a dating and relationships site and is therefore blocked. Hopefully we can get that sorted out, otherwise it will be a very short talk!

As Oundle School is not your average comprehensive, the facilities look good. There are certainly enough computers to go round and the room is light and airy. So, everything looks good - although I hope that I can rearrange the furniture a bit!

For those of you who may not know where the Sir Peter Scott building is, it is on the corner of Glapthorn Road and Milton road. I took the photograph above to help you get your bearings and because it enabled me to get a photograph from an angle I wouldn't normally get to see.

Stoking the Fire

Do you ever have those times when you are sure you have done something and then discover days later that you haven't? Well, I have just had one. I thought I had posted this blog, but in fact I hadn't. It is probably my age or my tin foil hat getting tight or I've not got the dosage right on my dried frog pills.

I get the same sensation sometimes when I am driving. I suddenly find that I cannot remember negotiating a roundabout or passing through a set of traffic lights. Although that is more a case of having done something and then forgetting.

I'm rambling. Sorry, my prosthetic yeomen, let's give you that post that I promised and then forgot.

Evar popped by last night to show off his recently acquired bronze medal from the extreme ironing championships (in the king size duvet cover and sheets freestyle) and to make sure that we were all aware that it would have been gold had it not been for a 0.2 point deduction for a suspiciously stained sheet.

There were the usual accusations of sabotage by the now infamous Johanus Merkwier, but they weren't all that convincing given that the day before the competition he partied with a trio of his groupies in his Volkswagen camper.

It was during the discussions over where he could purchase new shock absorbers for his van that he suddenly remarked that I seemed to be spending more time on my blogs again.

I hadn't got the heart to point out that the main reason I was steadfastly looking at my computer screen was that he was wearing the new crocheted mankini given to him by one of the aforementioned groupies and what is claimed to have started the mattress manoeuvring in the first place. It isn't just that you can't help feeling a touch inadequate when presented by Evar in a mankini, but it was the fact that Evar has decided to grow, bead and plait his body hair that meant I was determined not to look in his direction.

But Evar does have a point. I have found a renewed energy for my blogging undoubtedly helped by having an easier time of things at work, but mainly down to doing this blogging talk at the Oundle Festival of Literature.

As part of this I have been busily preparing slides and researching some interesting sites to reference during the talk. I have also set myself up a second blog which will be the one that I shall be using to demonstrate blogging and, hopefully, set up an active blogging ring around the Festival.

These, combined with the inspiration gained on my travels around the blogosphere has really got the energy back and I find myself making time at all kinds of odd parts of the day to blog.

I can only hope the energy continues after the Festival!

The day of my event approaches.

I'm pretty sure that there was someone famous (who's name I have forgotten) who said something like "stealing from a single source is called plagerism, but stealing from multiple sources is called research."

Whoever said it was obviously some smart fella who knew his stuff.

It is all pretty appropriate at the moment as the sands slip through the glass towards my session at the Oundle Festival of Literature. If anyone is actually reading this still, this takes place at the Sir Peter Scott Building, Oundle School on 7th March 2009 at 13:00 (thats 1pm in old money.) See the web site for booking details.

With that session on blogging rapidly approaching, it was with great fortune that one of my contacts from the days when I was interesting on 360 surfaced on Multiply. It seems that Neil (aka nomadtraveller) is not only well travelled, but he gets time to read the weighty Sunday papers. I guess you have to find something to do when you spend so much time in airport departure lounges.

It seems that there is a huge aid to my research published in this week's hernia inducing edition, part one of the 100 top blogs by Bryan Appleyard.

Very useful and very interesting - probably the kind of thing that Yahoo 360 had in mind when they started their interesting list and instead they got me! Never mind, I guess that one day they will learn!

It looks like there is a useful mine of information there just waiting for a claim jumper to devour.

As my lunch hour is almost over, I hadn't got much time for additional research, but suffice to say, I had a little surf. Have a go, you'll like it, not a lot, but you'll like it. (I'm sure it used to be his catch phrase, but if it ain't he'll never find me).

Also, I learned something. I wouldn't have believed it, but Paul Daniels is 70! He doesn't look it. Hasn't he worn well? (No, wait, that catchphrase was somebody else).