Oh my gosh – the last of the blossom is fluttering from the trees and festival season is nearly upon us. This is what it means to get older – the weeks whooshing by in a flurry of seasonal descriptors, faces and locations riffling past like a card deck. I hope you’ve been able to enjoy some of this beautiful weather. Here’s what I’m up to this week:

I’ve got gigs in Camden, Oxford and Norwich:

Monday 13th: headline set for Hammer & Tongue at the Green Note Café, Camden – doors 7:30pm

Tuesday 14th: final date of my Hammer & Tongue tour at the Old Fire Station, Oxford – doors 8pm

Thursday 16th: a scratch of my new show, Pub Stuntman, at Norwich Arts Centre – 10:45pm

Be lovely to see you at any of those. I’ll have copies of my poetry collection, Pub Stuntman, and my brand new album, Jesus Buys Me Cigarettes, to sign and sell. If you can’t make it to the gigs, you should click on the links to buy both direct from my publisher.

I’m spending most of this week working on edits for my new novel. Editing is surprisingly satisfying – it’s like locating the itch you’ve had for a year and finally scratching it. I’m not quite ready to tell you all about the story yet. I think you’ll like it.

Writing it has been a real journey. A few years ago I promised myself I’d never attempt a novel again. Fiction was a thankless task worthy of bastards and the insane. Yet a few ideas, a few characters kept gurgling around in the foul blancmange I have the temerity to call a mind. I told my wife about it. I resisted for two years. At last, I decided that I’d respect myself more for trying and failing, than for buttonholing people at parties ten years hence, exclaiming: ‘Oh yes, I had an idea for a novel once. Never bothered writing it down though.’

Now it’s nearly finished. I can scarcely believe it. Well done me, eh?

Don’t forget that all this month, anyone who signs up to my monthly newsletter gets the chance to win one of 10 signed copies of my new album. Sign up here. I promise to only send one email a month, my subscribers will get access to free mp3s of my work and exclusive poems, and you’ll know if I’m due to appear in your area.

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