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Get Action!

Great tune, Get Action, it's by a band called the Delgados and you should check them out. It's from their final (for now) album which felt less orchestral, more direct, and when it first came out I was printing sewerage maps for Anglian Water as a spotty early-20-something and treated myself to a CD every Friday from a local branch of MVC to cheer myself up because everything else in life felt shit. But the album, Universal Audio, was a winner, and I stumbled into it on Spotify the other day and gave it a spin whilst driving to one of my schools.  Anyway, Get Action sums up my July mood. I've got over my 'it's too hot' grump, even if it is - turns out all I needed to do was find the iced coffee function on the machine in my office. June felt a little flat; a few gigs cancelled due to poor sales, a choir show cancelled due to lack of singers, the school term feeling a bit longer than normal with the kids just wanting summer holidays. Next week looks brilliant; a ...
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Short films, big ideas. This BLOOODY HEAT

Yeah, still moaning about the heat, but still...180 days till Christmas. It's been a good week, though, school concert last night was wonderful and my students did me proud in front of a BIG audience...this stuff changes lives, doesn't it?  Collection of short stories nearly finished, should be ready as Edinburgh Fringe merch.  Been cast in a short film, by a director who has won lots and lots of awards. It's exciting as I'm the lead, and it'll be filmed in Essex. Naturally, I'm playing 'very awkward man' but a leading role's a leading role, isn't it? Typecast, but I play to my strengths.  Made my own short film, won't show anyone unless it wins an award or two. It's 3 minutes long and features a very wonderful drum soundtrack, if I may say so myself.  Not gigging enough, this sort of thing helps.  Also, had the BIGGEST idea ever, that I want to do. After Edinburgh. It'll take up a lot of time and I need to put together a team, but I...
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But, seriously, this heat

Students have been dropping like flies this week. Normally, I'd be a little concerned as, being self-employed, I always want to work every single second of the day or else...well, I get all dramatic about my business falling apart etc etc when it's totally fine. This week, though, I've welcomed it, because it's been so hot, and nobody really wants to be drumming in this heat, do they?  Actually, most of them do, apart from one very honest student who paid me but told me not to come over because they "can't be arsed to drum in this weather". Most of them cancelled due to school trips/exam stress, that sort of thing, it's very much the time of year for it.  I, on the other hand, still had to drum because, you know, it's part of my job and all that. Two VERY sweaty gigs this weekend with the blues band, the first one as part of our regular hotel residency where, due to the heat, I totally lost my way on the final track but nobody cared because they we...
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Local shows, this bloody heat

Christmas is a weird one, isn't it? I can't wait for it all year because it's the most magical time of the year, yet I always use it as an achievement benchmark....how much have I achieved this year? That sort of thing. But right now, middle of June, I can't WAIT for Christmas. Not because my achievement stats have been spectacular in 2025 to date (I mean, they've been alright, but there's more to come) but because IT'S SO HOT AND I'D LOVE SOME WINTER BREEZE, PLEASE. The heat does drag me down, especially as I spend a majority of my working day driving about to lessons all over Cambridgeshire in a car that claims to have air conditioning but, let's be honest, it's lying. I'm really happy with the new course I've written for my students (the wedding drummer one) as it's given them a whole new focus and structure, but the heat was a bit of a battle for all of them. Looking back on the last seven days, they're all proper troopers.  T...
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New ideas

I felt a bit flat earlier this week. See, there was a point about 5 years ago when the Harvey stage show was taking off, and it was clashing with Fred's House at our absolute peak (we'd just toured China, our third and best album had just come out etc etc). The Harvey show obviously, finally, rightfully ended last week on an absolute high, and the band, well, we still exist but we're all doing other things now and nobody is up for touring anymore. Maybe that was it, maybe that was my peak, was that the good as it gets? Weird that I didn't notice it at the time, I remember just being, well, tired, because I was juggling a lot of projects. As always.  That thought was buzzing around my head at the start of the week. That, and, because we've got a bit of a mortgage rise and an expensive holiday to pay off, I've had to extend my teaching hours a bit. It's great that I can do this; if I need more money, I just take on more work, it's really never a worry. Man...
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The end of Harvey Greenfield

In November 2018 I wrote what was to be my 'last ever play' - I was honestly done at one point, so started working on a nice, fun, energetic piece that I threw every last idea I had into. After a couple of house shows in early 2019, it opened publicly in April of that year in Swindon, before a bunch of other fringe festivals. In Edinburgh that summer (my 'last ever time') it was picked up by the national press and then it ended up briefly in the West End, and on several lengthy tours, and then there was the film which has won lots of awards including a few for me as an individual which was, well, never really the plan. And of course, it's success opened other doors for me, so I carried on writing, with new shows opening in New York and France. Not bad for a 'last' play, but it soon became a play I just couldn't quite shake off. Last summer, when performing it, I decided to just keep it going forever...maybe this play could be my living? This year I decid...
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Awards bash

It's half-term, so a bit of a lie-in yesterday and a chance to catch up on some writing. I've nearly finished my new collection of short stories and I'm rather excited about them...some of them are really short, but there's plenty of them, making them perfect toilet reading, that sort of thing.  Last night, myself and director Jonnie went to an awards bash in Essex. The film was nominated for a few things. I've been lucky enough to win quite a bit over the last few years, but I've never won if I've attended the ceremony, it's almost like I've cursed it.  We were up for best feature film, Annette was up for best supporting actor, and I was up for best actor. I didn't win best actor (I mean, I've got two of those already, a third would be greedy), but we did win best feature film, which we were not expecting.  A long evening of networking followed. Left the house at 4pm, home by 1am. Networking is exhausting, but the awards keep coming in for t...
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