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 were also too hot to notice. The second one, a festival for a science park yesterday, felt much nicer. 

Feels like the week hasn't been the most productive, but it really is. But it's mostly admin, isn't it? Booking in the preview shows, sorting out Edinburgh plans...and of course desperately trying to finish writing my new collection of short stories so I'll have a little merch to sell at the shows. Calm before the storm. Big old sweaty calm. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Departure from Stagnation Station

I had planned to start writing this in January, but, alas, I just ran out of time. Which is quite ironic because that’s the reason why I wanted to write this blog in the first place… See, I appreciate how lucky I am, I honestly do. I live in a lovely big house with my beautiful, successful wife, our perfect dog, and two cats, one of whom I like and the other I can tolerate. My creative endeavours as a drummer has seen me play in some weird and wonderful places with some mega talented folk, all over the world, with tours, radio airplay and everything else you dream of when you first learn to hit things in time, including all the non-glamorous bits, of course (but I dreamed of those, too - but who doesn't love a Ginsters slice from a garage at 2am for dinner?). In my parallel life, as a writer/performer of theatre stuff that sometimes drifts into other mediums, it's also gone rather well at times; 19 years of Edinburgh Fringes, some lovely national press, a few aw...
Read more

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...
Read more

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...
Read more