Brighten up a meeting!

So the new, 2014 calendar is up, but is there anything on it? You've opened your new diary too, no doubt, written your name on the flysheet perhaps, entered a few appointments and, if you write up your day too, a few details of the aftermath of Christmas and the on-off promise of spring. But what of fun?

You may be booking speakers for your society or club meetings. Are they all going to be serious and educational? All? Well, if you have any second thoughts on that, and live within a couple of hours or so's drive from Cardiff, you might like to consider a slight variation. How about a dryly humorous poetry show with freshly-written rhymes - and songs with classical guitar! - by... er... me? I now offer three themes:

The Mad Side of Modern
The Grim Side of Gardening
The Odd Side of Old


Details of all can be found on my other website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com (click respective pages). You'll find some new poems on all three pages too (written since Christmas).

I'm taking bookings now for this year onwards, and am happy to discuss any options or variations you may like to suggest. As for further venues, I'm happy to go just about any distance if you're happy to cover the costs!

But today is a sunny Saturday and I have an appointment of my own - with the spring sunshine... or has it gone again?

More rhymes - mostly silly...

To brighten this drab month, I've concocted a few new rhymes, available to peruse on my other site, poemsforfun.wordpress.com.

See Mad Side of Mod, Grim Side of Gardening and Odd Side of Old. There's fun and frivolity for gardeners, historians and the the other sort of middle ages too (e.g. 'What Did I Come Upstairs For?' on Mad Side).

Poems for children also available, as per usual, including an array on latest blog.

Finally, if you like reading poetry, whether serious stuff or lip-curling rhymes, why not get writing yourself? All you need is (a) to be awake, (b) writing materials - physical or electronic, and (c) a bit of patience while your brain juggles its way through the possibilities. Cost-free entertainment, to be enjoyed anywhere, anytime, anyhow!

More on this site soon.

Kate

A hum below the glum...

January may feel like the bottom of the world - dark, cold, wet, murky and sleepy - but listen carefully, and you'll detect a faint hum of activity! Be it dream or scheme, hobby or enterprise, study or creativity, it's probably just about at simmer-point now. After all, nature's spring begins a long time before we spot its first signs, and what are we, if not part of that nature? Yes, we're coming out of hibernation too, refreshed! Christmas is done and dusted and we're free and fit to move forward, with any luck!

I'm suddenly busy with rhymes, for instance - they're springing up all around me and sometimes it's all I can do just to catch them! It's the same with tunes: they seem to sprout up at me out of the garden squelch, the horizon's mist, the kitchen's pile of Christmas leftovers, or perhaps they're just emanating from post-Christmas relief.

As for actual work - the nitty-gritty of workshop planning, performance-revising, flyer-sending and all the rest of it - well, what could be a more conducive setting for it all than a Christmas-cheered, fire-warmed, lamp-lit room, cosily curtained by that steady grey drizzle down the window?

There'll be tougher times ahead, I know: dawn drives through deluges to unknown schools in unknown towns, followed by dashes through the downpours from car to entrance, probably to find it's the wrong entrance, or wrong school, or that I've left my guitar in the car, or at home. There'll be the creepy night drives too, to gardening clubs, over 50s gatherings, or whoever may have kindly invited me to brighten up their cold, dark evening. Yes, when I get there, it'll be my job do that, however chilly and soggy and drive-stressed I am by then - a fact that I'll be pinching myself awake about through SatNav's 'Re-calculating!'s and 'Do a U-turn!'s... And then there'll be the even darker, colder drives home, and then the stark, day-break rising for the next distant school...

But that's fine: it'll be one big adventure, as usual, and I'll love it once it's happening, especially after this snug winter's hibernation! Yes, January is okay: we need a murky window to huddle behind, a gloomy day to slump in, an enveloping fog to float about in - a little pause of the clock to bring us back up to the mark, freshly sharpened for spring.

Happy New Year, and all the best with your dreams and schemes, whatever they may be!

KateWebsite: poemsforfun.wordpress.com