Days

After doing the Plenty environmental festival in Banchory for the past two days, I thought I deserved a beer.

The Plenty festival spot over the last two days was certainly different for me, but so glad I did it. There is a wonderful green space in Torry, the part of Aberdeen I was born in, and thanks to Aberdeen City Council, The Scottish Government, and others, but egged in by Trump buddy, Sir Ian Wood, it will soon be destroyed to build a monstrous Energy Transition Zone, an area of warehouses, hyrdrogen storage facilities and heavy lorries. This 45 minute set, to which I was invited to be the main storyteller/ poet was organised by Scott Herret of Friends of the Earth Scotland, with anthropologist, Amanda Pinker and Herbalist / writer , Michael Malay, was to bring attention to this disgraceful and ungreen project. I wrote three new poems for it, but only used two, and had to do a fair bit of editing to make it sharp and interesting, as well as factual, with the odd lighter, poetic interruptions by Michael. Considering apart from Scott and I, whom I had met twice before, none of us had met before yesterday, and only had two zoom meetings and one other rehearsal with Michael, this week.
It really worked well, the second day worked even better. Now if only we gat the chance to do it again in a planning meeting. True I’d have to rewrite a couple of bits.
In other new, we had our double vaccinations yesterday morning, I’m fine, but June is feeling less than well with it.