An outing with the artists

It's been a pretty dismal day out there - grey, slightly damp, slightly chilly - so I wasn't sorry to have a slothful start and stay indoors all morning. My Italian has been falling behind this week - life has felt very full - so I tried to remedy that as well as making a loaf and stewing some rhubarb. 

I was aware all through the morning that I had a performance to put on in the afternoon, and kept wondering if there was some final prep that I ought to be doing. For a change, I wasn't singing; my friend Paddy (who teaches me painting) is very involved with Cowal Artists, Cowal Open Studios and so on and had asked me to read some of my poems at a gathering in the Burgh Hall, along with performances from the Tinny Tootlers (my friends Di and Linda, plus two others, play recorders and call themselves that because they rehearse in Ardentinny), a folk singer with guitar, and two other local poets. My lack of preparation - just putting the book in my case, with a list of page numbers, and a few extra books in case I made a sale - reminded me of teaching, when as an English teacher all I needed was my text ...

In the event, it reminded me of how much I enjoyed teaching poetry. I read a selection of half a dozen from Washed Up - all of them poems I've not read aloud before, which was fun. (My previous forays into this kind of event have been at the behest of people connected to a church community, so the poems for these were largely drawn from that area of my life.) I found it very hard work without a microphone - the hall is quite large, and the acoustic dead, especially filled with people and paintings and craft work. I was sorely tempted to go walkabout among the audience, but decided it might distract me too much...

Anyway, it was a good experience and I sold most of the books I'd taken. We left before the end so that we could get in a swift walk before dinner - just round the West Bay in a slightly damp mist. We might have been in Edinburgh ...

And now, as always, I'm drooping over the keyboard and needing my bed. 'Night ...