Things I Love Thursday #4
What is TiLT? Why have it here?
Here are the things that have kept me going through a rather hectic and hellish week this week!
Google Reader. It is my saviour. I have discovered so many cool new blogs and sites and with this brilliant tool I am able to properly organise and digest all of them! I spend half the time reading blogs nowadays… which is good because it can turn into a major procrastination exercise! It really is my new best friend.
The Golden Hour, Edinburgh’s hippest poetry event. I read at the September GH last night and had an absolute blast. Topping the bill was Jane Griffiths, reading from her latest collection Another Country, which I just finished reading - you’ll have seen it on this list already! Ryan Van Winkle also read and there was brilliant music from a guy called Withered Hand. GH is always a brilliant night… if you live in the Edinburgh area, check it out!
Autumn, my favourite season. Scarves, wellies, nights drawing in, back to Uni and counting down to Christmas!
More about the song by Rachel Fox, which I’ve been reading in bed over the past few nights. The collection was published by Rachel’s own crowd-pleasers press, which means that she had total control over every aspect. You can tell a lot of attention to detail has gone into the materials (recycled paper; simple, watery artwork) and the layout, which is never crowded and gives the reader room to “breathe” while reading. I’m reasonably familiar with Rachel’s work having read some for Read This, but the collection is still surprising… I had a fair few eyebrow-lifting moments while reading! Rachel’s work has a sweet, naive charm but also a strong, sometimes almost aggressive voice, which is utterly female and very likeable. Not quite finished the book yet, but I’m looking forward to the rest!
Frank the monkey. The other day, I was in a gifty, homey, bits-and-pieces kind of store with my parents, and tucked away in a corner they had a rack of hand puppets and cuddly toys. Amongst these was an almost lifesize plushie orang-utan, who I instantly fell in love with! I just had to buy him and, having blushed my way through paying for him, brought him home and named him Frank. He’s joined the growing - and rather disturbing - collection of plushie monkeys and owls who inhabit my tiny flat. Keep an eye on my Flickr for a picture of him soon!
Now you… what’s got you through the week?
September 20th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Bad Manners: decided on Thursday that I would go and see them play that night at Citrus, a club that doesn’t much put on gigs, and after convincing my flatmate to come, we both donned our most 2-tone outfits and DMs and headed for Citrus. Oh my, I have not had that much fun in a long time, and a live ska brass section is one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard. I think I lost about a stone also, as skanking in a tiny club for two hours, with 200 or so other people, in a leather jacket and Doc Martens, gets a mite sweaty. There are some videos from the gig on youtube, but none of them do it justice at all. Skaville UK on the 10th of October anyone?
The Picture of Dorian Grey: Not that far through it yet, but rather enjoying it.
University beginning again: I am needlessly excited about getting back into it all, and determined to definitely do lots of work this year (as I say every year…)
Bad Manners (again): and why not? It was very, very good.