Alarm calls at 4am….

This morning I had to get up at 4am to cover a radio breakfast show for a friend…. so as usual I set 4 different alarms – as doing that shift always makes you paranoid that you’ll oversleep! But you still lie there awake listening to the thunderstorms raging and working out how few hours sleep you’ll survive on. So excuse the bags under my eyes that Ryan Air would charge me £25 for.

It’s also weird how many meals you can eat in a day after such an early start – so breakfast at 4.30, first lunch of chilli chicken at 10am, then I’ve just had a second lunch at 2.30 of scrambled eggs on toast, and I’m sure that I’ll be starving again by 7.30 when I meet my friends for a curry. Is a 4am alarm call like having a tapeworm I wonder? (Also having bought a box of 6 creme eggs for 50p (Bargain of the week or what?) on the way home, and scoffed 2 so far in 10 minutes…. how many will be left faintly whispering ghostly Easter greetings by the time I crawl back into bed tonight?)

But back to poetry – so this week I went to a talk given by Naomi Alderman all about the future of writing online etc, and she stressed the importance of working with good designers. So here I feel I must confess and apologise hat so far you’ve only had text and words to read from me, as I don’t yet have a clue how to download photos etc or images to add to the blog – but that will be coming soon, she says optimistically…. Just enjoy the shapes of letters and words for now, and daydream about images of creme egg wrappers littering the floor and a knackered looking me typing away for you:)

I plan to grab some time this weekend to work on the Hawthorn family tree idea, and have been researching trees online discovering more about the love/loyalty/faithful relationship  meanings of the tree – how very apt in this context. A friend of mine always loved to sit by Elder trees, then discovered they were linked to her family surname…. so I’m sure there’s more to all this….

I’ve also got to do my tasks for my mentor/ringmistress (yes, she really does have a whip too, but that’s for a show she’d doing – well that’s what she says anyway. find out more on her blog. Jo Bell -just google Bell jar and her name and you’ll find it. I am still playing with the sonnet form, but it feels constrained like wearing a bodysuit a couple of sizes too small that’s digging in and stopping free movement:( When I read other people’s sonnets they’re elegant and effortless, but my attempts still feel more like counting syllables….. but it’s a good discipline, so I’ll keep trying. Now what rhymes with Albion….

I’ve also been sent a cd copy of the slot I did on last week’s arts show on Radio 2, talking about Carol Ann Duffy and the poem they asked me to write about her…. and so far I’ve been too shy to listen to it, but maybe I’ll  just stick it on while I do the washing up sometime this weekend and just see what it’s like.

Next week I’m doing radio shows every day to cover for a friend, but I’m hoping to get to see the WBA disabled team at their training session on wednesday night. They have so many different teams associated with the club, so I’m looking forward to finding out more, and fingers crossed that the Premiership team beat Liverpool tomorrow to keep the dream of Premiership survival alive a little longer……. pray for us, won’t you?!

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