The Fabled Return of the Fanciful Wanderer

It’s been a while as they say, and things have been churning. Stomachs, mainly. Turn Up Towers can be a grim a windswept pile of tottering stonework at times. There are those who take the view that it all depends on how you look at it. I take a different view, suspecting as I do that there are outside agencies at work.

Enough of that old guff! The Ledbury Poetry Festival is a subsiding memory. It was as good as I’d hoped, and in many respects surprisingly better. Michael McClure and his wife Amy stayed at the Towers. Great company. The headline in the Ledbury Reporter was right on the button; ‘Poet Holds Audience Spellbound’. Also staying were Colin Still, the film maker, and his wife Fern. Also good fun. It’s difficult to see how the experience can be topped next year, especially as Chloe is taking a year’s sabbatical.

But Martin Clark and I still have plans for our collaboration to take place at Tinsmith’s during next year’s festival. In fact, Martin has been working on the posters over the last couple of weeks. I am humbled by his skill and the beauty of the finished posters. They should sell; they virtually leap out at you and demand to be taken home. Tinsmiths is undoubtedly our best outlet.

I have to put my hands up to a lack of application on the web development front. Marcus bravely waits for some utterance of direction, some twitch of inclination, but manages to remain good company at the bar of first resort. We’ll get there, I’m sure of it.

Echo Road continues to be an inspiration and a frustration. Frustrating that we don’t get out and play, but when practices click, very productive and positive. We hope to be performing in Ice Bytes cafe one Saturday afternoon very shortly. I’ll return to this when more is known. There are certainly quite a few songs awaiting their first performance, including one in which Michael McClure had sufficient input to warrant a writing credit. Be there.