First blog for a while… busy, busy, busy



The older I grow, and the further the date of my official retirement recedes behind me, the busier I become. I shouldn’t complain; it’s gratifying to be valued rather than overlooked when one becomes an old codger. But I wish I had time to finish my novel!

Much of my workload, I confess, is self-inflicted. Of course manuscripts keep arriving with requests of the kind “Please edit this for publication”, but I’ve had scarcely 45 hours of such editing since the New Year. Taking on secretarial roles for the creative writing group and the Glossop Concert Society has imposed demands and responsibility on me, but nothing excessive. Signing up for a “writing for the stage” course has entailed a more significant time commitment, but since I wish to turn the play I drafted last year (The Riddle of the Stone, exploiting a few Peak District folktales and addressing environmental concerns) into something stageable, I can hardly complain. (It’s a good course, incidentally. The tutor, Jayne Marshall, is an experienced writer for the theatre and she’s good at focussing her students on the major ingredients of a good play and helping them to write effectively.) And of course I have my weekly creative writing homework, which is also valuable for me because (I believe, or persuade myself) it’s helping me to write better.

Add various social commitments such as walking my neighbour’s fat terrier…

And the local Creative Focus group, for which I compered the inaugural Open Mic night recently…

And storytelling in Glossop, Buxton, Matlock, etc. – plus storytelling workshops to enhance such skills as I have…

And commitment to storytelling at the Buxworth Gala this Easter…

I suppose I can legitimately claim to be fully occupied. Tomorrow I’m due to meet an old colleague to talk about deep venous thrombosis, with a view to publising another paper. I thought my involvement with science and medicine was over, apart from the aforementioned manuscript-editing commitments, but I feel morally obliged to take on this task.

Meanwhile, I’ve formed an intention (“plan” would be overstating the case) to record some of my Peak District stories and put them on to CD for sale around the area. If I can find someone to create a master recording for me and print the discs, I’ll do it.

Watch this space!

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