Fixing things

I've been busy organising a spate of mini repairs around the house - new taps for the bath, as the old original ones finally gave up the ghost, booking a painter to come and paint our bedroom, my time of shinning up ladders to paint 15' high ceilings is over I'm afraid, buying and fitting a new loo seat, so that you don't feel like you risk a giant clam bite every time you go for a pee!

I must admit it feels good to get these things fixed - funny how you can thole something for ages, and then all of a sudden your patience just snaps.

In the last couple of weeks I've had two meetings with poetry friends. One was a lovely walk round the Botanic Gardens, with lunch in the new building at the West Gate and a good blether about poetry and future plans, including a public reading we hope to do in the Spring.

The other was joining a new mini critique group, with two completely new friends. We hope to keep this going once a month for the foreseeable future - and if the first one is anything to go by I think it will be really worthwhile. The three of us seemed to click right away and had a wonderful time sharing ideas and talking poets that we like and admire. I think it is good to shake yourself out of your comfort zone and try something completely new once in a while and I'm really looking forward to our next meeting.

This is a busy week - tomorrow morning I'm at the launch of "Carry A Poem" and then on Tuesday I have a meeting of my local group pm and at night the joint launch of three pamphlets, including "Collection Point", the group anthology edited by Judith Stewart and me, that Colin played a big part in helping us to get printed.

This morning was an early start to watch Andy Murray not quite pull it off against Federa. I think he lost the match in his head as much as anywhere. I hope he shakes the "last British man to win a major" hoodoo one of these days.

The photo of this wreck of a Scimitar, that I saw on a walk past a farm yesterday, shows that even when your are totally ravaged good bone structure still counts - like Richard Harris or Peter O'Toole!