Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Richard Ford & me

@ 8 last night i was getting changed in A's car... (A is the bass player in the Spanner Jazz Punks), listening to Richard Ford on the World Book Club...

i got the suit on by around 10 minutes in & then A came back down & we went up to the stage... got caught in the speech being made by Ab who was having her birthday party & had drunk a little bit...

then A was moving bales of straw for me to sit on & i was setting up my keyboard, whilst a salsa thing was going on...

the band who had played before us were leaving so 1stly i had to take the drummers place in the salsa line (men remain stationary while women move along the line, very odd), and then just before playing our set the same drummer found me & i had to tell both A & P (tenor sax) to move their cars so the other band could leave...

then we played our set to a small but perfectly formed audience... (aliens)... lovely time had i think...

we got out of there quite swiftly... P driving me & M (bari) back to london... i got in to mine around 2:05am...

i very quickly transferred myself into bed and was drifting ever closer to sleep when P rang me & told me i was on Radio 4... he'd just heard me ask my question to Richard Ford...

the world service popping over to Radio 4 in the night...

i did indeed make it onto the show, i can be found asking my question @ around 14:53 - 17:12... but you can also hear my chuckles, laughs, a "yeah" @ all kinds of moments in the whole show...

it was a lovely afternoon spent listening to him talk, and aside from my relentless need to self publicise i think it's a great show, he gives good radio...

x

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

large emotional gradient important me is interviewed

the 1st of several mental days today...

and i didn't know it was going to be this mental when i woke up,

in fact, when i woke up, i felt quite desperate, not sure why exactly, but then about 12 hours later, cycling up kingsway, i felt like i was floating on a cloud...

because, whilst i was @ work, i got an email from someone @ the BBC, asking if i could be part of a trailer for the world book club event coming up in about 3 weeks... the one where richard ford is coming to talk about the sportswriter...

the one that i'll be attending,

the email i sent to ask whether i could come was very enthusiastic...

that's why they asked me to be part of the trailer, because i was so enthusiastic...

and i was so enthusiastic, not just because richard ford is such a fantastic writer, but because i'd started rereading richard ford a few months back, well, further back really, 6 - 8 months... in an effort to connect with the version of myself who existed before i was with dinah... a getting over dinah kind of thing...

that book that i'd left down in brighton in the house of a man i barely knew, and got back a month or so later...

that was "just a little piece of my heart", it was great, and it was very good timing for the world book club to decide to bring him over...

anyway, la la la...

i finished the sportswriter over the weekend and again, very good timing to be asked today to do the trailer thing...

it turned out that the best time to do it was this evening after work, (because the next few days are going to be mental) and i cycled over to bvsh house in the rain around 7ish, floating through the barbican highwalks along the way which i love...

met with a lovely guy called B who led me through the plush old parts and into the not so nice newer parts, sat me down beside a neumann mic and asked me questions about the book, the writer, myself, my thoughts...

it was lovely... just to have a chance to talk about something i care about, and be listened to...

i left there just after he turned up the microphone on big ben for the 3 chimes of 8:15.. (so cool to have that mic on big ben all the time, live, so when you hear the bongs for the news it is actually big ben bonging...)...

and i cycled home high on life... stopping off in muratori's cafe, full of cabbies, for a largish roast meal... while mum & dad were probably eating down in earlsfield with kat & her G, celebrating the new flat, which is on my itinerary for tomorrow...

the trailer will be made by next tuesday and there'll be an extended web version around too, B's going to send me a link when it's around and it will make me very happy to hear myself on the BBC, or at least on the BBC website...

ok, bed, big day of travel tomorrow, biking it down to whitechapel for a meeting and to drop the bike off for a service in the one bike shop i trust in london (bicycle magic, greatorex street)...

then public transport down to earlsfield to see kat & the new flat...

then up to ladbroke grove for another meeting,

then the science museum for their science museum lates night, a core arts staff do type affair...

covering all 4 corners of this great city i'll be...

x