Both fringe shows confirmed

That was an odd 7 days or so, fringe planning-wise at least. Our original plan at the start of the year was to take two shows to Edinburgh for a week, but as the months flew by reality struck and it looked like it'll just be the one, as usual. Nothing wrong with that - taking anything up to the fringe is a bonus, but perhaps our hopes were raised slightly by a possible investor/sponsor who had promised us some dosh in return for logos on our 6,000 flyers, but by last Thursday that looked to be off as they went completely out of contact for some reason. But, amazingly, my good friend Jon has - at the last minute - chucked in some money as sponsorship from his business, LoveSongwriting (who I've done a little bit of writing/editing for this year). Jon is not only a good mate but also somebody who supports my work, having seen last year's Oscar Pike show and continually saying nice things about that, so he knows what the deal is and what we're about. His generosity effectively gave us enough to register and pay for the deposit on a second show so we went for it, and luckily the people at Sweet (where we had our first show booked anyway) were able to offer us a slot within hours of asking and we got the second show registered. So, two shows at the fringe...one is normally quite stressful, two could well tip me over the edge...but I doubt it. So far at least there's a sense that whilst you're doing all the ridiculous amount of admin and promotion for one show you might as well do it for another whilst you're at it anyway. It's been hard work to try and stay on top of things this week (I even pulled out of a gig with Flaming June - I'm gutted as I wanted to do this one, but there literally isn't enough hours in the day at the moment) but things are reasonably in shape now - and in Izzy and Grace I have a lovely little team.

As for the shows themselves, having watched it again in London recently, Grace wanted to do my piece, 'Probably The Greatest Goal Ever Scored' - she was in it in Cambridge last year and loves the character. It's a short piece, so it'll be a production with three short plays (pretty much the original plan at the start of the year, then, only three not five), the other two plays being a drastically re-written version of one of my more established pieces, 'Love, Awkwardly' and also a brand new piece called, 'When Lucy Met Fiona,' which is based mostly around a soundtrack of songs by Chumbawumba. All three of those pieces are led by the character of 'Lucy', which Grace does so well, but with really strong supporting roles, which Izzy is capable of doing so well. The other production is of course the new Oscar Pike play, 'There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Oscar Pike.' Had a first glance at the first half of it with Grace in a small pub last weekend and whilst there's plenty right with it, the tone isn't there yet - I've got a lot of work to do on this one. The structure and premise is lovely, effectively I've put a very awkward character in a very awkward situation, and it works - perhaps the Paul Richards of three years ago would have considered this to be perfect and gone with it, but we know better these days and Grace and I spoke for a very long time afterwards about what needs to be done. I'm doing it, probably tonight. Tomorrow night I'm around Izzy's to show her a first draft. I have to nail this draft at some point...it's nearly there, but it's been 'nearly' there for a while now...

My progression as a writer over the last week though hasn't been helped by the addition of two new 'toys' - a George Foreman grill and an iPhone, both of which are awesome. I've set myself a challenge of not using the microwave for a month and so far, so good - tonight I burnt my burgers, but it's a trial and error thing. Either way, I'm growing up, this pretty much ACTUAL COOKING I'm doing these days. Fuck yeah. I'm still confused by the iPhone, but equally amazed by it, and when I get my head around the whole touch screen thing (I have lanky fingers, it shouldn't be a problem) I know my life is going to benefit from it greatly. And by benefit, I mean I'll probably be really distracted and never actually nail that new script after all...

Currently listening to: The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly, Crybaby - Crybaby, a self-made compilation from 2009 that I found in my drawer in the office called 'work tunes 2' which is quite nice

Currently watching: Twenty Twelve, Family Guy, various Steve Coogan DVD's

Currently reading: Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace (it's annoyingly good, by the way)

Currently eating: fat-free food...well, 42% of the fat goes into a little tray anyway, yep. And also Easter eggs, still.