Yeah. It’s been a while.
A few months ago I heard that the Grant Museum – the tiny, deeply fabulous zoological wunderkammer embedded deep in the throbbing heart of UCL’s Bloomsbury campus – was running a short story competition. The Grant is a delightful place, packed – and I do mean packed – with its curiosities. A three-legged quagga! Glass slugs! A walrus’ penis bone! A jar of moles! And that’s not even the beginning of an introduction to it. »
So the reading of i/o Error at last week’s Liars’ League went well: or to put it more precisely: the audience mostly laughed at the right bits; I had a whale of a time and there was even a bit of the promised love in the air, albeit that it faded faster than a rose from a Leicester Square flower-seller. »
i/o Error is going to be read at the next meeting of the Liars’ League, which has a Love & Marriage theme. (You might recall that The Man With The Musical Penis was read by Martin Lamb at the corresponding event last year, to great effect – that’s why I submitted again this year.) Details after the jump. »
According to tradition, William Shakespeare was born 445 years ago on this day – and died on what would have been his 52nd birthday, in 1616. There’s no way to be sure about his birthday – he was baptised on April 26th, but that’s about all that can be confirmed. (Inevitably, some people have different ideas, just as they do about practically everything to do with Shakespeare.)
By way of tribute, here’s a cut-up of Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) that I made at the V&A a couple of years ago, and my Quill Bill wallpaper.
The Liars’ League have put up a recording of my story, The Man With The Musical Penis, as read by the redoubtable Martin Lamb earlier this month. Ideal listening for the office; you can get it here.
One of my more notorious stories, The Man With The Musical Penis, is going to be read by a Real Live Actor at the next meeting of the Liars’ League. (How can you resist a title like that? And yes, it does what it says on the tin.) It’s at 7pm on Tuesday 10 February at the Wheatsheaf pub near Goodge Street tube station in London. Do come along if you can!
