It’s been a long time. I know, Blaggettes, that you may have turned your back on me. And rightly so. I know also that I will have to work hard to weasel my way back in to your RSS feed. Yes, LaBlag has downshifted from weekly, monthly to quarterly, to oh-for-God’s sake call yourself a blogger? updates. One of the reason for this extended sabbatical is a multi-syllable word beginning with T. Not TECHNOLOGY. Now wouldn’t it be boring to update you on technical matters if that had been the subject of my last, distant post? Although there is a certain charm to the idea of having a blog where the sole subject of which is technical glitches involved in posting that have delayed the posting, a mind-numbingly dull Groundhog Day type blog concept without Bill Murray or any possible opportunity of romance at any point in the future, ever. Then I could tell you that the TRANSITION to the Mac which was supposed to herald a new Halcyon era actually means I have to remember to collect a copy of Macs for Dummies from Zed Bed now that I have forsaken the in-house (PC-only) support in which I have luxuriated blithely for the past x years. TRUTH be told – although truth, fittingly, is not a multisyllable word – transition has been the name of the game this year and I’ve suddenly clocked that not only is it happening, it’s permanent. The battle against stasis is constant. Change. There you go. Another one syllable word. So much more direct, aren’t they?

You know one of the things I love and have missed about blogging is the freedom of narrative diversion. Staying on track is a discipline but it doesn’t always elicit the real story. Running off in the other direction however, hold on, I think I may be defeating my own argument if I don’t watch it. Shut up Brain B and get on with the update.

So what’s been happening? Since I’ve been gone friends have started blogs – notably author, mover, shaker, rather good picture taker Bernardine Evaristo; I’ve not stopped reading Antonia, who is one of the wittiest writers I know and, coincidentally, addresses some of the emotional issues around irregular posting I won’t go in to here, as does the utterly uber-talented poet and graphic illustrator Jay Bernard in her gorgeous cartoon reviews and blogs around process that are breaking new ground as we speak; I decided to do more about T-shirts with text on them; the cat has taken up with his fancy woman down the road and comes in smelling of cigarettes and cheap perfume; I have driven on a French motorway, and an English motorway, AND done overtaking, plus, while ‘parking’ (a manouevre I find implausibly difficult) I made a small, neat hole the size of an exhaust pipe in the back of a rather fancy Toyota Auris which the hire car company had upgraded me to as compensation for having erroneously charged me a YOUTH supplement – yes, under 24! – oh how I love you Monsieur Magoo in the Avignon branch of SIXT; I also ‘finished’ my poetry collection Incident 263, got it off my desk and on to someone else’s (an editor), deconstructed its themes and metanarratives so that I can now say it is a collection of poetic snapshots concerned, principally, with oppression and misdemeanour rather than mumble ‘um, I dunno, stuff’ when people ask me what it’s about; drunk turnip juice (think beetroot, chili, seawater and uh, seawater); promoted this very serious book on the financial crisis along with several other non-fiction titles which is a necessary and time consuming activity that involves me managing another career and small business along with my writing and its offshoots; taken this many nutritional supplements twice a day for a number of medical reasons; tried to be a cheapskate by getting my hair cut by a) Galya our cleaner, who used to work in a salon in the Ukraine – where they do NOT do hair like mine of a Tuesday morning, or a Wednesday either – in fact when G first came she asked if she could touch my hair, which is usually deeply irritating but was somehow not because she looked like someone who wants to cuddle an albino ferret that looks so cute but knows they can’t because it’s actually a vicious little critter so I let her and once she was in there, that was it, I’m in the kitchen with a towel round my shoulders…and b) by a woman called June on Brixton Hill whose husband was writing a book called Why Are We Afraid of the Spirits? about how/why we shouldn’t be afraid of all the spirits from the afterlife who surround us everywhere we go, before deciding that I’d just have to splash out and pay for a decent haircut with my real hairdresser Andre P (it was good to catch up, his forehead seemed suspiciously still and smooth, the salon was eerily quiet apart from a quick spat between a couple outside the window that ended with her shouting “I hope you DIE!” before she stropped off); Naomi Woddis used my story about selling my rare copy of X-Ray Spex’s classic album Germfree Adolescence in the Record and Tape Exchange on her brilliant idea and blog Poetry Mosaic; I met one of my most favourite new poets and first ever Belarusian Valzhyna Mort as introduced to me by my writing buddy Malika Booker – check us out here at the launch of her pamphlet Breadfruit in the Poetry Library; been commissioned for an EXCITING new online project called Open Notebooks by Spread the Word – where I will write poems online, explore the process, open my actual notebook and invite other writers to do the same and interview them about process and create a gorgeous online multi-dimensional scrapbook that will serve both as an archive and a living, breathing dialogue on the artistic endeavour; – more of that later; swum in warm, slightly choppy sea at Cassis; invoked a Buddhist chant as me, Ye Olde Soake (the Lady formerly known as Queen of Hearts) and Strumpet (aka La Bling) drove into Marseille on a terrifying Scalectrix of a motorway; stayed up late skyping with Malika Buddy while she was on a residency in Slovenia and drinking wine with Suzy next door while watching OBAMA WIN! – I confess I was a doubter, right to the end, I didn’t think America had it in her, so GLAD to be wrong – the next day was amazing, everyone had a spring in their step; waved goodbye to yet another Toshiba Portege, they are slim, sexy, expensive and crap, don’t ever buy one; harvested a couple of green beans from my neglected garden; bought a pair of only slightly knackered but oh so very very Manolos for TWO POUNDS – yes, La Blag she got tha’ mojo wor–king!; hung out with Poodle at the South Bank in the Members Bar where you can see more sky and the river than almost anywhere else in London (Penguin’s 10th floor function room is more spectacular if less accessible); did an interview for a podcast with my tech-geek-pal and creative Yemisi Blake who is constantly engaged in a zillion innovative projects one of which was setting up a multi-author blog for Poetry International, for which I was, briefly, a resident blogger (what joy! I LOVED being in an online gang) and thought right, that’s it, it’s blog now or forever hold your peace; oh and I became a Godmother to the diminutive and dinky Adele who will grow up and teach me to speak French.

What a long sentence! (That was a short one.)