An Arundel reading

Up and doing last bits on Gordon Road this morning, I want to make it good, but I don't want to tweak it to death. Then I took myself off just after noon to the gym, and did a fairly decent workout there.

Lorraine brought Pat and Maureen back to sit in the back garden, and Beth came too. Today was her due date but she's relaxed about it, and doesn't want to get into the mindset that the baby is somehow late. 

I prepped a little bit for the reading, had a catnap and a shower. Robin came to collect me, but only after Maureen had told me off for having dirty glasses, and cleaned them for me. Took some tupperware with food in it, and Robin parked on the little bridge in the middle of Arundel, and we had a sort of picnic on a little green by the river looking at black headed gulls, and a man with a very old dog. I had forgot to pack a fork, but felt a wave of love for Lorraine as I opened it up to find she'd packed one. Robin and I walked through the streets of Arundel, which at about six thirty on a Monday were empty.  Being early we popped into a hotel bar, for a half and a coke. 

The Victoria Institute where we were reading a bit labyrinthine inside. We found the venue upstairs, with a bit of a stage. We had arrived very early. The evening very varied, Robin and I doing poems, music from a pianist and saxophonist, a man, not a sufferer from self doubt, talking over his examples of his cloud photography projected on a screen, then there was some video of a monologue from a play about to be staged locally.  It kicked off with a four person improvisational comedy troupe. A nice venue. A small but attentive audience. In the interval, (I'd read in the first half) a woman came up to me and said my poetry was unusual. She was, however, a fan of Robin's work.  

We made off fairly quickly, and popped into a pub called The Red Lion for a quick drink, before Robin drove me back, much faster on the way back. Home and Lorraine had stayed up. She had slightly sedated Brian so we could cut his nails. Then to bed.