Preparations

Enjoyed having a day off for the National Day holiday, but with a very full few weeks ahead of me on the work front spent a fair amount of time on work-related matters. Fortunately these were, on the whole, of a creative bent so not too painful.

Got most of a talk-cum-workshop I'll be conducting at this year's Literature Seminar for the Gifted Programme sorted out. I've decided to go for something fresh this time round and am looking at various song lyrics, supposedly to ascertain if they qualify as Lit, but in reality just to enjoy listening to the songs. The following song-writing luminaries made the cut: Will Shakespeare, Will Blake, Noel Coward, Stephen Sondheim, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Keith Reid, Adrian Belew, Sufjan Stevens and Alex Turner, a list so eclectically silly as to make me want to attend my own lecture.

I also did a fair amount of preparation for a production of The Fantasticks, an American musical from the early sixties that we are putting on in early November as a fund-raising exercise. Enjoyed running the music through my mind. It's strange how when you get really close to a show the songs can come to almost possess you. I'm at the stage when that's starting to happen to me, and a jolly nice way of being possessed it is.