Well, that was a lot of fun. Last night, I went to my first-ever open mic evening at Leighton Buzzard Writers. The house was packed, and a great time was had by all. We were limited to three-minute slots, so I went for “Canine Mathematics”, which is probably the nearest thing I have to a crowd-pleaser. Anyway, it seemed to go down reasonably well, in that everyone seemed to laugh in most of the right places. In fact, I have to say that there wasn’t a single duff reading all night – everyone rose to the occasion, with an extraordinary variety of work displayed, both fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, and humorous, serious and occasionally downright angry. In the intervals, I met John Hockey of LB Writers and Martin Brocklebank of Milton Keynes Speakeasy and we chatted about how to free the power of the right brain. There’s a science to all this, y’know.
Anyway, well done to Kate Allen for organising it and for inviting us outsiders along. I believe that we in the VWC are doing something similar in the summer, and I for one can’t wait.