TEACHING

Since I've been working from home for a long time rather than in places where you must arrive at an early hour after a long journey by sardine-packed train or traffic-jammed bus, and since the dawn is usually the time I go to bed rather than when I wake up, early morning work experience is something I've nearly forgotten about.

To read the rest follow the link to my main blog.

FIRST TIME EFFECT

This month's theme in the excellent online literary magazine qarrtsiluni is: The First Time , which spurred me to dig further back into my memory. I came up with "The Effect" - another chapter for the autobiography, I suppose, but one I hadn't thought of writing down before. Knowing that your stuff will be read by someone somewhere certainly acts as a stimulus - why not send them your own experience of a first anything in your life?

HOT NEWS*** AUGUSTINE ON THE BBC*** ADVANCE NOTICE***

Anybody would think this was a world-shaking event, the way I go on about it but anyway, just in case you want to put this in your diary, like, today:

Tuesday, December 5, 2006: BBC 1, 10:35 pm, "IMAGINE" (featuring approx. two and half minutes of me and Augustine somewhere within the 50 minutes of the whole excellent programme. So don't go to the bathroom or make a cup of tea because you will miss my bit).

For those sadly unable to access the wonderful BBC, fear not. They will give me a DVD of the programme and techno types will tell me how to get it up on a computer screen so that it will be viewable anywhere in the known virtual universe. I may be sorry for making such a big deal out of this after I've seen myself onscreen but, like I always say, better be sorry than safe.

(to read the rest follow the link to Blaugustine's main blog)

THE AUTOBIO STARTS UP AGAIN

Starting and stopping is something I do a lot. I could make a list, will make a list, of all the things I have started and stopped in my life. But not now. Now I want to take up where I left off when I stopped writing the Burial of Mickey Mouse some time back in....never mind. Saying when I stopped would only add to my already overstuffed basement of guilt. Promoters of the love-yourself lifestyle insist that guilt is really really bad and that you must forgive yourself for all the bad you did and the good you didn't do. Well, you know what? I love myself devotedly, faithfully, but I also hang on to my guilts because they are very useful. If you're too comfortable you never get out of bed in the morning. Guilts are uncomfortable, they force you to ask questions about how you act, which may be completely contrary to who you think you are. You see yourself in your mind, others see you in your actions. Guilt comes along when you notice the discrepancy between what you think and what you do, or don't do, and noticing is what matters because if you don't notice you never change.

(to read the rest of this post follow the link to Blaugustine)

THERE'LL BE CHAMPAGNE CLINKING IN AMERICA TONIGHT

NOT THE SOUND OF MUSIC

If you've missed me, and I hope so, you can actually hear me, being interviewed over transatlantic phone tonight by Chris Rittke of 49sparks.

I didn't realise that I say "you know" quite so often or that I've got a frog up my nose and sound like an especially irksome adolescent but I was aware of my habit of butting in before the person I'm talking with has finished their sentence. Ay ay ay! Sorry, Chris, and thanks for being polite and not telling me off. My excuse is that in my family everybody talked all at once and everyone had strong views and you didn't stand a chance of being heard unless you interrupted.

This interview came about because the talented Lucy Pepper (formerly known as Vitriolica, currently wowing audiences at Blogzira ) was recently interviewed at 49sparks (listen to her lilting English voice there). She it was who told Chris how wondrous Augustine and I are and so it came to pass.

Now you have been warned, go and listen but don't hold it against me. When that BBC programme comes out (due on November 28 but they'll let me know ahead of time and you can bet I'm not going to let anyone forget it) I hope I'm not going to come across as so ...er... bolshy. I don't know if that's the right term. Ay ay ay.

This week - yes this week - I'm going to post another episode of the autobiography. Stick around.