August

August for me is without doubt the best month of the year - as it is usually the one where I take the bulk of my holidays. This year was no different, though was very much a staycation, as I had a boiler and new sofa to purchase. The joys home ownership!

Another thing that was no different this year was the weather. For the five years I have been able to take August off, the weather has been dreadful. As I write this, the weather has taken a turn for the better…typical!

The weather has been good for writing, which I have been doing with regularity. The aim is to send more and more stuff out, instead of hording it in folders and on my computer. I have also been tinkering with a website, this will be a portfolio, which is something that I have been meaning to do for a while. That can be found here, I will eventually move this blog over there, all in good time.

I was also planning to set up another blog site but that idea (which I will keep on the backburner for now) was taken over by another idea I had for a football blog. I quite enjoy watching football and if I’m not at Everton then I like to find myself watching non-league football. This is known as Groundhopping, not something I have done that extensively but over the years I have visited a few weird and wonderful grounds.



Speaking of football, the new season is upon us and so far I have seen Everton twice, first for the unique friendly versus their Chilean namesakes, which was an interesting game and good to see Everton winning 2-0...well they could not lose. It was a significant game for me also had a first in nearly thirty years (gulp…thirty years) of going to the game that I had managed to catch one of the toffees thrown by the Toffee Lady. The second game was the first league clash against Wolves, which I haven’t put finger to keyboard to write about, given that it was typically a last-game-on-Match-of-the-Day-type-game. Roll on November, when Everton normally start getting their act together.



After months spent with my head in books researching for new modules and programmes that I will be involved in at work next term it is nice to spend my summer reading books that may not be work related. The range of books may not have been be too heavy or too frothy; I certainly did not envisage reading Joyce’s Ulysses this year, which I did not.

One omission from the reading list that I notice, is that I have not read much fiction of late, I’m not too sure why that is. I have read a few short collections of flash fiction, which I quite liked, one is produced by the University of Chester called Flash. I have bought subscribed to this for a while now and it gets better with each issue. The other publications I managed to check out were Square which I managed to get through a couple of back issues that I had been accumulating. Square is a Welsh based publication with a healthy Stone Roses obsession. As well as Square, I picked up another small-scale flash fiction publications Nutshell. I may not pick up some of these publications again, but its good to see different styles of writing are out there, without having to spend too much time reading them. What I like about Flash Fiction is the ability to dip in and out of publications.

The other books I read included Joe Moran’s On Roads, Luke Haines Bad Vibes and Louise Wener’s which I have blogged about elsewhere on this blog.

Music wise I went to see John Grant and my thoughts on that gig can be found here. Also I have listened to a few albums over the last few weeks, the pick of which is very much the John Grant album Queen of Denmark. My thoughts can be found on that and the others that I listened to can be found here.

In-between my car being on blocks (three trips to the garage of late) this summer has taught me that a new car is needed I tried to get away for a few trips Buxton and Morecombe were the height of my travels which is a might frustrating.



So its back to work and typically the next month will disappear in the blink of an eye…soon it will be a new term and then…I wont say it but you know what.