I’ve been throwing out #content in various directions lately, but have been neglecting my blog, so here I am writing a post to remind myself of all the stuff I’ve been doing and to try and push me to write something every day, no matter how dry and dreary. Which seems like a strange thing to be writing on a rainy morning.

First up: I finally started a newsletter. I ummed and ahhed and ummed some more about its theme, but finally settled upon “the city”. I call it Suburb on the Edge of Forever, and you can subscribe below if you would like. The latest post is about the demise of the Broadmarsh shopping centre in Nottingham, and how the council has a unique opportunity to redefine what town centres are for (and are hoping they don’t screw it up).

Next Level Sketch, the comedy night I produce, comes back on May 25th, at The Miller in London Bridge. An actual physical event! With jokes in it! Tickets are available here (7:30 show) and here (8:45 show): we’re doing our show twice in the same evening to small-ish capacities due to the Covid rules, but will hopefully be able to increase our audiences as the summer rolls on. We’ve got lots of exciting guest acts booked in, so I would be very grateful if people could go get their jabs and ensure that this is the kind of thing that can actually happen.

We’re also still doing podcast episodes – the latest one is below – but we’ll be releasing them less frequently now that we have a stage show to worry about too.

I am also starting a new stand-up night, also at The Miller, with my friend and fellow NLS human Maddi. After doing my stand-up course earlier in the year, I realised that the only way I would keep up my writing in this format is if I set up a date in the diary when I absolutely had to perform, so logically the only option was to set up a night. Not, you know, just booking an open mic, or performing on Zoom, or something. Oh no. That would have made far too much sense. No: an actual club night, with real comedians booked and me compering. It’s the only way. Sink or swim! Cake or death! And so on.

Our first night will be in June and there will be more details about this when we have figured out what they are.

Whew, what else. Well, in human journal / diary news, I have had my first anti-Covid jab, as Lambeth seem to be a bit ahead of the rest of the country in letting 40+ humans have the vaccine. I could make lots of jokes about how Bill Gates’ nanobots are running free through my veins and I now have lots of positive feelings about Microsoft, but this is too serious a topic for that.

I also had a haircut, so I no longer look quite so shaggy, and can reduce the overall percentage of time spent wearing hats.

It might sound weird, but psychologically I am feeling a little wary about the end of lockdown. There not being a future to speak of has had the effect of allowing me to focus on the present, and I have been unusually productive creativity wise (see above). Now that the future is available again, I suppose I have to carve out what that looks like. And that makes me nervous, because I don’t have a good track record in this area.