Categories: london-life, news-from-depressionland
Tags: depression, poetry, radio, Cornwall.
Date: 30 October 2010 16:27:02
Report on my brilliant media career: the brief interview I was expecting to give to Premier Radio, turned out to be a one hour phone in, which involved me in talking to various sad women who called in and wanted to tell me all about their mental health problems. I felt very inadequate in my answers, but mostly they seemed to just want to talk. One of them even wanted to read out her poem, which turned out to be not at all bad. And at least the presenter plugged my book about every five minutes, which is bound to boost sales a bit. I have also kept my list of the names of all those who phoned in, so I can pray for them, which will make me feel better about not solving their problems.
Then presenter and I rushed off in a cab to the poetry prizegiving. As the competition is in memory of Jack Clemo, who was Cornish and very much a poet of the Cornish landscape (in spite of being deaf and blind), we had the Lord Lieutenant of London, who has Cornish connections, giving a long and dull speech about some Cornish event. There was also a little man from the Cornish Society, who looked like a pixie.
The buffet lunch was surprisingly good, especially the desserts of which I sampled four (in very small portions). And I think the poems were ok, though I always find it hard to tell when they're read out, and I lent my little leaflet with the three winnning poems in it to someone else and didn't get it back. Still, it was fun and I met several people I hadn 't seen for years, which was very pleasant and put me in a better mood than I have been in for some weeks. What joy it is being a literary lounger.
And today I finally went swimming, then met a friend for lunch and listened for a considerable time to the story of her husband having a breakdown, leaving her, coming back and leaving again. Which was very sad, but I hope it did her some good to talk about it.
PS Son finally did finish his Film Studies essay, going from 'I think FS is not the right subject for me' to 'I think I'll specialize in one aspect of film', in less than half an hour.