It was sweet, last night, to be at Nottingham Playhouse, to see a new play by James Graham. The playwright is from Mansfield and used to work on the door at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal but this was his first new play to be staged in the city where, as he told Geeta Pendse this week, he learned to love theatre. He’s closely connected with the Playhouse, however, having become an Associate Artist while I was on the board ( I served for seven years, finishing my term at the end of last year). If I remember correctly, he was keen to do a play with Artistic Director, Adam Penford, but was rammed with writing commitments for the next three years. Then the pandemic struck, theatres…

It’s great that both Cineworld and Broadway cinemas are back this month. I’ve already seen Tenet (disappointing) and Les Misérables (strong, salutary viewing) in socially distanced, near empty cinemas. But most of my viewing has been on a 40″ screen at home. We finished various TV series that have kept us going during lockdown (I’ve had to ration my viewing of Bojack Horseman, having done the first three series in six weeks). Therefore we’ve been watching more and more movies, new(ish) and old. That’s why, in addition to my regular ‘holiday’ reading blogs, I thought I’d write about the movies, good and bad, that we’ve watched. For eight years, I’ve kept a record of what I’ve seen and read, which is particularly useful when trying…

For me, as for many people, it’s been a summer of reading. I’ve not had the brain space or inclination for creative writing and preparations for next term’s online teaching have taken a toll. For the last eleven days, Sue and I were meant to be travelling around Norway by train. Instead, we’ve visited my dad in Colne, shortly before Pendle was locked down again and made a fleeting visit to Sue’s family in Stevenage. The only thing our holiday has had in common with the one we should have had is that a lot of reading has been done. Since my lockdown blog, I have finished Hilary Mantel’s Booker winning (spoiler alert) The Mirror and the Light, which is decidedly longer than its two…

For the last three days, I’ve immersed myself in Graeme Thomson’s excellent new biography Small Hours: the long night of John Martyn, and Martyn’s music, which I’ve been listening to for 46 years. If you don’t know John’s work (though why else would you reading this?) here’s a playlist I made shortly after he died, aged sixty, in 2009. I discovered John Martyn in the mid-70s, when I was sixteen, and met him when I was 18, at a benefit gig for Liquorice. Writing for this fanzine had led to my studying in Nottingham, where I was in my first term at uni. I was on general hosting and recording duties. Martyn sound checked with a solid electric guitar, which he’d never used on stage…

Normally at this time of year, I write about my holiday reading on my blog. This year, while I haven’t had a holiday, I’ve done loads of reading, if not in quite the same way. So here’s this Easter’s reading, which I’m also sharing on the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature website. Nearly everyone I know is having trouble concentrating for long periods. A case in point. I have a long standing reading rule which is: when I’m not enjoying a book after fifty pages, I give up on it, if I haven’t already, but if I get past the fiftieth page, I always finish it. The first week of lockdown, I broke this rule, pausing my reading of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the…