Lonely as a crowd

Tom Jones is making a cameo appearence at Latitude festival this year. An octopus predicts the football scores with barely-compelling accuracy. Evidently, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Perhaps such strange but riveting happenings explain why 'A Pint For The Ghost' has been so eerily silent in recent months (so long, in fact, that I'm not sure the use of 'recent' is justified).

An alternative explanation for more rational followers: I've had a busy six months, having recently been appointed Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria and moved halfway across the country to take up this exciting new post. The hills of the Lake District are an inspiring setting for any writer, but I've been particularly intrigued to learn that Wordsworth's former house, Dove Cottage, was once a pub. In fact, ale houses figure prominently in local history - apparently Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son, Hartley (who lived just up the road from my current house) met his end in a ditch after a long night at The Nag's Head. Hartley, himself a fine poet, was frequently found sleeping by the roadside after one too many at his local. A ghost after my own heart, though I'm relieved to find the road back from nearby Tweedies bar is an easy one...

Since my last posts, 'A Pint For the Ghost' has been on the road, with performances including the sold out London Word Festival and a trip to Hull and back for the North Lincs Art Festival last week. Simon Perkins (pictured above) and I performed in the intriguing surroundings of Cleethorpes Light Railway, which boasts the smallest pub in the UK and, we're told, will soon also be the home of the smallest sweet shop.

We're taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe this year between 4th-17th August, where you can retreat from the clamour of the festival and hide away in the chilling Banshee Labrynth for ghost stories and poems from myself and Simon. Do pay us a visit if you're in town; the show will be free to watch.

More imminently, I'm off to Latitude festival this weekend to perform ghost poems and other material on the poetry stage and, of course, to hear the likes of Tom Jones and Sheffield's finest export, Richard Hawley.

Now that I'm installed in rainy Grasmere, expect some more frequent updates about poetic and ghostly goings on from The Lakes and beyond, including some new poems!