Hellfire, hostel, Homage to Catalonia. Lampoonery, Lemmy and The Library.

Not usually a busy month for live poeming, but plenty of diverse stuff this month, quite apart from the Paisley 2021 result night, and a conference in That Embra, on other pages. The Glasgow Poetry Mafia held a wee Xmas get together on 29th. They called this the Yuletide Bloodbath. What else would you call it? They held this at The New Hellfire Club, a cracking record shop (2nd hand Rock/Metal/Punk on all formats and new unsigned local bands and musos, Tshirts, memorabilia, dvds, books, etc) which regularly doubles as an intimate performance BYOB venue. In the Hidden Lane, Finnieston, Glasgow . . . go there! Said some stuff & saw some familiar faces again, so that was nice.

Couple of days before Christmas, did a wee turn in a hostel for homeless people, where the very giving guy that is Chris McCarry, was sorting some entertainment for the men & women who were in out the cold for a while. Saturday 16th was protest poeming at a rally in Glasgow's Royal Exchange Square, not dogmatic political stuff, just asking for people not to be beaten or jailed for trying to vote, if that's alright, thanks. My Homage To Catalonia.

The reason there's usually less poeming gigs in December is, I think that venues are all busy with works' nights out and team dinners. This may or may not have been the reason that two of the city's most prolific Spoken Word organisers, opted to pounce on one of the rare available nights, and have a joint event, on 19th December. Johnny Cypher's Extra Second event fused with Mark McGhee's Bards In Their Eyes, seamlessly. Benevolent lampoonery ensued. The Bards In Their Eyes premis was obvious, but rather than just rhyme off one of my favourite poets', I decided to write one in the style of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit. Bonus act that night was a stripped down set by most of the Girobabies, warming up for their first full gig in a year, a week later. It was kind of the Glasgow Poets work's Christmas night out.

Talking of favourite poets (See how I did that? I should be a continuity writer. Does it pay better than poetry?) the 28th was the 2nd anniversary of Ian Lemmy Kilmister's death. I was honoured and excited to perform my No Remorse No Reprise piece about that particular poet, in between bands at Glasgow's dedicated Rock venue, Ivory Black's, to the assembled metalheads. Lastly in my alliterative list for December, was The Library. What's newsworthy about a poet being in a library, it's their natural environ? But this wasn't a library, it was The Library. Daft name for a pub, but hey, we like quirky. On the 7th they were hosting a showcase of some of the musos who's contributed to the Paisley 2021 album, win or lose. Turned out it was "lose", but turned out a good night, nobody can stay sad when Johnny Barr's hosting the shindig. Johnny decided the night could be augmented by me doing a couple of Paisley pieces, which went down well among the quite emotional, quite merry, but very proud, townspeople.