[steve pottinger]

resolutions

I’ve started 2014 with a few New Year resolutions. In no particular order, they are:

1. cut down on alcohol
2. shift a few pounds
3. get fit
4. seize the day
5. find adventures
6. abolition of a system which puts money before people, blames the poor for everything, has its head in the sand about climate change, and generally treats the planet as just another item on a profit-and-loss spreadsheet.

I’m doing OK on the first few. I’m sticking to dry January amongst all the floods, and getting out on the mountain bike and up some hills as much as I can. But that last item? Well, it could prove tricky. Every now and then the UK lurches to the right, and politicians start mouthing inanities like No such thing as society and worshipping more fervently than ever before at the bloodied altar of monetarism. It’s happening now. Much of what’s going on feels like the worst of the 80s, revisited, and we all know how glad we were to see the back of them. So I don’t expect that particular resolution to get anywhere before Easter weekend, earliest.

Still worth aiming for, though.

In the meantime, I’m hunting for gigs. If you run a poetry night, get in touch. If you know the person who runs a poetry night, get them to get in touch. And if there’s nothing like that where you live, but you’d like me to come and gig there and you can get a dozen or so mates together, drop me a line. We’ll organise something in the back room of a pub, or someone’s front room, or something. There are too many people for whom the idea of listening to poetry is slightly less enticing than pulling out their own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers, and this year I’d like to change that, one audience at a time.

More of the good stuff. Less of the bad. Life’s too short and too precious for anything else.

May 2014 be good to you and those you love. Now, where’s that mountain bike?