Have finally got round to creating myself a website. This is, to an extent, a little bit of an experiment. With a number of projects and tasks on the go, I’m hoping that keeping this site and blog running should provide an incentive to keep them going and get things done. 

And then, of course, there’s the little thing about encouraging people to give me work. Work is always nice. 

On the basis that I’ve not done this before, if anyone happens to see anything on the site or blog and wishes to give me some friendly, free advice, be my guest…. conversely, anyone who wishes to provide me with unfriendly or downright threatening advice, please refrain. I’m actually quite nice. 

So…. I mentioned projects. 

Gawain d’Orkney
Far back in the ancient reaches of time, whilst studying literature at university, I got heavily into Arthurian literature. Starting with Malory, I began to absorb Lanyard, Chretien de Troyes, Geoffrey of Monmouth, including his ridiculous Vita Merlin. And then, because of the kind of course I was on, I threw myself into the modern versions: amongst others, The Mists of Avalon, T.H. White, Boorman’s Excalibur, Monty Python…. being the kind of pretentious student I was, I wrote my final essay arguing exactly why the later’s Holy Grail is the very best modern adaptation of the genre.

Long after I’d finished this part of my studies (which subsequently moved into the even more self-indulgent world of Existentialism and Shakespeare) I came back to my beloved Malory. You see, it’s not that these texts, and Malory especially, are exceptional literature. This was a sub-genre of literature, longer running and more convoluted than anything in modern literature. Malory came at the end of several hundred years of story telling in which the tales were continually being expanded upon, rewritten, heroes born and supplanted and, often, villainised by later writers. And Malory seemed to have set himself the task of explaining and canonising it all – think Steven Moffat setting himself the task of explaining every discontinuity and alternative plot line in all of Doctor Who across all its televised and non-televised appearances, and then extend it over a few centuries). And, in all this, I became particularly taken by the character of Gawain. Gawain d’Orkney, nephew to the king, golden boy of the early English stories, the most courteous of knights, reduced to a closed minded, ignorant buffoon in the later years. 

So, naturally, I wanted to write him a sit-com.

My Gawain project was originally intended as a radio sit com, but recently I’ve been adapting the original script to be a stage play. It’s full of frightfully silly jokes based upon early modern texts, modern television and with a few moments of my own inane sense of humour. After taking a brief break while life hit it the way, I’m back working on it and am currently working towards the climax of the first half. 

Watch this space.

Sketch Show
Years ago, a few of us ran a steampunk group called The Verdigris Collective. This was mainly a music, comedy and poetry with a vaguely steampunk theme, hosted alternately by Eoghan Lavery and myself. However, in that structure, we played around with a number of comedy sketches and scenarios (both performed and which never saw the light of day). My plan is to find some way of going back to them and adapting them for the internet. 

I think I’ve rambled on for long enough for the moment, so I’ll leave it there (and pray that no one was silly enough to consider reading my meaningless babble).