Fat Roland at Christmas

While Fat Roland washed his frocks by night, all pleated and rather brown, the angel of Blogger Dot Com came down, and this blog post was plopped down...

Really? Am I starting a blog post like that? Really?

I was going to carve out some kind of advent blog post series this year, something multimedia with new fangled audio and video. Y'know, something like Rudolph Died but all 3D like Michael Bay or something.

But there's something really valuable in being quiet. For the past couple of years, I've coped with the pressure of Christmas with a strict corset of writing deadlines, but this year I'm going to let it hang all loose and floppy.

This year has all been about pressure. Not just the Edinburgh Fringe, but writing group deadlines, submissions to a short story course and all the planning that comes with Bad Language. All of this is pleasurable, of course, and I've had the most amazing year. Life feels like one big playground. But I need a little space.

And so I may not turn up to your Christmas drinks. I may not appear at that many spoken word events this month. And if Santa wants to hitch a lift again this year, he can flip well get a megabus.

Having said that. Quiet Fat Roland still means a lot of activity. I'll be reading on the subject of togetherness and separation for Nous magazine next week, I have a huge gig at the Contact Theatre and it's not long until I take on the spirit of a diseased bauble at the Bad Language Christmas Party (image pictured).

And I have my end-of-year blog list to do. But that's not that busy, right? Loose and floppy. Let's keep this season loose and floppy. Am I really ending this blog post on that image? Flip yes.