hiya

Oops

Last newsletter I talked the big talk about how I'd moved over to buttondown only for my first newsletter to come out absolutely wrecked: the links went nowhere, replies went nowhere, the subscriber page was written in grey text on an almost identically grey background. It was a disaster. I wish I could blame anything but my soft skull and pockmarked brain.

Nevertheless it's fixed now. In penance for the broken links from the last newsletter, here they all are now but functional.

Holes

American tiktoker who tunnelled underneath her house

a weekend of work in progress comedy at Stanley Arts

Tickets available here!

These links can be read in context in the archived post here: Big Hole

Do You Reckon Margaret Thatcher knew about Global Warming?

It's been hot huh. My back became moist and grasping like an octopus' sucker, gluing me to any fabric or surface it touched. I've spent the week misting my face at 10 minute intervals with room temperature vapour. Watching Dune 2 with my feet in a washing up basin brimming with cold tap premium slosh. I got a big bottle of SPF50 kid-friendly sun tan lotion and started referring to it as "The Slime".

Do you reckon Margaret Thatcher knew about climate change? I was stuck¹ on an EMR train between Sheffield and Liverpool and the air-con was blasting, but the wrong air-con, the wrong blasting, the hot air-con, the hot blasting. I was wondering how long we've had to prepare for all of this. Feels like we're caught with our trousers down when this now-annual phenomenon rears its head again. Imagine receiving an email that there's a steamroller in John o' Groats piloted by your worst enemy and if you don't move for 40 years it'll kill you. In Sheffield all the trams had to stop because all the tracks melted and seeped into the ground.

I had always assumed that the story of uk political climate inaction would start with Thatcher. A problem like climate change requires governments to govern, it's a silver bullet through the heart of free-market fundamentalism. A dagger through the heart of the beast. But like with any idle query about political history, the picture is kinda gloopy.

In her final two years in office she got pretty stuck in to green issues - she even spoke at the UN about the threat of climate change². But by then she'd become too unpopular and got ousted and it was all kind of retconned - like maybe she was doing it to build consensus for nuclear energy or north sea gas or as some free market experiment³. All of which could be true really. Can't really trust these people. I've always been sceptical of her sleeping 4 hours a night. I think she just did when other people were watching to maintain the myth. But you've got lots of credulous articles suggesting she was some kind of mutant, the Michael Phelps of power naps. ok but what if she was just lying???

Normal Game #2 - Congratulations Alun

The second Normal Game work-in-progress show was a huge success. Not least because it culminated in an actual human man competing against an actual dog whippet in a footrace for the final round. Unfortunately there wasn't much in it and the 12 cameras poised for the photo-finish actually weren't really necessary. Congratulations Alun, I hope you are the first of many non-human champions.

Recommendations: Jerry's Map

I massively enjoyed this video from People Make Games about Jerry Gretzinger, an 84 year old man who's been expanding, layering and destroying a single fictional map for decades. It's a wonderful art project, the map becomes more abstract and un-map-like as new additions are either added or layered directly over previous panels.

Recently he's pursuing The Void, white masses that's been eating away at large swathes of the map, only then to be layered with personal paraphernalia - receipts, diary pages, personal correspondence. As someone who's watched their extremely talented friends and peers destroy their art - it's both challenging and curious to see that destructive urge rolled into the artefact itself.

But there's a short interview in the middle of the video where he suggests he regrets it and he's sad at how much The Void has eaten away at decades of work. Heartbreaking! Incredible! What a blunder! What a fool!! I love him.

When Jerry works on the map he uses a deck of cards to figure out what he's doing in that session. This settles it for me, cards are just better than dice. I'm never going to roll another dice again if I can help it. The problem with a dice is that they're too honest; you can't slip a little secret into the deck. You can't stare in astonishment at something you don't even recognise. I've tried to use cards before, like Oblique Strategies, when trying to work through a creative block. Problem is: they're too oblique! Jerry's cards are often very concrete. Maybe this is the way. I'm going to make some cards. I'll let you know how it goes.

Bulletin Board: Tea (Cont)

Recently I've been experimenting to see how well a newsletter works as an extremely slow form of social media. The most recent prompt is: "what did you have for your tea?" requested by Kit and Rote. If you sent anything last week, it, uh, possibly went nowhere. So please send whatever it was again.

Replies should work now, so you ought to be able to reply to this email. And if I don't appear to acknowledge your email please contact me via some other route and let me know replies are still broken.

Upcoming Shows

OK, it's time. The covert real reason for the newsletter.

I've got two Edinburgh Previews coming up.

Sheffield - Saturday 18th July - Sean Morley and Eric Rushton Edinburgh Fringe Previews

Sheffield - Thursday 23rd July - Plughole New Material Night

London - Saturday 25th July - Backchannel at Stanley Arts Comedy Weekend

And then I'll be at The Fringe for the whole month.

Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Normal Game date.