The Spoons That Are My Ears!

The creation of new tongue-twisters is very cheap entertainment. Lack of money is urging Adele and myself to take such desperate measures. We do other things as well, though. We camped on Oxwich again, wading out to sea to pass the headland that separates that beach from Three Cliffs Bay. Before choosing our site, we went into the nearby woods to search for firewood. By the time we emerged it was dusk and we found ourselves in a marsh in the company of spooky will-o'-the-wisps. I don't believe in supernatural beings; but they do exist. Adele is more sensitive to paranormal phenomena than I am. But the night passed without undue hassle from ghosts of any kind and we woke to a glorious sunrise and the gentle pounding of the surf.

The following week I fell ill, maybe as a result from swimming in the sea (no beach in the world is really clean anymore) and my fever and muscle aches lingered until this morning. But I can't complain. My book, The Postmodern Mariner, has just been published. Steve Upham gave me ten complimentary copies yesterday when I met him at the 'Space, Time, Machine, Monster' conference at the University of Glamorgan. In a previous post I gave the date of that conference as July 21. I was wrong by exactly one month: the real date was midsummer's day! I delivered a lecture on OuLiPo that was well received, although one person afterwards told me that my shirt was too 'distracting'. Courtesy of my publisher, the above photo shows me signing copies of my book in that particular shirt.