Marie Marshall

When they speak of ‘Mardi Gras’ in New Orleans they don’t just mean Shrove Tuesday, they mean a whole season when parades and all kinds of other high jinks can take place. It may surprise you to know that the parade season has already started there. Part and parcel of the parade procedure is the ‘throw’. Throws are gew-gaws and souvenirs that the marchers give away – literally throw into the crowd. This means that on Saturday all the throws containing my quick-fire poems about Doctor Who landing the TARDIS in New Orleans have… gone! Not one remains! Well, what does remain is the blog record of the assembly line – check it out here!

Ben Crystal

In other news, renowned Shakespearean actor Ben Crystal, who is the son of linguist David Crystal and the brains behind the project to present Wm Shakespeare’s plays in their original pronunciation, declared my ‘A sonnet to explain why Veronica Franco misses the first hint of spring‘ to be “Lovely stuff!” Let me explain something: Ben really understands iambic pentameter, and I’m honoured that he should have even read my little piece of not-so-serious sonnetry.

Anything else been happening this weekend? Well, I have been working on some extra material for the possible TV adaptation of ‘Axe’, and have picked up one of my shelved novel projects, The Deptford Bear, to see if I can get it moving again. So far it stands at a little over 11,000 words and I think it can work.