Have you been watching the commonwealth games?

Hi gang,

I have, just a bit this week because I'm off work. It's been top notch. Tonight being a case in point. Men's 800m was top drawer, 200m also really good.

I've also been to Chester today to see a mate and his wife. Always good, nice lunch, few ales, wander round, can't go wrong. Went to see the play in the park earlier in the week too. Hansel and Gretel. Very well staged, well lit, great sound etc. The actual material felt a bit light to me, lot of noise but not a lot of content, but a good spectacle none the less.

Just as an aside, I was reading a review of A Streetcar Named Desire which has just opened in London. Apparently Gillian Anderson gives a career defining performance. I was reading this at 3:30 this morning and I'd had a bit to drink, shocker! Anyway, I booked tickets to see it when they do the NT Live broadcast in September. It's only £13 a ticket and an ace way to see live theatre if you can't be arsed to take time off work to trek to London. I woke the wife up to tell her. She wasn't thrilled at the time.

Mind you, I wasn't delighted when she dragged me out of bed at half 9 this morning to go to Chester. I soon rallied once we'd stopped at the services for a brew and sausage bun. Once we walked to the lunch spot in Chester I was all set for a couple of ales.

Other news - I've been shortlisted for interview for the job I'm currently doing. I have mixed feelings about it which I won't bore you with here.

So, book news? Well, the new, shiny version of The 24 Hour Jazz Café was released yesterday. The Kindle version is available now, the paperback will be out any day - just depends how fast Amazon do their bit. What's new about it? Primarily I wanted to tweak the paperback. So the cover is now matt, the pages are now cream and it's totally reformatted so it's a hundred pages shorter. But as I was doing this I rewrote bits too. It's now about 2000 words longer, plenty of scenes have more detail and some plot points are tighter and better explained than before. As a result I decided to relaunch the kindle version too.

FEAR is progressing well, I'm not killing myself to get it done though. I'm submitting the first 3000 words of it to a competition in August, along with 3000 words of the new jazz café. Can't hurt. I've also sent an extract of the new jazz café to an agent, just for kicks. In the morning I will also be submitting the new jazz café to the Guardian book of the month competition. Again, no harm in trying.

So that's about it. Lot's going on as ever. Could live without the huge pay cut coming my way shortly but such is life. On the plus side we've just bought two more houses as part of our Buy To Let project which means we have three. Safe as houses.

Right, ale, Tele, early bed since I've only had 5 hours kip.