October BLEH

I never can keep track of Octobers. They're like old socks, slipping down behind the dryer and refusing to match up properly.

I spent Friday and Saturday nights frantically taking notes and pretending to be an actual Londoner. My funding body and I went to see all seven performances of Show Time at Riverside Studios. All of the performances were interesting and enjoyable for one reason or another, but three jumped out at me as particularly useful for what I'm looking at.

One of those was practically a case study for my ideas about performing personal stories with digital media and how compelling the simplest presentation of an anecdote can be. And funny! Legs 11, a work in progress by Tom Marshman.

Now I think I should have studied humour, because I'd have more reason to dwell on the funny bits. Spoiling It For Everybody Else by Rachel Mars was engaging all around, but I laughed until tears poured down my face at the KPMG song.

Neither incisive nor comprehensive, my review stops there. Friday night we spent at a swanky hotel in Chiswick, and Saturday night we had the most painless journey home from London I think we've ever managed. Perhaps that's good karma for my introduction (the one to my thesis), the umpteenth full draft of which is currently thumbing its nose at me and daring me to string three sentences together in a way that makes any sense at all. That's where I'll be when I'm not teaching my brand spanky new Digital Storytelling for Research course, piloting this Tuesday.