After all of the careful planning earlier this year to make 2018 the most productive year of my career, naturally last month - typically the first proper busy four weeks of the year - was a crazy, frantic mess. In a good way, but with so many projects, often in different parts of the country, any scheduled time-off went straight out of the window. April was a brilliant month, though.
Hastily following a shaky private preview around my mate Jo's house, I took my Short Plays for Marvellous show to the Swindon Fringe and had a brilliant time. The audience were onside throughout, the review was great and I won the award for "Best Comedy Performance" at the festival, which was nice.
A few days later I was back on tour with the band in support of our new single. With shows in Bath, Salisbury, Maidenhead, Isle of Wight, Bedford and Milton Keynes, it's been a good fun so far, with many more in the pipeline.
All of this alongside the continued drum lessons across Cambridgeshire; I'm getting a great deal out of these, I can feel that I'm becoming a better teacher with every session, whilst still making sure the emphasis is on fun and the students actually enjoying being drummers, often for the first time. My schedule is bursting with new pupils every week (across several colleges/schools and 20+ private students) but I can't help but take on more...
In the meantime, Edinburgh Fringe preperations for various shows are going well. Little Sparks, with a full cast, is turning into a beautiful thing and I've got five other productions heading up there this year, too. Okay, 'preperations going well' is probably a bit strong, but we'll be fine, yeah?