My first public appearance is coming up (well, the first one since I sang “Light my FIre” in High School; how Immanuel persuaded me to do that I’ll never know. His claim was that I was the only one who knew the lyrics, but on retrospect it looks like a highly suspect claim. My score was zero rotten tomatos flung to zero cigar-touting music producers waiting with a contract backstage.)

Anyway, as I was saying, first appearance coming up, appropriately a modest one: I saw something called the Banyule Writers’ group and thought, well, I’m a writer, I live in the area, I’ll see what happens. It turns out I’ll be the only science writer there  – a large poetic contingent is expected, I gather – and I have two-to-three minutes to read something out. I toyed with the idea of a viral Haiku

(“winter,

a virus infects

the sound of sneezing”)

but decided to stick to the original form of my texts and do “A Sip of Life” – a bit about desert bugs in Chile. At least it’s exotic and – more to the point – short.

apart from the event itself, which looks rather nice and friendly, that’ll be a good exercise for me since I appear to have a radio appearance or two in my none-too-distant future – details of these will be posted here mere seconds after I get them.

Okay, time to practise my diction.