Ashley Manning

It’s been quite a while since my last post. I’ve been feeling ill, and uni work got in the way. I’ve had two mini-presentations to do. They’re not really presentations just introducing a poem and talking about the poet and main features of the poem. I think of them and prepare for them as presentations because I know the real ones are going to be here before I know it. One of the introductions was on Song (I’m going to New York) by Frank O’Hara and the other was To The Snipe by John Clare. I hadn’t heard of either of these poems before, but enjoyed both of them. Although I read a few other John Clare ones and preferred them, especially I Am.

I’ve also shown work at a workshop session that went reasonably well. The comments were not too positive, but I was expecting that to be honest. So far the two pieces I’ve written to uni have been too forced just to get them finished in time.

I also found out that I cannot write Fantasy for my dissertation which means the 4000 words I wrote over the summer and all the planning to go with it is now practically useless. I have a Dissertation meeting thingy tomorrow and hope that I will be told I can write fantasy, but somehow I doubt it.

I watched the first episode of Agents of SHIELD the other week and really enjoyed it. Still haven’t watched the second one though. I also need to watch the second episode of Atlantis. I enjoyed the first one of that as well.

I’ve been playing through the Metal Gear Solid series again at the moment. I haven’t played the original two games before, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed them. They’re dated but once I got into them I really liked them. I’m just over half way through MGS2 at the moment. 

I haven’t watched any films for quite a while. I just haven’t felt like sitting in one place for a long period of time and focus on something. I haven’t even been watching that much tv. I suppose it’s just readjusting to uni. 

The new Darren Shan book, Zom B Baby, came out last week. It took me the longest to read out of the whole series, but that was just because I was ill. It’s hard to say but i think it may be the best book in the series so far. The events towards the end were really shocking and yet again I can’t wait for the next one. I will post a proper review soon. At the moment I’m reading Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I’m not very far through it, but I will read more soon. After that I’m going to read Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman about the time travelling dinosaur Professor Steg. I also have to finish The Water Babies at some point. 

Writing has been slow recently. Hopefully all will be back to normal soon.