White rabbits, can it really be June already? It will soon be Christmas eh? Eh? We are now halfway through the year and I really must get the hell on with it and bash the shit out of my to-do list. I know I talk a lot about tidying my office, but yesterday evening I had a proper go at it and made some good progress, so much so that I nearly went mad and ran the vacuum cleaner round too, if I'd have got really giddy I would have plugged it in. Funnily enough, thanks to the latest Facebook fad in which you are alerted to things you posted on the same day in years past I realised that yesterday marked two years since one of Prefontaine's best gigs. It was at Jongleurs and had Matt Humphries, Josh Kemp and The Fade on the bill with me as compere. What makes this weird is that as I was sifting through a box labelled 'gig/event stuff' (a collection of setlists, wristbands, flyers, and assorted gig souvenirs) I found Prefontaine's setlist for that gig. This is a good omen as Prefontaine are on their way back onto the live circuit at long last and should hopefully be gigging by the end of the year. I realised that this means that they have been inactive since 2013, the Rosie May gig being their last performance before they broke up. 

I managed to organise all of the loose shit that needed filing away into different boxes at long last and now have a stack of boxes labelled with their contents that will after my death either be donated to a library or similar archive or slung on a skip, hopefully the first option. My box of abandoned ideas is the most interesting to me as I still harbour a desire to eventually have the luxury of time and budget to enable me to pick one project out at a time to finish. Some are more outlandish than others but it would be fun to see it through, or when someone reads the bits of paper in years to come they might wonder what drugs I was taking. 

Although I haven't made a huge impact on the world it would be nice if my archive is of interest to somebody in years to come when I am long dead and forgotten about. I have a huge collection of music by Nottingham artists (although a large amount of it is on USB sticks) and combined with the odds and sods in the gig stuff box it might be useful to someone writing about the history of Nottingham music at some point, especially as my audio collection contains all of the musicians who played live on my radio shows with group photographs too. There are some videos too, and typed and handwritten paper copies of the reviews I have written for the Nottingham Post and NottinghamLIVE. Combined with diaries, letters, personal photographs, my radio shows and podcasts on CD, along with my collections of books, records (plus CDs and tapes), clowns, and Christmas editions of Radio Times, some poor work experience kid who hasn't been born yet has a hell of a task ahead of them. On the floor of my office is the collection of crisp packets that have been featured as my Twitter crisp reports, maybe I'll add them in too. Maybe I am wasting my time with music and comedy and my big break is round the corner as a crisp critic and I'll become known all around the world where I will fly around endorsing crisps and snacks and host television shows called Steve on Crisps with lucrative spin-off books. At Christmas I'll be asked to be one of the voices on the WH Smith adverts where people flogging books get a chance to talk about several fellow authors and end with "and my book too" and my face will be on crisp packets (not Walkers though, colour code ignoring bastards). 

Also in my files is a probably unnecessary collection of financial paperwork, which will baffle the work experience kid even more when they add all the elements together and realise that I didn't become a millionaire.  

While writing this blog I have genuinely reached for a scrap of paper and written the words YouTube series - crisp report - consumer show. Don't worry, it's gone straight in the box and we will never mention it again. 

The Sunday Alternative will return soon.

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June Housekeeping

The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime, the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.

All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free. 

The Sunday Alternative bag and t-shirt and other products can be purchased from my shop page. All money raised will go in the fund to create free entertainment.

steveEoliver@gmail.com
@SteveOliver76