I may have got the punctuation and the emphasis wrong there. What’s my job again? I’d like to borrow you for a moment here to talk about two things, the first of which being that clearly writers should never retreat. Clearly. Not without a very good excuse and a chocolate biscuit.

But the second thing is that there is a writers’ retreat this weekend and you can make it. It’s an online retreat called Inkspill – I keep saying this to people, but I love that name – and it’s also free. I’d be mentioning this to you by way of being a service and for once telling you something useful instead of just my usual self-aggrandising ego-laden pondering, except that I’m a contributor to the Inkspill retrate. So this is still an S-AELP. I came so close.

Inkspill is here on A Writers’ Fountain, the blog of poet Nina Lewis. She’s organising the weekend and it’s a series of blogs and videos to do with writing and a bit to do with writers. Chiefly writing. You’ll be writing during this, so you will.

I am one of the writers but you’ve also got Charlie Jordan and Heather Wastie, both of whom I’m looking forward to stealing from – I mean, learning about.

My section has an intro video which makes little sense unless you’re on the Inkspill retreat and unless you know what my section of the programme is. Without that knowledge, which I seem to be keeping from you, the intro video just looks strange. I’m okay with looking strange. Do pop off to Inkspill to find out what’s going on and when. But for now, let’s look at me being strange.

I’m overselling the strange. And I am conscious that I sound like one of those people reality TV crews get bouncing up to the camera and saying “you should film me, I’m kraaazy” and they’re not. Don’t expect me to be very strange in this video, it’s not like I wear a hat, but as well as the mystery of what in the hell I am talking about, I do give you a writing exercise. It’s one of my favourites, too.