Milling Around

On Monday of this week we went up to Matlock to be shown how to Advise young people doing their Arts Award. Arts Awards weren't around when I was a young person. A Silver Arts Award is worth a high-grade pass at GCSE level, and a Gold one is the same as an A-Level! Just think, I could have got an A-level in doing cool stuff instead of spending all my spare time learning to do stuff by trial and error and neglecting my A-levels...

Ho-hum. It was a nice day and, like most things we do, felt like we'd travelled in time. We were in a conference room in Masson Mill at Matlock Bath. This was in the car-park:


We went up there with Michael Frearson, who we're doing some activities with at a summer school in August. We're indulging young people's imaginations in Time Travel and Super-Hero stories, poems, and songs, and we might even get them to publish a book/cd by the end of the fortnight. Simon Jones (Jonezy/Equalibri) was there, as he's doing some things along the same lines soon. We may or may not be a part of that, depending on time and work, but I sincerely hope that we do.

We're hoping to do more of this kind of stuff as time goes on, and getting the Arts Award Advisor certificates is the first step. If you're under 25 or if you're the parent/guardian of someone who is, keep your eyes and ears peeled for news of practitioners in your area, or go to the website.

That is all.

TTO x

TTO Bookshop

COFFEE
5 short stories and 1 song
First edition of 100 published April 2008. 28-pages, hand-bound on recycled paper housed in brown card with hand-stamped flower paper. CD housed in coffee filter inside. Numbered back cover. Comes with free chocolate covered coffee bean and 1" pin badge of the espresso maker.

Catalogue number: TTO*3
Price: £4 Postage paid (worldwide)

TIME
7 short stories
First edition of 200 published June 2008. 32 pages, hand-bound on recycled paper housed in blue card with hand-stamped flower paper. Numbered back cover.
Comes with free minute and 1" pin badge of the clock.

Catalogue number: TTO*4
Price: £4 Postage paid (worldwide)

If you have any queries please e-mail us at books@timetravelopps.co.uk

A Collection Of Stories About TIME

Here it is. Our second book. We hope you like it.

It's called 'TIME' and that's the theme. There are seven short stories over 32 pages.
There are also three letters written by the three of us in the moment before the clocks went forward an hour in March 2008.

It's printed on recycled paper and there are 200 copies. Each one is hand-bound, hand-stamped, and comes with an envelope containing a badge and a free minute. You can see all this in the picture. We should point out that the Westminster Movement is not included...

It costs three pounds from us in person, or four pounds in the post. You can get one by contacting us at books@timetravelopps.co.uk

Ta
TTO x

P.S. This is what it looks like in colour:

TIME Book Launch (Update)

It's Wednesday today. That's good because it's nearly Saturday. We're really looking forward to Saturday. It's also bad. It's bad because it's nearly Saturday. We're really looking forward to Saturday but there's SO MUCH TO DO.

Here are a list of reasons why we're looking forward to Saturday:

THE MONTH OF JANUARY (a whole month in one night? Only a man acquainted with Doktor Coke & Ray:ManOfWords could pull it off)

PAUL HAMMOND (The only all-star quarterback from the East Midlands. Polymath, entrepreneur, legendary lover, all before the age of twenty-five. Is he going to give us Stephen Hawking's real deal?)

JENN ASHWORTH (our first not-from-round-ere guest. A prolific liar and extremely talented writer from Manchester, Jenn also writes the interactive library novel 'SH' with Emma TTO.)

STEPHEN M. ROE (Down from Leeds, Steve once haunted the streets of Derby before going up there to become part of Hooray! Say The Roses and now Held By Hands. He'll be sitting in front of a mic and behind a guitar, perhaps even with Harry on violin)

KEVIN WALLACE & JO BELL (They've only gone and written a special duet about TIME haven't they! I can't wait for this one. Although I think it might be filthy. Warn your mum!)

MICHAEL FREARSON (Awesome, passionate, sentimental wittard and poet. If you don't know Frearson already you flipping well should. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll probably get a Party Ring thrown your way.)

TIME TRAVEL OPPORTUNISTS (that's right, it's us again. We'll be reading from our new book, and waxing lyrical about our main collective obsession - TIME.)

It's at Big Blue on Sadlergate in Derby. It's free. There'll be something free from us when you walk through the door (probably). We will try to make the evening very 'special'.

New poster (only slightly different from original):

Small Publishing Archive, and The Place Where Time Stood Still

Cromford is where time has almost stood still. It's also where you'll find RGAP (Research Group for Artists Publications), behind a car repair garage, in an old mill that doesn't work anymore.


I went up there to have a chat with Martin Rogers about the way we publish our books, and if we could use their space or equipment. It turns out they're so utterly full of books that there's less space there than in our house at the moment. Martin have us some great advice on how to speed up the process of making our books this time around, and lent us a couple of bone folders. What a Lord!





These are ADANA presses. I love them. I want to use them As Soon As Possible. We might make something up just as an excuse to use these babies.







This is on the side of the building. It's where all that machinery from the picture at the top is supposed to go. At the moment it looks like someone is flushing a toilet all the time. A really really big one.




It's amazingly beautiful up there. Unfortunately, the place isn't open all the time. You have to get in touch. But we urge you to, because Martin is lovely and a great help to anyone with a passion for publishing. He also runs the Small Publishers Fair in London in October. I think we might be going to perform and flog our wares.

Live Last Night, Sold Out

Flipping heck last night was brilliant. We performed at The Brunswick in Derby (Derby's oldest brewery) with John Hegley, Mark Gwynne Jones, Brookside Jazz, Michael Frearson, Kevin Wallace, Jo Bell, and more.

Billed as 'poets' not 'storytellers' we stuck out like a sore thumb. But a sore thumb that is welcomed and applauded. So not really a sore thumb. Perhaps a weird uncle with nice presents at Christmas. Whatever, we had a flipping awesome evening, and the place was rammed.


In a previous post I wrote that in The Brunswick " if you squint it feels like you're in 1913." That is true, and even more so when you've got some proper old school jazz played by proper old school jazz gents Brookside Jazz. Very classy.

Nathan and Emma both performed brand-new pieces, and I dug out an old one. It was an honour to have Hegley on in between each of us, performing something that our stories had reminded him of.

Mark Gwynne Jones, the crazy looking guy in the photo above, was incredible. He's from Matlock Bath, and he's very very funny. We're going to try and make friends with him and get him down to the launch of HOME in August.

The highlight of the night, in my opinion, was the sing-a-long-with-John-Hegley bit at the end. Anyone who can get one side of the room to sing "The Legionaries far flung life is hard" and get the other side of the room to harmonise that with "I don't know why my French father went and joined the American National Guard" is a lord in my book.

So yes. A wonderful evening. Splendid. Super. Now to bind books and memorise stories ready for NEXT WEEK!

Reviews Of Our First Book, The One About Coffee

As you can see from the previous post, we're doing a performance to launch our second book - TIME. We are giddy to announce that we will be joined by Jenn Ashworth, who is right now celebrating her new book deal, will be our first non-Derby-based guest, and who will be performing a special piece about TIME!

A couple of months ago we launched our first book. It was called COFFEE. We sent Jenn a copy. Jenn wrote a review of it which pleased us a lot.

Chris Killen also wrote a review in a post about a few other books like ours.

Here are my favourite quotes from the reviews, the ones I'd like to see on a sticker on the front if we ever happen to put a sticker on the front (with quotes on):

"Top Banana! " - Jenn Ashworth

"It feels like you are going round to a house" - Chris Killen