I’m on my couch. This year has involved very little time on couches for me, due to activities requiring a more upright posture than that which couches encourage. But the work year is over and the inevitable post-tour flu has arrived so the couch is suddenly ideal.
Sofa. The English call it a sofa. Sofa. So good.
I’d love to write a witty Christmas blog, but I think I’ve said all I could possibly hope to say already this year, in various forms, about various things, and I’m too snotty and shivery to think anyway. If you want to read the sort of thing I might write if I were feeling less knackered, here’s a column I wrote some years ago about Christmas.
But what I really want to do is acknowledge debt. I feel ridiculously grateful for the cool opportunities I’ve had this year and the support I’ve received in trying not to bugger them up. I have met and worked with dozens of people who have taught me so much and with whom I’ve had large measures of fun. It would be absurd to name everyone, but the entire companies of both “Matilda” and the Heritage Orchestra Tour are the objects of a great deal of my particular brand of love.
The only names I do want to name are those of Linzy and Shell, who run my online life. Linz started up Angry (Feet).com a few years ago, and has gone on to run my Facebook page and my Myspace page (RIP) and a lot of the content on this site. And Shell appeared in my life a couple of years ago and started doing incredible work to keep on top of it all too. They are incredibly good to me.
And thank you to you too. (< – cool sentence). If you are reading this, you are probably one of the insane, lovely people who keep tabs on what I get up to and do crazy shit like watch my shows and buy my DVDs and generally be enthusiastic and nice so that I can keep making stuff I want to make. I’m sorry that I haven’t got to meet so many of you this year, but I never take for granted how lucky I am to have such cool, thoughtful supporters.
That’s all I guess. My daughter has the flu too – I’d better go stick some drugs in her face.
If you’re interested in an overview of the status of the various things I’ve been beavering away at, read below.
Otherwise. Thank you thank you thank you. Merry Christmas. Peace be with you.
xtim
End of year notes:
The RSC production of “Matilda – a Musical” has got lots of nice reviews and seems to have a pretty good chance of getting to London. And if it gets to London and people like it, who knows, it could get other places too. That’d be amazing, huh? Thank you everyone who has been to see it and has made lovely comments about it and sent me letters and messages. It’s been the most joyous of processes.
My UK tour with the Heritage Orchestra came and went in a massive whirlwind. That’s a metaphor, although there was a snowstorm in Cardiff. It was incredibly good fun to perform, and people seemed to like it. Thanks to all who came. I’ll be performing the same show with the state symphony orchestras of Australia in February-March 2011, and then in Scotland in April, with them Heritage bastards again.
My new DVD, “Ready For This?” seems to have sold a few copies ahead of Christmas, which is nice. I have a heart-warming vision of hundreds of British families sitting down to watch me sing “I Love Jesus” instead of the Queen’s speech.
The animated version of “Storm“, my ranting beat-poem, is pretty much finished. The 10 minute long film, created by artist-animator DC Turner and producer Tracy King, grew from a small project to a huge mission and has now been long-listed for a BAFTA nomination! So we’re holding its release back (again) until next year, when we will upload it so that people can watch it for free.
Oo, and Shaun Tan’s animated short film, “The Lost Thing“, which I had the honour of voicing, has been shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination. Incredibly exciting and thoroughly deserved. Shaun is brilliant.
Just in case you missed it, my seasonally relevant, mildly irreverent love song to my kid, “White Wine in the Sun”, is available on itunes (as ever) and all proceeds until the end of the year will go to the National Autistic Society. The NAS are a good bunch. And it’s a nice little song, I think. Sentimental, I know.
And whilst on the subject of the ways in which I temporarily alleviate my middle-class guilt, we (you) raised over £3,000 pounds for the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts when I ran a thing in October. Thank you so much for your support.
I’m off to the US in January for a few days. I’ll be taping one or two as-yet-unconfirmed late night shows and doing a couple of dates in LA. And I’ll be back to tour properly in June.
Yep, it’s as exciting as it seems! Tim will be recording a new CD at his gig on Tuesday at the o2 in London, featuring the 55-piece Heritage Orchestra and a couple of others.