Hallo. I cannot complain about my life being boring at the moment. Having returned from a stay in Dublin and Italy two weeks back, I’ll be flying to Dublin next week again to partake in a world record attempt organised by the Irish Writers Centre. Before that, and I’m extremely looking forward to that, there’s Amanda Fucking Palmer’s Berlin arts event and concert at the container-turned-art-space-place Platoon. I’ll attend as I backed up her Kickstarter for the new album, tour and other shenanigans. Here’s the low-down:

“International musician and performer Amanda Palmer is releasing a new album with her new band, The Grand Theft Orchestra. therefore she asked her friends, more than 30 international artists, to do artwork for her new album and while in search for a display space in Berlin she turned to PLATOON to do an exhibition followed by an intimate concert.”

Here’s a photo and a new song from the upcoming album. I can’t wait (and also harbour tiny tiny hopes that her husband, a certain Mr. Gaiman, may be in attendance as well).

The Friday after, I’ll fly to Dublin again to partake in a Guinness (!) world record attempt organised by the Irish Writers’ Centre, coinciding with Bloomsday.

“The Irish Writers’ Centre will attempt to make history this Bloomsday by claiming the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Authors Reading Consecutively From Their Own Books’.

The readings will be open to the public and the worldwide audience can join in too, as the whole event will be streamed live on the Irish Writers’ Centre website. There will be a broad range of texts and tastes, and audience members are invited to stay all night and cheer on the writers reading into the small hours.”

I’ll be reading with writers such as Roddy Doyle, Kevin Barry and Irish Nobel Prize laureate Seamus Heaney, amongst others. They did give me the nightshift though, so I’ll be reading at 3.45 am on Saturday morning, which I think is a good time to read a story. I hope they have wine though. Or Red Bull. In any way, the full schedule is here.