This week I keep digging into the weird and let the obsession with another James Gray consume me. I explore identity, absurdism, belief, ethics, moths, donkeys, banana bread, castles and throwing enough sh*t and seeing what sticks.

From navel gazing to staring at my feet, this week I have the sniff of an idea, talk about the process of coaxing that idea out from its den and then dissect the poor thing, live on air. I try to come to terms with having feet like a city pigeon, I take a moment to appreciate good orators and we welcome Heaney onto the pod.

Seagulls and toilet cleaner and hangovers and double yellow lines and love and falling for scams and acceptance at last and regrets and small ‘s’ sins and weird tasting bourbon biscuits. All this and more…

We take to the high seas for the first ever waterborne pebble inspection. I record on a very noisy ferry en route to the Roundstone Storytelling Festival and read from my my own version of a fairytale, an uneasy bedtime story for any age. I also read from a couple of books I read this week that have helped crowbar me out of last week’s maudlin rut. Have at it.

CONTENT WARNING: She’s a salty one.

This week sees me cast adrift into the world of being a freelance, by which I mean jobless, writer. I write a story too horrible to finish and I spiral into a pit of self pity and misery live on air. I talk about pirates, vikings, jellyfish and storytelling with a brief interlude for some chat about holiday plans.

I take a look back at a year spent working on a masters in creative writing at Lancaster University and ask was it worth it? Did I learn owt? What the fuck do I do now? Could I have spent £10k more wisely?

And a first for The Pebble Inspector Podcast, we have listener’s letters!

The death throws of a dissertation and an entire masters… I talk about writing that most hated of things, a critical reflection; trying to sound clever about all the stuff you just made up. Expect poorly pronounced french, poorly pronounced english, frostbite and lots of making it up as I go along.

Skulking about in cupboards, laughing at my own jokes and generally living my best life. You can expect, in no particular order:
Alligator wrestling
Bashed heads
Poultry pulling
Dead dogs
Winter winds
Weasels strike back
Fargo (1996)

Live from the studio…which is a bedroom cupboard, episode 7 of the Pebble Inspector Podcast covers writing induced psychosis, Wetherspoons-related writing advice, overtop reactions to good writing and me being fully kicked in the head. I also ask, are celestial events good for flow state?

I’ve scuttled back under my duvet for this week’s pebble inspection.

I take another run at a piece I discussed back in episode two, following feedback and some fairly substantial rewrites.

I wonder whether diorama is the right word, I take time to appreciate noise-cancelling headphones and the physics of helium balloons, all while a one-hundred-foot-tall skeleton haunts the streets and skies of London and I start seeing double.

Breaking out from under the duvet, this time recording in a French kitchen at the foot of Mont Blanc.

A different format this week, the Pebble Inspector Podcast looks back at the last few months of reading during the Creative Writing & Literature Studies Master’s course at Lancaster University.

Over an hour and a quarter of me reeling off 40 titles with no notes or plan but what I remember of them. I also completely forgot to mention two entire books but I’m on holiday so I’m not rerecording (listed below).