Presenting at the Wirksworth Festival Fringe - September 2012

(15/8/12 update - TICKETS NOW ON SALE - see bottom of flyer)

I have been very fortunate to team up with Graham Sellors, a highly talented local playwright, and to be accepted for the Festival Fringe here in Wirksworth

'While Giants Sleep' - Contents Page & Amazon Reviews

Hey you! (1964 – 1970)

And all who here ....	8
Early morning snow	10
The rat	11
Explanations and interpretations	14
Everydaynow	15
Prospects	16
A friend from way back	17

Hanging in the balance (1984 – 1988)

Hanging in the balance	20
Domestic violence	24
If I could take the pain away	26
Sargasso	27
Men and women and the rock	30
Purchase on renewal	34
Arriving at this	36
The local climbing club is ten years old	40
Conversation points	43
Christmas alone – a beginner’s guide	45

Away and away (1989 – 1999)

Around Annapurna	52
Whistling down to Jomsom	57
Ogwen, November 1989	59
Too far, too steep	60
Two glasses	62
Before the workshop	63
A taste of life	64
The cove	68
Attempting to interfere	70
Northumberland, 1996	72
Lions and minnows	74
Lost to the night	76
Above grit	77
If you see him .... leave him be	78

Peninsular days (2004 – 2006)

Peninsular days	88
Way to the west	92
Around Land’s End	96
Days of the Lizard	101

Amazon Reviews

Megan Taylor:  "Whether discussing climbing, travel or relationships, Andy Miller's unique collection is consistently lyrical and thought provoking, and often gripping. A book to repeatedly return to and to treasure"

Victoria Lewis:  "This collection of stories and poems vividly paints a picture of the author's experiences in life and love. Inspiring and entertaining, sometimes painful, but ultimately optimistic, this is a thoroughly good read"

Alastair Walker:  "Andy Miller has created an eclectic mix of prose and poetry that uses writing over a forty year period to illustrate some of the most important influences on his journey through life. Each piece is different but helps to represent a coherent set of attitudes and feelings. He is adept at bringing landscapes to life and the impact of those landscapes on people struggling to traverse them. He is even more adept, with a very light word-sketch touch, at introducing us to the character of those whom he meets. The book is both unique and excellent"

Extract from 'Whistling Down To Jomsom'

We come into Kagbeni, crowded, closed, Tibetan streets, a river through the road, a complex, a jumble of lanes, dark alleys that narrow beyond vision, openings out onto the wide flood plane of the Kahli Gadanka, figures on the stones moving against vast stretches, the mesa-hillsides, the flanks of interwoven mountains crumpled into a landscape that becomes Tibet, a magical place, lunch in the cool upstairs of a rest house, chapattis, peas fried in onion, tinned chicken slices, and tinned fruit, decorations formed from an old Colgate tooth powder tin prominent among the iconography, our boots cracking the new mud floor, a puppy crapping among us, Susie bringing in a ten week old baby, his mother’s jumper folded under him as a nappy

...  and out into the valley, all in scarves and bandannas, against the winds coming up from the south, and into the Kahli Gadanka, the wide flat valley, the beach between the feet of mountains, the muddy wanderings of the split river, the laughter at the slippery stones, the sight of an old woman piggy-backed by her husband along the narrow side track,

smashing rocks in the search for ammonites, and the beginning of trees on the hillsides, and yellow flowered gorse and a purple clover in the stones and the dust rising up like a cyclone in the distance gathering momentum before dipping and then setting off towards us

...  and the five Nepalese girls travelling back home to Jomsom, arms swinging, shawls over their faces, and the huge curving rock faults, and the thunder colours further up, and the Eiger-wall face on the north east of Nilgiri appearing in the clouds that take on dust haze
layers of shade above the ever-darkening hill ridges, while a wild, drunken Nepali attaches himself to us, reeling through the canyon waving his stick until we shake him off, and we join the Nepalese girls who giggle at my attempts to sing through my bandanna, then they sing to us, leaning forward in earnestness and against the wind, and on across the pebbles and packed earth, white everywhere with surface salt, and into the bumpy mud mainstream of the town, an ugly mixture of Western influences, but not before we have seen riders in the valley corralling horses and the relations walking out into the wild land to meet the girls

(nb. 'While Giants Sleep' does not contain photographs and images used in this post are from Google and my notebook)