Sunderland a Love Letter

Sorry that

I left 

Never wanted too

Pissed on Double Diamond

High on too much speed

In Australia

 

I

Became a wife

&

Watched the children grow

Tried to sing that song

On 

&

On

& 

On

& on the bus

I went

Right back to my

Old school 

Where

The

Pages 

Turned

Back 

Time

For

Love 

Letters

Letters 

Loved

Now

Let 

Me 

Sing 

You

That 

Song

___________________________

Before I Sing You This Song
Published by CREAR PUBLISHING

Order your love song here.

UK ORDER HERE

AUSTRALIA ORDER  HERE

JUSTINESLESS.COM

Who Owns The Moon?

 

Today

A scrap of spacecraft

Collided with the moon.

Tides forgot to rise

Crops withered

Dung beetles cried

Menstrual cycles dried.

The Buck

Got passed from 

Man 

To 

Man

To

Man

To 

Man.

We don't own it

I mean who does?

Own the Moon

Intoned the men

Intoned the men

Intoned the men

In

Japan

Russia 

Iran

Italy

Uruguay

Argentina

Israel

Netherlands

& Berlin.

A scrap of spacecraft

Made in China

Bought by 

Australia

& 

Launched in the U. S of A.

Collided with the moon.

Just Breaking

A scrap of spacecraft

Collided with the moon 

Announced the newsreader 

On the 6 o' clock news.

By 6.32pm

The Man In The Moon

Was so over the moon

So he moved

To a space not yet found 

By all the other men.

Not yet anyway.

Before I Sing You This Song

18 July 2026

Dear Diary, 

Remember back in 2016, when I was just dipping my toe into writing. 

I had a writing mentor.

A short story won a prize with Writers Victoria.

I was always shirking from the shame of not being able to spell, dreadful with grammar and no idea about tense.

Doesn't matter.

 My writing mentor said. 

That's what editors are for.

What matters is you can tell a cracking story..

I'd been doing comedy for about a decade. Wrote a few shows. Delivered a few workshops. 

And couldn't shake the comedy outta my system, no matter how many gigs and shows I did.

Out of nowhere this reunion of old school mates from Sunderland happened in Melbourne. We had dinner together and at the end of the meal one of my mates said..

Let's watch The Little Waster. Bobby Thompson, comedy hero in Sunderland. Bobby did the same two acts for thirty years. Everyone in Sunderland has a favourite Bobby joke.

I'd not thought about Bobby for years. That night I woke in the middle of the night and I wrote, till dawn. The first chapter of what, ten years later would become Before I Sing You This Song.

Possessed is an understatement. I wrote, I researched, I went back to Sunderland and met up with Bobby's son Keith and Pete Peverley who did a tribute show about Bobby.

And I kept wondering.. where were all the women back then in the 1970's in England.. surely there were some funny women.

And no doubt there were, but women couldn't be members of working men's clubs and women could only sing songs, not tell jokes..

And so I created Elsie Bishop, and the book Before I Sing You This Song, set in Sunderland in 1978, inspired by Bobby Thompson, is about a woman who wants to do comedy.

But comedy is a tough gig.

 Even tougher when you're a woman.

I went on to do a masters by research in creative writing on humour as a power construct in the wider gender based violence lens. 

Write two books. 

Move house four times. 

Leave a very very long marriage. 

&

Grimaced at the countless rejections for Before I Sing You This Song..  it's very Northern written in Pitmatic dialect.. too northern for this house..

Then a small but mighty publishing house in Sunderland said yes.. 

Let's bring Elsie Bishop to life.

Before I Sing You This Song is dedicated to all the housewives whose lives have been swept away under a rug..

Before I Sing You This Song

Launching 

Sunderland 

October 2026.

Dear Diary if I'd known it would have taken ten years to get this project over the line. I probably would have written a bit faster..

The Disappearing

 9 June

I went to a movie 

The Old Friend was there

With her friends 

Her husband

Her family

Old Friend

Not the Paul Simon kind 

Not the book end kind

An Old Friend

I see them

And other

Old Friends

And a little bit of me disappears

I cried that day

They said that to me

That I was not 

The kind of Jew they liked

I cried and cried

Wrote them a letter

The very next day

Sorry I said

sOrRy I said

in so many ways

Not good enough

Not Jewish enough

Not

I cried that day

& a little bit of me

disappeared

I see Old Friends

On trains

On streets

In cars

They look through me

And every time 

A little bit of me disappears

I smile less

I worry more

And a little bit of me disappears

Peseach comes

Rosh Hashanah goes

Chanukah the menorah and Bondi horror meld

Friends and families gather

No invitations sent

And a little bit of me disappears

Relationships

 20 November 2025

Dear Diary,

I wake up most mornings  wondering  if my relationship to money is making me ill?

I wake up anxious that I have no savings...

Today I went to a branch a bank to put some cash in -  the person at the counter asked me how I was and if I'd like to chat sometime about my finances.

I nearly cried.

I rarely go into branches..

I rarely chat with anyone about money..

Rarely chat to the person in a shop as I fumble over coins or notes

Just tap my card.. gather my items and leave

I try to to save, then another bill comes in or a creative endeavour arrives that I am compelled to pursue. The latest one is registering for comedy festival. $500 to register + venue + marketing + box office  + front of house costs + payment for a producer etc etc .. + the time to write the show and get bums on seats in a very busy market.

I have poured thousands of dollars  into creative endeavours over the years. The book coming out next year took ten years to write, I've spent thousands on editors, millions of hours on it when perhaps I shouldn't have.. but it is done and I wouldn't  trade the changes that happened to me on a deep cellular level for anything.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

SELF WORTH =

CREATIVE PROJECTS

CREATIVE WORTH =

FINANCIAL COMMITMENT =

LATE STAGE CAPITALISM STILL AIN'T PAYING  FOR CREATIVE ENDEAVOURS

Something like that...

COMEDY WORKSHOPS 

THE REST OF SLESS

BOOKS

 

Loneliness of The Blood

 25 October 2025

Dear Diary,

I always get a little teary on the way to the bloodbank

Kindness, great snacks and staff who look you right in the eye and listen will do that.

Red as a cardinal's cassock, blood leaves me.

One time I gave plasma.

    Felt woozy.

    Insisted I was fine.

    The nurse knew I wasn't.

    They are face whispers.

    Stay she'd said.

And so I did.

    Nurses cared about me.

I cried,

a quiet cry.

Then marvelled at the selection of snacks on offer. 

I make a morning of it now.

    Mitigating loneliness

            One 

            Drop 

            At a time.

On the way to the blood bank this morning 

At the intersection

A woman I once knew 

Passed me in her car

    We were friends.

Every day I wake up thinking

    How is this possible that we are no longer friends..

    Middle East, North, West & South

Ruby, Scarlett, Crimson, Vermillion

Blood flows red as a cardinal's cassock

    Into rivers and seas.

I pause at the traffic light

Wanting to ASK

I am on my way to the blood bank

If you needed blood

Would you ASK who donated this?

Because I know that we are a match.

AUTHOR COMEDIAN MC
JUSTINE SLESS
COMEDY STORE

Zymurgy The Last Word in the Dictionary

 

zymurgy /ˈzʌɪˌməːdʒi/ noun the study or practice of fermentation in brewing, winemaking, or distilling.

Boys 

Brew wars

Blood Ferments 

&

Loss is distilled

Through the narrow neck

Of the

Demijohn

AUTHOR COMEDIAN MC
JUSTINE SLESS
COMEDY STORE