We often wonder what Oh Comely writers are up to, away from their writing for the magazine. So we got in touch and asked.

Our second writer interview is with Victoria Watts, who wrote the wonderful piece Can I Sleep on your Sofa? for issue 7. The article looks at couchsurfing as a way to not only travel, but to meet new and unusual people - artists who invite you to their house party, or undertakers who teach you the anatomy of a horse.

What is your job at the moment? I’m a yoga teacher and a blogger at Bridges and Balloons--a travel lifestyle blog about living the life you want to, not the life you think you should. My boyfriend and I left London in March 2012 and have been travelling ever since. We’re currently living in Ubud, Bali for five months where he’s editing a film, and I’m working on the blog, as well as studying yoga, nutrition and physiology.

Where are you most likely to be found at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon? On a Saturday in Ubud, I’m most likely to be found in the spa! It’s so cheap here that Steve and I have made it a weekly visit – Saturday spa day. Why not?

What's been the smallest significant change in your life since writing for Oh Comely? I discovered the best drink in the world--capomo. It’s like coffee, only better. It’s even good for you. It’s high up on my ‘Reasons I need to live in Mexico’ list.

What’s best to drink whilst writing? Hot chocolate, perhaps with a dash of whisky.

Two pieces of advice for the 'you' of ten years ago, one personal, one professional. Meditate and do yoga--that covers both personal and professional.

Will you still be writing in five years, if so what would you like to be writing? I hope to still be writing the blog in whatever form it grows into, and I have ideas for books that may come out of that.

If you could have written one book that’s already published, what would it be? When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chudrun. Once you get past the title, it's an incredibly wise book. I know so many people who it's helped, myself included. I'd love to write something that useful. And I also secretly wish I'd written Eat, Pray, Love.

Our current issue is 'outer space' themed. What would be the pièce de résistance of your fantasy spaceship? A jacuzzi. I have no idea how it’d work, but it'd be next to one of the windows so you could sit in the bubbles while staring out to space.

You can also read Victoria's interview with Andrew Bird and her personal pice Things my mother never told me.

Follow Bridges and Balloons on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Bompas & Parr are the food mavericks who set a steamship in 55,000 litres of jelly and built the world's first chocolate climbing wall. 

We interviewed Sam Bompas in the latest issue, and he gave us two recipes for jelly space cocktails. And you know what that means? Now it's your turn.

Here's your challenge: make a jelly inspired by outer space.

The prizes: four Oh Comely subscriptions.

How to enter: Email [email protected] with a photo and your recipe by October 14th.

Inspiration: There's a printer-friendly version of Sam's recipes here if you'd like to have a go at them, but your jelly can be anything at all. We're looking for desserts joyfully tacky enough to be served at the afterparty of the 1977 Star Wars première. Rainbow colours, stars and flying saucer sweets are encouraged. Look, it just has to be better than our gelled moonshot, okay?

We'll be putting all the entries up on the old Facebook, so include a website or blog link with your entry if you'd like that included.

T&Cs: 1. The competition closes on 14 October. 2. One entry per person. 3. There is no cash or other alternative to the prizes stated. 4. Any entries may be published on ohcomely.co.uk and its social media platforms with credit.

The film Mister John tells the story of Irishman Gerry (The Wire's Aidan Gillen), who travels to Singapore after the sudden death of his hostess bar-owning older brother, only to find himself sinking into the life his brother left behind. The film flickers between the visceral world of Singapore and the muffled ruptures of Gerry’s London home life.

Joe Lawlor and Christine Malloy are a Dublin-born writer and director duo, otherwise known by their company name, Desperate Optimists. When meeting them to discuss Mister John – only their second feature-film – it feels as if I am speaking to a person who just happens to be divided over two bodies. Both grey-haired and kind-mannered, they don’t interrupt one another as much as pick up the baton of the other’s thought. With their sentences constantly connecting with and overlapping the other’s it is only the change of tone from male to female voice which later distinguishes one from the other on my digital recorder.

Tell me a bit about your partnership, the Desperate Optimists?

Joe Lawlor: Christine and I have been working together since the mid-80s, in Dublin initially. Then, after 1992 we graduated and formed a theatre company. Our main thing was writing but we had to act as well. Touring theatre was awful ­– two or three years going around not knowing where you’re living. We thought, "We’ve got to stop this".

How was acting? Were you any good?

J: We were crap.

Christine Malloy: We never really acted, we were... performers. We did everything, but we had to perform, because we had to earn some kind of a wage. Our approach was doing some pretty idiosyncratic performing, very Marmite-like. We had a lot of fans – like, real proper fans – and then we’d have people who’d wish we’d just curl up and die. And sometimes I used to wish that too!

Has that sort of reception carried through to your films?

J: Well we had it with our debut feature, a film called Helen. Some of the critical reactions were amazing and positive, and some really weren’t. But Helen grew out of working with local communities, whereas Mister John...

C: Mister John’s very different because it’s not an art project, it’s a film. People perhaps wanted us to make something that was a bit less wilful than Helen was. We wanted that as well, but we still haven’t done it. I don’t think John’s a crossover film. I think it’s, well, distinctive in its own way.

It definitely is. There’s a sequence where Gerry comes out of the bar and the scenes melt between London and Singapore. It gets very strange and uncomfortable. It was a little reminiscent of Twin Peaks.

J: Twin Peaks freaked us out!

C: When we first watched it we didn’t have a telly. We were in London for a year as part of our degree. Our friend had one, and to get back to where we lived we had to go around SouthwarkPark, and the wind would be blowing because it was the winter. It was one of the only times in my life I felt terrified.

J: We didn’t want that scene to be naturalistic. We wanted it to be played out in a much more dream-like way. You know that kind of odd feeling – I haven’t had it for a very long time, but I used to a lot – you’re in a Sunday church feeling naked somehow. A very uncomfortable feeling of nudity surrounded by people clothed, in a church, and you’re only ten. It's like that: a very odd, volatile moment for him to confront what he’s not really brave enough to confront.

I’m not sure I know the naked-in-church feeling. But what did strike me as uncomfortable is that sex is only really accessed in the film as prostitution; sex in a loving relationship is never seen. Did you want sex and love to be that divided?

C: Of all the environments to put Gerry in, considering his state of mind, this was a highly sexualised world, and also an easy one. You get the impression that his brother was a very charming character, so this world is defined by his charisma, his personality, his sense of ease. But Gerry’s not even looking to have sex with anyone really; he’s looking somehow to reconnect with himself.

He’s a frustrating character for the majority of Mister John because he’s so passive. I felt like the film is about an environment which forces a very passive person to act.

C: It’s interesting because characters tend not to be passive, especially main characters. We had issues with that as we were developing the script, but for us it was really important. The idea that things happen to him – even the erection he gets isn’t his erection...

J: A passive erection.

C: Things begin to change from the moment he loses his luggage and starts to wear his brother’s clothes. He sees that it’s possible to affect people.

J: I think that’s true. If his luggage wasn’t lost and he’d kept his clothes, he’d probably have ended up in a hotel and cried his eyes out. And there wouldn’t be much of a movie there.

Mister John is in UK cinemas from 27th September.

Oh Comely has struck up a friendship with Sofar Sounds, a curator of intimate gigs in living rooms around the world. Every now and then we publish a Sofar column with an up-to-date playlist, highlighting the flourishing music scene of a particular city. Today, we will bring you to Glasgow.

Photos: Sofar Sounds

Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad, Admiral Fallow. Enough said?

Maybe not, but these names only represent a fraction of all wonderful bands that Scotland has to offer.

At Sofar's remote Glasgow leg, we've had a wealth of fantastic acts this year. For instance, David Frazer, a singer/songwriter originally from New Zealand and now a full time Glasgow genius. His song ‘Down in The Archives’ has been near the top of my iTunes play count for over a year now. Washington Irving is another incredible live act and their bassist Kieran even plays the occasional saw. I’ve also fallen deeply in love with Blood Relatives and their singer Anna Meldrum who always gives a really genuine and spellbinding performance, perfect for the intimate setting of a stranger’s apartment. Their new album is out in October and I will be amazed if they don’t get a huge amount of acclaim for it.

Some insanely great festival line-ups this summer has pushed forward a new wave of Scottish music, but, as always, this has been made possible by a lively audience, always passionate and supportive of local talent.

We’ve assembled all the Glasgow highlights in one playlist.

Ta for now.

I tried silk screen-printing a few times at college, but, after designing the image I wanted to print, a technician would always whisk it away and come back present me with a freshly-exposed silk screen. Just like magic.

At the Print Club London studios in Dalston no one gets such special treatment. You oversee the creation of your own prints from naissance to paper, magic and all. The Print Club indulges printing addicts with molten inks in a vast array of colours, squeegees, a light box and a dark room.

Modest and unassuming, the studio is nestled just off Stoke Newington Road down a back street. Prayer flags and Chinese lanterns in shades of reds hang overhead lining the alley; discarded prints and half-finished images litter the walls leading up to the entrance. The studio itself is reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting - every surface smattered with colour. The aroma of the inks intoxicating.

The time it takes to get my 6 perfect prints is an all-day affair, but the end result is well worth the patience. By the second pull of my squeegee I’m hooked. I’m suddenly fantasising about mixing colours, layering, larger paper, t-shirts, bags, a host of wildly inappropriate surfaces covered with my increasingly extravagant designs.

Since moving to London I’ve found it hard to find a creative outlet and whilst the £100 per month membership price tag seems steep, you do get a lot for your money. Unlimited access to the dark room, light box and 6 printing beds 24 hours a day, on top of that the collective of artists that make up Print Club London promote your work for you through group shows and exhibitions at such prestigious locations as Somerset House.

We often wonder what Oh Comely writers are up to away from their writing for the magazine. So we got in touch and asked.

Jane Flett is first in our new series of writer interviews. She wrote In Praise of Solitude: Waking up Alone, published in issue 10. The piece explored Jane’s love of languid mornings and the 'peculiar, elbowy, dream logic' that often accompanies the silence of solitude.

What is your job at the moment? Writer.

Where are you most likely to be found at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon? Roller skating down the runway of Tempelhof, an abandoned airport in the centre of Berlin.

What’s been the smallest significant change in your life since writing for Oh Comely? I installed a hammock on my balcony. It has revolutionised everything!

What’s best to drink whilst writing? Champagne. Or, rather, cheap supermarket German Sekt.

Two pieces of advice for the 'you' of ten years ago, one personal, one professional. Personal: Don’t buy the Mitsubishi van and set off into the Australian outback with  no knowledge of engines and that cute boy from Leeds who doesn’t know how to drive. Yes, I know it’s cheap. No, that doesn’t mean you’re getting a good deal.  

Professional: When they offer you a church building in the centre of Edinburgh to do whatever you like with and you end up working 14-hour days, every day of the week, cursing your life - just enjoy it. You’re going to look back on these times as awesome.

Will you still be writing in five years, if so what would you like to be writing? Of course! I will probably be simultaneously working on too many projects: an epic long form poem setting characters from Norse mythology into 1970s Lower East Side New York, a choose-your-own-adventure noir thriller novel in the style of Raymond Chandler and Edward Packard, a second collection of short stories to be published by Penguin with a stylish orange cover, a series of cross-country collaborations with friends who make electronic beep beep noises, and a secret blog documenting every last love affair.

If you could have written one book that’s already published, what would it be? Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behaviour.

Our current issue is themed around outer space. What would be the pièce de résistance of your fantasy spaceship? The zero-gravity make-out chamber.

Curious about Jane work? Here’s some of her Oh Comely writing: Follow your feet and Waking up alone. Visit janeflett.com for more.

The inspiration for Sean Ellis’ newest film came whilst he was on holiday in Manila. As the writer/director watched two armoured truck drivers having an argument, he began to think about the circumstances that led them to that point. That germ of an idea became Metro Manila, just announced as Britain’s submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the Oscars. Starting as a moving portrait of an impoverished rice farmer and his wife, the film shifts gears mid-way through to become a tense crime drama. We spoke to Sean about the film.

Metro Manila is entirely in Tagalog. You don’t speak the language, so how did you create the film? Well, the script was in English. There was talk of doing a translation but I felt that if someone translated the script then it was another interpretation of what I’d done. It’d be like having another author. Then in the casting sessions it became apparent that it was easy for the actors to speak about their lines in English and translate them into Tagalog in a way that they felt the characters would say. It slowed us down a little bit because they had to learn the lines in English and then translate them, and then there was discussion between the two main actors about the intonation of what was being said and how.

How did that process affect how you directed the actors? I think when you write a script you’ve got an idea of where everyone is emotionally. You’re there for the actors in that respect if they’re wondering how should they play a scene, whether the character is upset or angry. So once the translation had been done it was just dealing with acting. The great thing about acting is that most of it is non-verbal, so I could sit there and watch them speak Tagalog and know whether it was a performance I believed in or not.

The performances are very naturalistic. I really tried for that. I don’t think they were used to the sorts of silences that I was asking for, because in the Filipino school of acting they make a massive amount of stuff for TV. I kept saying things like, "That’s great but slow it way down. Make it more difficult for you to say, as if you’re searching for those words". They would then do that for what they felt was a long time and then we'd look at it and maybe even say let’s do it more and see how far we could take it. It just felt right for the material. What this family has to go through is an emotional and difficult journey. I felt like some of those silences would say more than what their words could.

The crime elements in the film aren’t introduced until quite late on, about an hour in. Was that a conscious decision? In some respects it's a cross-genre film. It starts off as a world cinema drama and moves slowly into a heist movie, and I thought that was an interesting combination because I love world cinema but at the same time I do like more commercial fare as well. I always said that it was a very commercial story in disguise. I feel like one thing compliments the other--it serves to reinforce the characters and the empathy you have for them so by the time the crime stuff kick in you're going through that gauntlet with them.

Before filmmaking you had a long career as a photographer. Is that why you chose to be your own cinematographer on the film? Obviously I've got a photographic background so I'd like to think that visually I know what I'm talking about to a certain extent, but in many respects it was a budget call as much as a creative one. Being my own cinematographer had a massive impact: it enabled us to not have to buy five flights to Manila and put five people up in hotels for three months. When you're talking about the budget that we made the picture for, that sort of thing makes a huge difference.

I suppose that by shooting it yourself it gives the film a lot of fluidity. There's an emphasis on handheld shots. It looks almost like a documentary. I felt that style of filmmaking would help the audience to relate to the family, because you're right there with them. Also, I wanted the story to be first and foremost. I think that the more that visuals lead storytelling, the more the audience falls off. So if there are any visual flourishes in the film it's to back the story, to reinforce it. There are probably two big visual moments in the film, but they’re earned.

Metro Manila is in UK cinemas on 20th September.

As you know, we are constantly on the lookout for happenings that introduce new talent and inspire others to try out creative fields.