March 2019 – Robert Garnham

The Ballad of Josh McGrew

When it’s forty below and the tent is so cold
And icicles cling in your beard.
Your sleeping bag barely is much of a comfort
And life is as bad as you feared.
The howl of a wolf in the lonely cold woods
Sends shudders of primordial guilt
And the hunger which pangs like the wolf’s wild fangs
Demolishes the life that you built.

The moon is aglow in a sky filled with stars
And the forest is ominously dead.
Your senses acute, the sole of a boot
You can hear with each rhythmical tread.
The great northern lights light up the night
Like fingers of phosphorus fire.
And if any damn fool say they don’t question it all
Then they would be surely a liar.

And if that’s not enough you’re feeling quite rough
And parts of you are starting to whiff.
You’re out of hair gel in your own private hell
And in the mornings you’re ever so stiff.
You watched as a bear ran off with your iPad
And an otter peed in your shoe.
And your beef flavoured Pringles had a bad best before date
And without Netflix there’s not much to do.

The endless Wild woods seem to go on forever
And the wifi signal is patchy.
You haven’t had a chance to do a good laundry
And your pants feel uncomfortably scratchy.
You let out a cuss word when you lost your password
While changing your status on Facebook.
You rolled over last night and had such a fright
When a pine needle stuck in your buttock.

The last time you went on a trek such as this
Was in Wetherspoons finding the loos.
And your Instagram post hasn’t had many likes
And your selfie was facebombed by a moose.
And there’s twigs in your hair and twigs in your socks
And there’s probably twigs up your bum
And there’s twigs in your crisps and twigs in your soup
And you hope it’s not the same twigs that have been up your bum.

The mountains loom like mountains tend to do
And loneliness points at your scowling.
And you feel sleep deprived and just half alive
Because the stupid wolves kept on howling.
And you feel with a quiver, if fortune were a giver
Then to you he’s been something of a miser.
You decide that next time you log on online
You’ll moan about it on Trip Adviser.

In the Glare of the Neon Yak Live at the GlasDenbury Festival

One of my highlights of last year was performing my show, In the Glare of the Neon Yak. It was a show which took me away from my comfort zone, a sustained piece, occasionally theatrical, humorous, but with moments of introspection and tenderness.

On one of the hottest days of the year, I was privileged enough to be able to perform it at the GlasDenbury Festival, on the poetry stage in a marquee, with the hot sun beating down. And me wearing a feather boa and one hundred percent polyester ringmaster outfit!

Due to the presence of kids at the festival, i had to do a slightly edited, clean version of the show, but it was still received well and remains one of my favourite moments of the year.

And here is a blurb:

In the Glare of the Neon Yak is a riproaring piece of spoken word storytelling set on a sleeper service in the middle of winter. A train full of circus performers are being stalked by a mysterious entity which seems to mean more than just its eerie manifestation. A portent, an omen, the Neon Yak symbolises dark times. Will our hero find love? Will Jacques, the tight rope walker, get back together again with his ex, the circus clown? Does the secret of the Neon Yak lie in the hands of a randy old lady? Has the buffet car run out of sausage rolls? Will Tony the Train Manager find where they’ve put Carriage F? An hour show combining poetry, storytelling and music, In the Glare of the Neon Yak is the sparkling new show from spoken word artist, Robert Garnham.

Hope you enjoy this:

www.dropbox.com/s/6rmzlnoa8l7j0bg/In the Glare of the Neon Yak Glasdenbury 2018.aac

On nicknames and darts.

I’m Robert Garnham, Professor of whimsy. Professor of whimsy. That’s not my nickname, that’s just what I call myself. For marketing purposes. If you’ve made it up yourself, it’s not a nickname. That’s the rule. A nickname isn’t a nickname if it’s something you’ve decided without anyone else’s input.

A friend of mine is a semi professional darts player, and he’s decided to call himself The Intimidator. Just like that. He has decided. Keith The Intimidator Hepplethwaite.

The only thing intimidating about Keith is his liberal use of Lynx Africa body spray and his ability to belch the theme tune to Frasier. It’s pretty disgusting.

So he calls himself The Intimidator, and at great expense he has had it printed on his shirt across his shoulders, The Intimidator, and on his darts, The Intimidator, and on his personalised beer mug, The Intimidator, and he insists that everyone call him The Intimidator. Look at me, I’m The Intimidator. The Intimidator!

And then one day, as a joke, I called him Doris. And you know what? Now EVERYONE calls him Doris!

But there’s something weird going on with the names of the people in his darts team. The members of his darts team are Matt, Pete, Trev, Jim, Kev, Deano, Craigie and Paulie.

So apparently, this is the rule. If you’ve got a name of two syllables or more, your name is shortened to the first syllable. So Matthew becomes Matt, Trevor becomes Trev, Kevin becomes Kev. Fair enough.

If you’ve got a one syllable name to start with, then an extra syllable is added on the end, as they’ve done with Deano and Craigie. Ok, then.

But the team was recently rocked by an crisis when a new member joined them. And this crisis was because his name was Milo.

What the hell can they do with the name Milo? It’s already got an O on the end, and you can’t shorten it to Mile, that’s too much of a mouthful in the fast paced world of pub darts.

So what they’ve done is really quite ingenious. Cos they’re quite sneaky really, are darts players. Sneaky little darts players! They’ve stopped calling him Milo, and they’ve started calling him Fido, which kind of sounds like Milo, and once they’d got used to calling him Fido instead of Milo, they shortened it to Fide.

Much better. Much better.

Poem

Darts.
Nightly pub-sport spectacle.
Like rhinos line astern gripping tungsten spears.
Darts.
Chunky-reaching cheek-wobbling darts.
Beer belly a-quiver overhanging too wide tee shirt unsolicited stomach glimpse darts.
Spherical hysterical measures out in trebles.
Darts.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Cocky oche-jockeys crafty cockneys dressing sloppy.
Sports-upholding team mate-scolding beer glass-holding.
Carpet shuffling fart-muffling comes away with nothing.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Double-chaser bullseye-maker opponent-hater third-rather.
Forefinger fling-flourish free-form darts throw panache.
Board-seeker tip bounce wire hitting kerplink.
Unlucky, Trev.

Thud. Thud. Kerplink.

Great big belly-man darts-land Leviathan takes a stand.
Meaty meaty clap-hand (nurses darts like baby chicks),
Arrow-flinging darts board-singing double-trimming
Guess who’s winning?

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Trophy-doting low-score-gloating show-boating local scrote
Boozy-wobbling woozy-toppling lazy darts-fling treble twenty
Bar staff aghast, darts stars laugh, fast darts dance, last chance,
Bust.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Last game, the same again, self-same blame game.
In the team lean, seeming so keen, trophy a gleam, he’s a darts machine!
No pain no gain, no gain, no fame, oh, the shame!
Sudden-death shoot out, league-topping bullseye-aiming,
Thud, pretty nifty, scores a fifty, mores the pity,
Geddin my son quivering tentative there the dart itself hanging like a
Swan so graceful in its beauteous flight betwixt chubby
Sweating fingers slow-mo revealing the under belly wobble
Suspended in mid air aerodynamic like the philosophic truth
Writ large straight into the exact centre of the board!

Unlucky, Trev.
Unlucky, Trev.
Unlucky, Trev.

See you all next week?