I was going through some old blogs recently and daydreaming about the days when a performance poet could travel anywhere and life was pretty much normal. Though to be honest, my life has never been normal! In 2019 I was asked to do the Hammer and Tongue tour, appearing in six different cities over nine days, and it was the most amazing adventure. I’d spend the day travelling, zigzagging across the UK, and in the evenings I’d perform to a different audience every night. I met such wonderful people. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn’t have decided halfway through to spend the weekend at home in Devon! It probably would have been easier and cheaper to stay in Surrey with relatives.
So here are the blogs I wrote during that magical period, from Hackney to Bristol, then Brighton, Cambridge, Oxford and Southampton, with an inexplicable hiatus in Devon halfway through!
The first blog was written in a Wetherspoons in Hackney the night after the gig, the night after sleeping in an office block!
https://professorofwhimsy.com/2019/04/03/on-the-road-and-looking-after-an-office-block-in-london/
The second blog was written the day after the gig in Bristol. I was on the train to Brighton when I wrote it.
https://professorofwhimsy.com/2019/04/04/thoughts-from-on-the-road-2/
The third blog was written in a hotel in Cambridge while I was at the buffet breakfast, watching what was going on around me and laughing at all of the foibles of human nature. I think by now, some kind of madness had set in!
https://professorofwhimsy.com/2019/04/06/more-thoughts-from-on-the-road-the-buffet-breakfast/
The last blog was written at my bed and breakfast in Southampton before the final gig.
https://professorofwhimsy.com/2019/04/10/final-thoughts-from-on-the-road/
The thing about lockdown is that it’s brought a very real sense of what living means to me. And this is the accumulation of memory and experience, and meeting people on the road. I can’t wait for things to get back to normal, but a part of me is worried that they never will be quite the same. As well as the Hammer and Tongue tour, 2019 also saw me at the Edinburgh Fringe, and fringes in Guildford, Reading and Barnstaple with my show about tea, and with my regular poetry set in Newcastle, Petersfield and Milton Keynes. Little did I know what 2020 would bring!
Robert Garnham 