May 2021 – Robert Garnham

Seaside Serenade (Poem from my new solo show, filmed at Paignton’s Palace Theatre

Last month I was filmed by director John Tomkins, performing my new solo show Yay! : The Search For Happiness, at Paignton’s Palace Theatre.

Here’s an exclusive extract from the show! The poem is taken from my new book, Yay!, published by Burning Eye Books. You can order the book here: https://robertgarnham.bigcartel.com/product/yay-book

A sultry seaside serenade

It must be hot,
My mars bar’s turned to mush,
The smell of melting tarmac
In the late night hush.
Bread in the packet has already turned to toast,
My neighbours pet chicken is now a Sunday roast.
Now I don’t like to boast,
Because I’ve got Brandon, oooo, Brandon
Basking on my bed in his boxers,
Both of us pining for something fresh
Other than the obvious
Like the steering freeze of truth,
The cool, cool wash of contentment,
Or a vanilla ice cream.

We’re making our way through this
Seaside town now, me and Brandon,
He’s promised something hot and long and sticky
The moment we get back.
It’s been years since I had a kebab.
Past shop clad shutters and graffiti denouncing
Tracey as a slag,
To the neon buzz moth hub
Of the prom prom prom
Tiddly om Pom Pom
Last night in bed he said
It isn’t very long
Tiddly om Pom Pom
And it’s very limp.

And I said,
It’s seen a lot of tourists over the years
And it’s prone to erosion
And longshore drift.
Half of it was swept away
By a giant squid.

The rash on the side of my neck
Is caused by Brandon’s stubble as if scrapes
Sandpaper scrapey sprapey scrape
When he gets distracted by
The cricket results.

And now we’re walking next to the beach and his face is
Lit up like that of a cartoon ferret on a box of cheap own brand
Rice Krispie knock offs
The spoon filled with ricey goodness
Hovering inches from his cavernous gob

And the salt air late night sea breeze
Caresses our manly frames
Imbuing in us all kinds of nautical hi jinx
Naval seriousness, merry little frigates,
Dolphin blowholes, bottom feeding mullets,
Whales both humpback and sperm,
First mate officers, salty sea dogs,
Able bodied seamen, bow thrusters,
Butt blocks in the rigging, man the head,
Bump head gurnards and bottle nosed lumpsuckers.
And chub.

Do you see the ice cream van?
Do you see the ice cream van?
An oblong of light spilled out on the
Sand flecked concrete,
It’s refrigeration generator
Throbbing the sir with a sudden intensity,
Chugga chugga chugga
Do you feel it throbbing away there?
Chugga chugga chugga
Window stickers advertising all kinds
Of things to lick and nibble and crunch down on
Cool and ever so creamy.

The moon beams on high like someone from Dorset.
In the glow of it’s madness we dance.
Oh, Brandon, I want to do things
To certain bits of you
For most of the night,
Though I’m conscious you’ve got an early shift
At the Lady Remington Smooth N Silky
Cordless Rechargeable Hair Removal Facility factory
And the ice cream man,
Oh,
The ice cream man,
Did I mention he’s also a magician?
A sparkle in his eye,
He starts waving his magic wand at us, and

Poof!

All is gone.
The ice cream man is gone.
The ice cream van is gone.
The neon and the stats are gone.
And Brandon is gone.
None of them ever existed.
It’s just me, and the prom
On a sultry night in a sleepy coastal town,
And the kebab shop is closed,
And the rash on my neck
Is just a fungal infection
And Tracey is still a slag, apparently,
And I walk sadly home,
I walk sadly home.

Hamlet (Poem written for Exeter Pride)

Hamlet

Jack came from a long line of straight men.
He seemed prone to big thoughts in a small town,
How much else was wrong?
If this is what he shouldn’t be,
Then how did he become what’s not allowed
Without any conscious effort?
Did a fairy wave its magic wand?
Did he drink from a well that was cursed by witches?
Was there something odd in the sheep dip?

In the cattle barn, the ill-fitting roof tiles
Shot down solid beams of summer sun
In whose resplendent dust-flecked iridescence he’d dance
And imagine the laser flash and the subtle smile of a similar soul,
Lithe bodies contorting through the big city beats,
A glance of possibility, a look, the promise
Of love fulfilled.

Two years before they’d seen a male goat
Trying to have it off with another male goat
And the men had all laughed and said such things
And he wondered if the goat had been at the sheep dip,
The cursed well, the fairy with her wand,
Or perhaps he’d somehow passed it on, he, Jack,
The same way Janine got a splinter from the flaking paint
Of the combine harvester, the one they had to scrap,
And she had to get a tetanus.

One day, giddy perhaps on the silage,
He’d seen Jason on the neighbouring farm, shirtless,
Herding pigs in the summer sun, he couldn’t look away,
Jason, slapping each pig’s bum, lucky pigs,
He wanted to be with Jason, he wanted Jason’s palm
On his rump, Jason, on whom the gods had bestowed
Floppy blond hair and rippling biceps, ohh, Jason,
It made him feel dizzy, though not as dizzy as he felt
When rotating the crops, his knuckles whitened
As he gripped his binoculars,

Last summer his uncle’s prize ram, Kenneth,
Won first prize in the category Lincolnshire longhorn,
But six months before you wouldn’t have believed it,
Kenneth was a miserable specimen, a shag of a sheep,
Yet nature intervened and he transformed into
The finest woolliest puffiest fluffiest virile and thrusting ram
To ever set hoof in the ring,
Nature intervened and put things right,
And maybe this was just a phrase that he, Jack was going through,
Perhaps there might be a flash of light so blinding as to make
The cocks cock-a-doodle doo and the chickens bakurrrrrp,
And he’ll metamorphose and fall for some winsome lass
Whose coquettish charms will make him forget all about
Jason and his rippling biceps.

And settle down.
And have loads of kids.
And live a life in perpetuity
Hetereonomatively.

The rolling green fields and the warm summer breeze
Cannot calm at all Jack’s perpetual unease,
For places exist where communities thrive
In whose clamorous clasp he’d feel more than alive.
The isolation, the loneliness, the sense of forbidding,
The yearning, the heartache, the perpetual kidding
That the emotions he feels are oddly counterfeit,
A life so subdued will never feel complete.
Real lives are lived in rural parts,
Emotions are felt, the breaking of hearts.
He came from a long line of very straight men
Each generation, again and again,
And all the time came that one nagging thought:
Is he real as a person if his desires are worth nought?

Happy

This is a poem from my new collection, Yay, published by Burning Eye Books. You can order your copy right here: https://robertgarnham.bigcartel.com/product/yay-book

Happy

I can hardly describe it.

Often I get these moments

In which I’m able to stand back and

Look at my life as if from

A different vantage point,

And consider my journey

As a unified whole.

Boom, there it is,

I’m happy.

It’s almost sickening.

Take my friend Mark.

They say, well,

He’s only happy when he’s got something to moan about.

Well, he is!

You should see him!

You should see his little face!

Having a good old moan

Really makes his day.

And that also makes me happy.

And then there’s my friend Shane.

He’s always happy.

He looks like a grin

With a person attached.

I say to him, you alright?

And he says, yeah, I’m alright,

You alright?

And I’ll say yeah, I’m alright,

And he’ll say,

I’m alright if you’re alright,

And I’ll say, alright,

Because neither of us are big conversationalists,

But he’s alright, is Shane,

And he’s happy.

My favourite anecdote

A glum theatre stage,

A set designer stands there

Having just decorated the scene,

Stands there with that gloom merchant

Crinkle faced Mr Intensity Samuel Beckett,

Turns to this existentialist deep thinker and asks,

Happy?

It’s a fluffy puffy feeling

It’s incredibly appealing

It’s like a lack of gravity

That puts you on the ceiling.

It’s a bouncy flouncy skip and hop

That makes your heart just flip and pop

Smooth as silk and warm like tea

And sweeter than a lollipop

Oh my,

Listen to me!

I’m not the sort to rise right up

And suddenly clap my hands.

I hope you understand

Cos this feeling

Is more a state of being

Than the status of this man.

Before you here I stand,

A soul enmeshed in mirth

And it’s been a constant feeling

From the moment of my birth

That every day

When I wake I say

Yay.

No change in status

No change in status

Midnight in Tokyo, the hotel reception
Too opulent for jet lagged eyes,
This fool holds breath as from speakers,
The Blue Nile’s Tinseltown in the Rain,
An unusual choice in this disjointed dance.
I’ve hardly seen the neon and it’s almost
Tomorrow and there’s a problem with my booking.

Which makes me wonder who I even am,
Because the computer does not recognise my
Existence, and the receptionist explains that
Luckily there’s a spare room on the 36th floor,
No longer quite so happy so lucky so chipper,
And I’m admitted entry but I must promise to pay,
Mister, Mister, Mister . . . Sorry,
What was your name again?

The following day I begin to disappear, which
Makes shaving quite difficult, and I slide
Through the lift doors down across the marble foyer,
Find an adjacent supermarket and buy
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HECK IT WAS
For breakfast but it comes with chopsticks and there’s
A boiled egg plonked in the middle.

Ghosting through the Ginza several months
Too early for cherry blossom, I forget my name
In the crowded lanes, become translucent like a
Discarded thought in front of a travel agent
Advertising holidays in FUCKING PAIGNTON I KID YOU NOT,
And then in this city of technology and robots to a
Tourist office on the 15th floor of a skyscraper
Run by a Nanna and Grandad who pass me a free map
As if it were a precious gift and I bow on receiving.

The coffee shop patrons are taken aback.
You can see the coffee and muffin pass right through me.
It’s impolite to stare and it really doesn’t help matters
That I keep humming Tinseltown in the Rain,
Even though there isn’t any tinsel
And it was perfectly dry though somewhat overcast.

The wind sighs, ‘Have you ever been?’,
And I reply, ‘I am being now’,
And the wind sighs, ‘Are you being now?’
And I reply, ‘Have I ever been?’
And the wind sighs, ‘That’s only for you to
Decide, oooooooohhhhhhhhh’, and I really get it
That people think there are other worlds.

Isn’t it the dream of every spirituality to become
Nothing but a thought?
I achieved it so well that they might think about
Dedicating a place of worship in my honour, except
By now I had no name and I’ve never been a big one
For shopping, or drinking, or sexual conquests, so
I wasn’t even just another geezer on the Ginza.

A certain stylised frisky-whispered kitty cat in a bow tie
Explained via speech bubbles that the building to my left
Escaped being bombed by the Americans.
That thing I had this morning with the boiled egg in it was
Actually quite nice, and I texted a friend back home and
He replied, ‘I can see right through you’.

I’d always wanted to be a nobody, but now I was a no body
And it was the most weight I’d ever lost in one go.
Maybe this whole thing would have been better if I’d shared it
With you. I’ve walked around so many cities solo, like
Prague, and Reykjavik, Singapore, Lancaster, and never
Once heard The Blue Nile played as if they were
Just like any other band, gotta hand it to them.

‘No change in status’, said the lady on reception,
By which time I must have been merely a
Distortion of reality, a blurring where my outline
Would have been, an opaque mistake, and I rode
The elevator to the 36th floor and someone was playing
Bagpipes and you know really it hadn’t been a bad day
With the exception of my gradual philosophical psychological
Complete super disappearance.

Yay! show diaries 7.3.21 – 2.5.21

7.3.21

Spent some time making a first couple of designs for the possible publicity poster. Then worked on a song with a Croydon Tourist Office backing track for the film, which I called ‘So happy’.

8.3.21

Line learning You Dunked a Muffin in Your Cuppa.

9.3.21

Worked on the publicity poster design and then line learning You Dunked a Muffin in Your Cuppa.

10.3.21

Rehearsal using the chair.

13.3.21

Sunrise rehearsal room, Brixham. Went through the whole show, no movement.

14.3.21

Sunrise rehearsal room, Brixham. Went over the various bits that I struggled with yesterday.

15.3.21

Back in Paignton. Went over the last half of the show, typed up revisions, did some admin with Guildford Fringe.

16.3.21

Wrote a new poem to finish the show which draws together happiness and identity, ‘Be Yourself’, which also has an element of humour. In the evening, headlined at ‘Leadworks’, an online gig, and debuted some of the linking material from the show as well as performing three poems in the set, Shakka Lakka Boom, Homecoming and Seaside Soul.

17.3.21

Line learning Be Yourself.

18.3.21

Line learning Be Yourself.

19.3.21

Did a complete run through of the show, including the new Be Yourself poem at the end. Came to 55 minutes.

21.3.21

Spent the morning working on an interview with Heather Moulson and talked about the show and its premise. Then worked on a blog with the publicity pictures and the press ‘interview’ I did with myself, and unleashed it on the world on my website and social media, changing profile pictures to the show poster. Afternoon, worked on an audio recording of the show mainly to help myself stay fresh but also as a possible future project.

23.3.21

Tickets for the Yay show on sale on the Guildford Fringe website.

25.3.21

Did ‘Shakka Lakka Boom’ and ‘Seaside Soul’ plus linking material at WonderZoo, an online gig based in Plymouth.

27.3.21

Rehearsed last half hour of the show in the Sunrise Rehearsal Studio, Brixham.

30.3.21

Rehearsed last ten minutes of the show, back in Paignton.

7.4.21

Rehearsed whole show. Chatted to filmmaker John Tomkins about the logistics of filming the show in Paignton’s Palace Theatre next week. Evening, did ten minutes of poems and linking materials of the show at Word Mustard, an online gig based in Weston-super-Mare.

14.4.21

Filmed the show at Paignton’s Palace Theatre with John Tomkins, sound engineer Clive and Sarah from the theatre. Filmed for five hours, filming the show twice from several angles, and also footage for a trailer which involved different poses on stage. Then home for the last proof-read of the collection.

19.4.21

John Tomkins made the trailer for the recording of the solo show, and this was put online on my website and various social media channels.

21.4.21

Had a meeting online with Fay Roberts from PBH Free Fringe about entering the show into the online Edinburgh fringe, then a meeting with John Tomkins to show me some of the edits of the show so far.

23.4.21

John Tomkins sent me a first edit of the show, watched it and suggested a couple of minor revisions.

26.4.21

John Tomkins sent me the second edit of the show, watched it and approved it as the definitive edition.

27.4.21

A box of Yay books arrived!

28.4.21

Spoke with Ludlow Fringe about performing the show in the same week as the Guildford Fringe / Taunton Live.

2.5.21

Full run through of the show at the Sunrise Rehearsal Room, Brixham. It’s the first time I’ve done the show since filming at the theatre, relieved that it’s still in my head!