This is a poem from my new show, ‘Bouncer’. It’s about something that people say to me every time they discover that I’m a comedy performance poet. I’m sure lots of other people also get told this especially if that’s the sort of thing they do.
I hope you like it!
My new show will be coming to various places in 2023 and 2024. At the moment it is booked in for the Barnstaple TheatreFest Fringe, the Guildford Fringe, and for two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’m also hoping to do it at other places, too.
Here’s the new poem:
You Should Write a Poem About That, from ‘Bouncer’, 2023
As I did with my last show, I’ve been keeping a diary charting my progress from the very first day I started work on my new show, to the present moment. Obviously, as the show has not yet been performed before an audience, there may be spoilers here. But not many people read this blog, so that should be OK!
Bouncer diary
23.8.22
Decide on theme of show to be based around appearance on BGT
25.8.22
Write some linking material about poetry, and start work on opening poem ‘Welcome to my Show’
26.8.22
Work on ‘Welcome to my Show’ and an autobiographical poem called ‘Orange Juice’, which may or may not be used to add background character.
28.8.22
Sat in the sun in the back garden in Brixham. Worked on a new poem, provisionally titled ‘This City Never Seemed so Cruel’, the obligatory downbeat poem for near the end of the show. Also worked on some linking material about my Great Uncle, and a bit about Thundercats.
29.8.22
Back in Paignton. Heard the Squeeze song Hour Glass on the radio, and then some show tunes, and the idea for a call and response poem came, with a similar structure as the chorus of the Squeeze song. Called ‘Everyone Wants Fame!’ Jotted it down on a ticket, then home, worked on the poem. It’s the bare bones of something fun, but it really needs to be 30% funnier.
30.8.22
Worked on ‘Everyone Wants Fame!’, added two jokes.
31.8.22
Worked on ‘This City Never Seemed so Cruel’, ‘Orange Juice’ and ‘Welcome to my Show’.
1.9.22
Wrote new poem ‘You Should Write a Poem About That’, plotted the storyline and poem list for the show, then worked on a new version of ‘Fabaranza’ written from the point of view of the BGT producers.
4.9.22
In Brixham, worked on linking material. Wrote the goose joke, and then one other joke, and then thought, ahh, that’s two jokes, a good days work, let’s relax for the rest of the day.
5.9.22
Back in Paignton, more work on linking material.
6.9.22
Paignton, worked on linking material, then started to put the show together so far, right up to the Covid section.
7.9.22
Worked on ‘You Should Write a Poem About That’, then typed up all of the show so far before working on more linking material. Worried that the version of my portrayed in the show is negative, whiny, too much like a victim, and generally unlikeable.
8.9.22
Worked on rewriting linking material, added a few more jokes and funny lines. Worked on ‘You Should Write a Poem About That’, took out the line about all other poets being bastards!
9.9.22
Unexpected day off due to yesterday’s death of HM The Queen. Started work on the BGT phone call linking material.
11.9.22
In Brixham. Worked on new poem, ‘The Contestants Await’.
12.9.22
Worked on linking material and ‘The Contestants Await’.
14.9.22
Worked on the start of the BGT section. Worked also on the ‘Everyone Wants Fame’ poem.
16.9.22
Worked on the BGT hotel section. Went to a coffee shop and thought of two jokes about the contestants which made their way into the show script.
18.9.22
(In Brixham). Worked on the BGT section. Almost finished the first draft of the script, just need to write a kind of summing up section. Current word count is over 7000 so it may need editing down.
19.9.22
First draft completed!
24.11.22
Had a read through of the linking material having worked on the Cold Callers project in the intervening months. Pleasantly surprised at the cohesiveness and tone of the show.
27.11.22
Had a complete table read run through of the show at Brixham’s Sunrise Rehearsal Studio. 52 minutes, happy with that. Had a couple of rewrites to ponder: Fabaranza as a poem instead of a song, and tightening up the lyrics of the opening song Welcome to my Show. Also, does the show need the Covid section? Seems put in just to get on the one liner list! Later on, back in the Rehearsal room, rewrote the opening song ‘Welcome to my Show’.
28.11.22
Paignton. Ran through ‘Welcome to my Show’ a few times, then rewrote the song ‘Fabaranza’ as a fast-paced poem.
30.11.22
Began line learning ‘Welcome to my Show’.
1.12.22
Line learning ‘Welcome to my Show’.
2.12.22
Line learning ‘Welcome to my Show’.
3.12.22
Line learning first batch of linking material.
5.12.22
In Brixham. Ran through ‘Welcome to my Show’ several times and videoed it so see how it looked. Worked on linking material.
6.12.22
Paignton. Line learning linking material.
7.12.22
Line learning linking material and began line learning ‘Zach’. First five minutes of the show memorised.
8.12.22
Line learning ‘Zach’.
9.12.22
Line learning ‘Zach’.
26.12.22
Been ill for two weeks so unable to line learn or rehearse without erupting into coughing fits. Staying in Brixham for Christmas. Had a great line learning session in the Sunrise Rehearsal Studio, memorised the whole Zach poem and videoed it too.
27.12.22
Brixham. Worked on the Zach poem and the subsequent linking material. Started a video diary.
29.12.22
Paignton. Linking material and You Should Write a Poem, which I also rewrote.
30.12.22
Learning You Should Write a Poem
31.12.22
Learning You Should Write a Poem.
1.1.23
Brixham. Learning You Should Write a Poem, plus ran through whole show so far, about 12 minutes.
4.1.23
Paignton. Line learning You Should Write a Poem.
5.1.23
Line learning You Should Write a Poem.
6.1.23
Line learning You Should Write a Poem. Managed the whole poem with no mistakes, 3m30. Then performed the first 12 minutes of the show with no mistakes.
7.1.23
Line learning linking material.
8.1.23
Brixham. Line learning linking material (producer phone call section), then started work on a possible backing track for Welcome to my Show. Very camp.
9..1.23
Line learning linking material. Chatted to film maker John Tomkins about filming the show with an audience.
10.1.23
Line learning linking material.
11.1.23
Line learning linking material. Chatted to photographer Jim Elton about taking photos for the publicity pictures. That evening, performed two minutes of linking material at the online Woking Write out Loud gig. People laughed at the funny bits!
12.1.23
Rewrote ‘Who Wants Fame?’
13.1.23
Line learning Who Wants Fame?
14.1.23
Line learning Who Wants Fame? Chatted to photographer Emily Appleton about taking publicity photos.
15.1.23
Brixham. Line learning Who Wants Fame? Then to Paignton, to Emily Appleton’s studio, had head shots taken in various poses for possible poster designs.
16.1.23
Paignton. Line learning Who Wants Fame?
17.1.23
Line learning Who Wants Fame?, and adding some choreography.
18.1.23
Went through all the material I’d learned so far. Then line learning linking material. To Exeter, performed five minutes of material and the Zach poem at Taking the Mic. On the train home I started rewriting Fabaranza.
19.1.23
Rewriting Fabaranza.
21.1.23
Rehearsing the show so far and experimenting with different tones of voice.
22.1.23
Brixham. Line learning linking material.
23.1.23
Line learning linking material.
26.1.23
Bristol. Line learning linking material. Back to Paignton. Started learning ‘London’.
27.1.23
Line learning London.
28.1.23
Early morning session, line learning London.
29.1.23
Brixham. Didn’t get into regular Barnstaple Theatrefest so applied for an ‘alternative space’, pledging to do four shows.
30.1.23
Line learning London.
31.1.23
Line learning London. Barnstaple Theatrefest alternative space application successful!
1.2.23
Ran through all the learned show so far. Experimented with using song or different tones of voice on Who Wants Fame. Line learning linking material. Then in the evening, completely rewrote Who Wants Fame, now based on the music to Three Little Fishes, with an incredibly stupid chorus.
2.2.23
Continued rewrites of Who Wants Fame. Line learning linking material.
3.2.23
Line learning new version of Who Wants Fame.
4.2.23
Line leaning Who Wants Fame.
5.2.23
Brixham. Line learning Who Wants Fame and linking material. Also worked on the poster after Emily’s photo arrived.
6.2.23
Paignton. Line learning The Contestants Await.
7.2.23
Line learning The Contestants Await and Who Wants Fame. Then worked on the show poster.
10.2.23
Line learning The Contestants Await.
11.2.23
Line learning The Contestants Await.
12.2.23
Brixham. Line learning linking material and rewrites of Fabaranza.
13.2.23
Paignton. Line learning linking material and rewrites of Fabaranza.
14.2.23
Line learning Fabaranza.
15.2.23
Practising random bits of the memorised material so far, then line learning Fabaranza. Evening, went to Exeter and performed five minutes and Who Wants Fame?, at Taking the Mic. Fluffed one line but generally it went well and people laughed at the jokes.
19.2.23
Brixham. Line learning and practicing Fabaranza. Afternoon, went to Totnes and performed at Word Stir, tried out some linking material in front of an audience.
20.2.23
Paignton. Fabaranza more light rewrites.
21.2.23
Line learning Fabaranza.
22.2.23
Ran through all of the show so far and was very pleased at how much I remembered. Then line learning the section after Fabaranza. Good progress.
23.2.23
Line learning linking material. Also, ordered a game show style buzzer as the only prop for the show.
24.2.23
Line learning linking material at the shop before work. The buzzer arrived. Evening, performed a little of the new linking material at an event at the Little Theatre, Torquay.
26.2.23
Brixham. Line learning linking material incorporating the buzzer.
27.2.23
Paignton, Line learning.
28.2.23
Line learning linking material.
1.3.23
Line learning linking material.
2.3.23
Line learning This City Never Seemed so Cruel.
3.3.23
Line learning This City Never Seemed so Cruel.
5.3.23
Brixham. Line learning This City Never Seemed so Cruel and linking material. Made decision to read the final poem from a piece of paper during performance to accentuate the fact that it was a piece written, so therefore the line learning phase is completed. On to actual rehearsing, now.
6.3.23
Line learning This City Never Seemed so Cruel.
8.3.23
Ran through the whole show so far. 58 mins so will have to prune maybe the last poem. Also decided that the back of the piece of paper uses for the last poem will have David Walliams written on it in big letters. Email from Guildford Fringe offering a date which I accepted.
9.3.23
Rewrote ‘To the Celebrity’.
10.3.23
Rehearsing ‘You Should Write a Poem . .’.
12.3.23
Brixham. Writing the show blurb and publicity material.
I had a lovely gig in Bristol the other week. The venue was a theatre on an old lightship in the harbour. It was moored to the quay almost totally static but even so I kept lurching sideways. The boat wasn’t even rocking, it was probably just something psychological going on deep within me. Boat = movement. What a nob, I expect people thought.
I’d fretted a lot over my set for the gig. I often get Set Fret but this was something else. I wanted to do some of my old bangers, of course, but I also know that I can’t keep hold of them forever, and that the new stuff has to be unleashed on the world at some point.
But there’s also another thing going on. Over the last couple of years I’ve begun to assess what it is that I like in a performance and I’ve been trying to translate that to what I do on stage. Humour and timing, of course, are things I’ve always had an eye on, and hopefully been got at, but lately there are one or two thinks that I’ve been tinkering with because, well people change over the years, don’t they?
One of these things is volume. I’ve begun to appreciate volume. Or rather, I’ve begun to appreciate it less.
Maybe I’ve been watching too many Ivor Cutler videos. Or Bob Newhart. Or, come to think of it, almost all the people I watch for enjoyment. Laurie Anderson. Edith Sitwell. Alan Bennett. They’re all quiet, somewhat reserved, and seldom loud. Yet they’re funny and they’re clever and I want to be both of those things. I’ve been to plenty of poetry gigs where the poet - and it’s usually a young man, though I don’t want to develop stereotypes- suddenly starts bellowing into the mic halfway through a poem. That sort of thing’s not for me. I’d feel I was bullying. If you’re going to shout, then at least stand back from the mic. I feel it also changes the dynamic of a performance from enjoyment to hostility. I know that some people may enjoy this, and may appreciate this in a performance, because a performance is what it is and what we’re all there for, but we’re all different, and hooray for that. For me, though as soon as a performer starts shouting, I feel that I want to Get Out Of There. So I come away from these performances hoping that I don’t annoy people in the same way.
So this means that I’ve been trying to adopt a more relaxed, conversational tone when delivering my linking material. And I’ve been working hard at this, because it’s hard, after a lifetime adopting something of a more performative tone. But I’ve been having a bash at it. Here’s my little secret as to how I’ve been conditioning myself to be slightly more conversational and less forced: I start my set with the words, ‘Hello, there’. It’s impossible to be loud or forced when the first thing you have said is, ‘Hello, there’. And if I feel myself getting more forced or desperate or less conversational, then I say to myself, ‘Hello, there’.
One of the other things I’ve been concentrating on is sex. No, not in that way. I mean, the sexual content of a set and the effect that this, too, has on an audience.
In the early years of my comedy poetry career, I relied quite a bit on content of a sexual nature. Naturally, this was a comedic version of sex, performed (the poem, I mean), by someone who you’d think was probably not very good at it, and therein lay the humour. Indeed, my first collection with Burning Eye, ‘Nice’, was about relationships and more specifically, sex, in the most part. I remember someone writing in a copy of it that had found its way into a poetry library in Manchester, ‘Not nearly enough mention of sex’.
The thing is, I was in my thirties when I wrote some of those poems, and possibly just about passable enough to seem naive and comfortable with such relationships. But now I’m very nearly fifty and the idea of me being on stage talking about sex seems, well, creepy. I’m aware that many in the audience will be thinking the same thing.
I’m not alone with this idea. I was chatting with an LGBT performance poet who’s much higher up the spoken word ladder than me, and he was saying that he is going through a similar process of removing the sexual content from his sets because, as he gets older, he feels it less and less appropriate. I felt that this vindicated the unease I also feel these days of standing at the mic and talking about orgasms and the such. It also maximises the humour when I might mention something vaguely sexual during a set.
So it feels that I’m becoming much more mature as a comedy poet, and gosh, that’s taken it’s damn time. I’m more aware of the audience and more aware of what it is which makes me feel, after a performance, that I’ve done something I can be proud of. This has come about through several years of studying what it is that people laugh along with (as well as laugh at). It also means, hopefully, that I’ll not be stereotyped, just like the words written in that copy of Nice.
We all change. In fact, that was the subject of my very first solo show, ‘Static’. But right now, I’ve never felt so relaxed as a performer, and so at one with my material. Another friend of mine, the American fringe performer Dandy Darkly, once said to me that you can be as silly and as weird as you want to be, so long as you do it with conviction, and that’s definitely what I’ve been aiming for of late.
As a performance poet I believe it is exciting and perhaps even necessary to look at what has come before. In such a way you might be inspired in ways you’d never imagine. I can’t remember how I got into the sound poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, but this poem is a response to that.
Performed live at Satellite of Love, January 2023, Bristol. Photos by Marius Grose.
Had a wonderful time headlining at Satellite of Love, a poetry night in Bristol which takes place in a theatre inside a decommissioned light ship in the harbour at Bristol.
In 2018 I toured the fringes and festivals of the UK with my show ‘In the Glare of the Neon Yak’. It was something of a gamble at the time to write and rehearse an hour long poem which took me away from the comedy and whimsy and into a strange territory of myth, folk-lore, atmosphere and storytelling. The show had taken a few years to write, from around 2015, and almost a whole year to learn. I was hugely pleased with the outcome and I got the chance to perform it everywhere from Edinburgh to London, the GlasDenbury Festival to Surrey, and then with a live jazz band in Totnes. It is the piece of work which I’m proudest.
Performing the show was a weird experience. Over the Edinburgh fringe, I suddenly became aware that the characters were almost friends, and that I would look forward to performing them again when their part of the show arrived. Indeed, it was something of a shame when the run ended and I felt genuinely sad not to perform these characters for a while. Almost immediately I began to think of a possible sequel to the show, yet I knew that it would not be the same because I didn’t want to spoil the mythology that I had built up around the show. ‘
‘In the Glare of the Neon Yak’ took place on a sleeper train heading north, filled with circus performers, and stalked by the mythological entity the Neon Yak, loosely based on the folklore tales of Herne the Hunter. I decided that a follow up show would have a similar structure, (characters telling their tales), but I wanted to go deeper and move the focus of the show to the actual situations in which these characters found themselves. I wrote three new pieces and also ‘borrowed’ the long poem ‘Bulk Carrier’ from my 2018 book Zebra, and then wrote a kind of framing narrative to bind all of these together. I envisaged an LGBT astronaut, flying to Venus, being consoled throughout his long journey by stories which would remind him of the importance of his community, until the final story details his own adventure when he finally gets to the planet.
The individual sections which make up the show could easily stand alone as performance pieces: ‘Bar Code Blues’ takes place in a supermarket in the 1990s with a character who is struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality. ‘Bulk Carrier’ takes place on a container vessel in the middle of the ocean which is haunted, (Why not?), by the ghost of Marcel Proust. ‘Much Ado About Muffins’ is a modern retelling of the Shoemaker and the Elves, taking place in a bakery which refuses to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding. And the final piece, ‘Dancing with the Electric Dragons of Venus’, takes the astronaut to a planet where every desire and hope are granted.
And as a special link to its predecessor, the voice of Ground Control is none other than Tony, previously the Train Manager from ‘In the Glare of the Neon Yak’. A change of career, perhaps, but he’s lost none of his humour.
I’d hoped to perform the show all over the UK during 2020, but world events put paid to that. With a show already written for 2021 and the publication of my new book to tie in with it, I knew that Electric Dragons would probably have to be mothballed for quite some time. So this autumn I set about making it into an audio play, a monologue delivered with musical interludes and sound effects, which I might unleash on the world this Christmas.
It’s been an amazing journey working on this show. Obviously, it’s a shame that it didn’t get to see the light of day in 2020. But without the constraints of having to fit the show into an hour slot, I was able to stretch my legs a little with the audio version. I do hope you will like it, and let me know what you think of it.
00.00: Lift Off! Voyage of the Starship Poopscoop 06.23: Bar Code Blues 22.00: Bulk Carrier 33.26: Much Ado About Muffins 49.30: Dancing with the Electric Dragons of Venus
The thing was, I was fed up with lugging props around the various fringes and festivals. That was the crux of the issue. Each year I would devise a new solo show and each year I’d promise myself that it would be a simple affair, and within weeks I had incorporated so many props, costumes and technical details into the show that it couldn’t possibly be performed without a big box of paraphernalia. Which is not what you need when you have to run for trains or make your way from Devon to the Edinburgh fringe.
2019 was when things got just too much. That year, I had a show all about tea. The show was called ‘Spout’. ‘Spout’ could only be performed with: a tea pot, a cup, a saucer, a tea caddy, a box of drawstring teabags, a tea cosy, an iPad which had all the various sounds, music and cues stored on it, a Bluetooth speaker, some juggling balls, a large pad of paper with a word search written on it in sharpie, and a tray on to which I had glued another teapot, another cup, another saucer, a milk jug and a sugar bowl, so that I could dance around the stage without them falling off. So once you add luggage for a week in Scotland, merchandise to hopefully sell, and everything else which I normally travel with, you can see that performing the show was more like moving house.
And then on the way back from Edinburgh, someone stole my luggage. Sure, I had my box of props, but the tea cosy was in the suitcase which got stolen. The tea cosy was actually a proper hat knitted and created by the artist Hazel Hammond, and I think I was more upset about this than the fact I’d lost all my clothing. And that’s when I decided, the next show will have no props!
No music, either. No complicated cues. No background beats. It would just be me and the audience with no embellishment whatsoever. Something about this felt pure. It felt real. It felt grown up.
In 2020 I started work on the new show. I decided that it would tie in with my new book, published by Burning Eye. I decided that the show would feature only poems from the new collection. Which I knew would make the writing somewhat limited, but I was determined to get it done.
Each one of my shows was inspired by something or someone during the planning process. My first show, Static, (2014), was heavily influenced by the work of performance artist Laurie Anderson. In the Glare of the Neon Yak (2017) was influenced by storytellers such as Dandy Darkly. And when it came to the Yay show, I was busy looking at the work of singer David Byrne, and storyteller Spalding Gray. Spalding’s only prop was often just a table which he sat behind. And Byrne’s American Utopia stage show concentrated on choreography and movement. These were the two things I was watching or reading about during the creative process.
I also read a book about creating solo work, and it suggested keeping a diary. Aha, I thought. Now that’s something I can definitely do. I thought I’d forget about the diary, but it actually helped with the creative process because it pushed me to do something which I could then write in the diary as proof that I was making some kind of progress.
Naturally, at the time I had no idea that this period of creativity and rehearsal would coincide with various lockdowns, pandemic mandates, and the whole paranoia and psychological malaise which these brought to the art industry. At some moments I wondered if I would ever get the chance to perform the show. As it is, with a bit of luck and some nifty admin, I managed to perform Yay twice in 2021, as well as perform it to a completely empty theatre for the benefit of a filmmaker, so that people could view the show online during lockdown.
And below you can see a couple of videos of poems from the book.
These are poems about memory, place, and growing up. These are poems about the things that happen and the people you meet along the way. Fleeting encounters on sleeper trains, becoming invisible in a Japanese mega-city, growing up in a house on a hill in the woods glimpsing the whole of London from the back bedroom window, and dreaming, and becoming entranced by the neon.
But most of all, these are poems about the woods. The forest. The trees. Obscuring memories, perhaps, as well as the view. Lonely autumn walks through a leafy copse, imagining other places, other existences.
This collection of poems from Robert Garnham is subtly autobiographical and layered in surprising ways which takes the reader beyond the present moment.
‘The poems are a journey through memory, travel and the “everyday miracles” trying to find “meaning where there is none” and finding a home that “probably never existed”. Very serious stuff but you’re knocked off-balance by the humour which ranges from the ironic to the iconic, the snappy to the quirky, the satirical to self-deprecating, the wit and wordplay.’
(Rodney Wood)
‘Robert Garnham has an unerring eye for the bizarre, and a penchant for the outrageous statement, such as ‘I was never interested in poetry’. He told the school careers adviser he wanted to work in a garden centre. The Pet Shop Boys were dismissed by his dad as ‘whining bastards’. At the same time Robert developed a strange admiration for the US comedian Bob Newhart. Need I say more?’
(Greg Freeman)
‘Woodview is an evocative and sensitive collection of poems and prose that resonates with leaving childhood behind and searching for an identity. Robert is known for his wit and whimsical works, ever present here. Tenderly sitting beside these are the beautiful and honest poems in the section ‘A Person’ where Robert shows ‘the workings of my heart’. Woodview is Robert at his very best’.
All I said was, Why is it so draughty in here? And you gave me one of those looks Like the tosser that you are, Sprawled akimbo half on the sofa, Half on the pouffe, You sports vest attired shag bunny You king of pungency masked in Lynx Africa You gymnasium dumbbell botherer whose limbs Look like the spare parts left over when Mother Nature has tried to make its first gibbon, You text speak Netflix modern day lothario Looks more like Onslow Whose only cultural refinement is the ability to Belch the theme tune to Countdown You harbinger of sloppy sex whose bedroom technique Feels more like conducting an oil change on a Ford Transit van, Said, I can't feel a draught.
And I was apt to point at the curtains The net curtains the fine lace net curtains Which were lifting ever so gently away From the window frame gently swaying net curtains And I said What's causing this, what's causing this, eh? Is it the ghost of Liberace trying to make a grand entrance? And you didn't get my cultural reference And thinking back I didn't know what it meant either.
And furthermore I insisted persisted that Should I stand there with feather next to the Obviously ill fitting window frames A feather whether the feather should Demonstrate by means of its bristles undulating Sensuously Like a naked James Bond opening titles dancer See them undulating these bristles Like a naked James Bond opening titles dancer Who ironically Would almost certainly feel a draught.
And did I not impinge the possibility That the curtains should billow so Undulating billowing curtains ballooning curtains Swishing whistling billowing curtains Right in front of the TV screen That we might Billowing curtains billowing curtains Fluttering across the TV screen Lose sight of the bigger picture?
And thence did I not utter a silent prayer A private invocation a spell a trance Hands clasped flat palm on palm Eyes screwed tight shut palm on palm Prayer pious prayer eyes shut prayer While you Scooped up and consumed Honey roasted nuts?
And did I not expostulate And did you not lie there Half slouched with your bronzed muscles That put me in mind of the cheap handbags in Primark With your shorty shorty shorty shorty denim shorts Which when you take them off just kind of Maintain the same shale put a book across the top Use them as a makeshift coffee table With your bleached blond blond blond blondie blond Sandy beach bleached hair short spiked Like the stubbly pasture grass around the steaming cowpat Of your bald patch With your face that looks like the top half was incredibly surprised That the bottom half had grown a beard And now it was off to go and join A much more successful face With your tattoo of Marilyn Monroe that had got so wrinkled She now looked like Sid James Did you not lie slumped there and suggest I sit at the other side of the room Sit at the other side of the room? No I replied, I ain't no draught dodger.
Robert Garnham 