At ten years old, I did feel somewhat held back, and I worried that my stories about secret agent dogs were getting a bit old hat. In late 1985 I must have been given another exercise book, because before I knew it, I’d started a brand new story which was innovative on a number of different levels. The first level was that the lead character was not a secret agent. He was a skier, who competed in the skiing world championships and the Winter Olympics. The other level was that he was a human being. And his name was Bill Board. Now, looking at the title of that first book causes a shudder of embarrassment. Yet I can at least comfort myself that I did not come up with the title. You see, the story begins with a skier by the name of Clive, who comes up with the idea that he get a head start at the beginning of every ski race by having his friend, Bill, give him a hefty push. One day Bill pushes too hard, Clive falls over, and Bill goes off down the mountain on his own. Indeed, so well does Bill do, inevitably winning the race, that he is invited to participate in every ski race thereafter. So, representing the UK, Bill becomes, by the last chapter, the skiing world champion. And the title? ‘Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack’. At the time, I thought this a rather clever title. My friend Mark had suggested it, because Bill won his skiing races so often that the organiser had to keep the Union Jack out so that they could raise it on the winner’s rostrum. But soon afterwards I became aware of the patriotic overtones, which I found, even at the time, somewhat silly. I don’t know why I was intelligent enough to realise that the title was overtly and perhaps stupidly patriotic, and yet not intelligent enough to realise that I could simply change the title. By now I was 12 years old and I wanted, oh, how I so desperately wanted to be a writer. I was obsessed with writing, and it was probably all I ever did. Once Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack was finished, I launched into several more Bill Board stories. And some old habits began to creep in. Bill and his friend Clive, having won the skiiing championships, were then asked to become - oh dear - secret agents. Over the course of 1986 and 1987 I churned out fourteen of these buggers. I remember family holidays in which we’d all stay in a caravan somewhere like Bognor or Hastings, and I’d be writing away whenever I had the spare time. I vividly recall a summer evening in Hastings, walking along a hedge-lined country lane after dinner, riding a funicular railway down to the town where I bought an exercise book, the opening paragraph of the next Bill Board story winding its way through my head. We played crazy golf and walked along the beach, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the caravan. Once we’d taken the funicular back up to the site, I remember sitting at the caravan table, opening the exercise book, and writing into the night. By now I was at secondary school. You’d think I’d have to put all of my energy into my studies, but alas, the Bill Board stories came thick and fast. My English teacher, Mr Smith, was encouraging, and took a few of them home to read, and it’s a wonder that he didn’t then decide to retire right on the spot. He did correct some of the spelling, bless him. I remember that Christmas sending him a Christmas card and saying to my mother that he’d probably mark it out of ten and send it back. In 1988, I realised that I’d slowed down the Bill Board output. As a remedy,I bought an exercise book and worked on one final story, which was called ‘Robot on the Rampage’. A couple of things changed in this book: Bill’s friend Clive moved away. A lesser character, Ed, and Ed’s wife Lenda, kind of took Clive’s place. Bill was desperately trying to vanquish a rogue robot while at the same time take part in what he knew would be his last ever Winter Olympics. Things were changing, not only for Bill, but also for me. The big thing that had changed was that my Grandparents had given me a typewriter. It was a huge old Olivetti, the kind that wouldn’t look out of place in an old black and white film of a newspaper office. And oh, how I loved that typewriter! I nicknamed it ‘The Tripewriter’, and wow, I really had to bang down on those keys to get the feint ribbon to make any kind of mark on the page. It must have been insufferable for my parents and our neighbours in the estate, what with those thin walls, to hear this typewriter banging away all afternoon. I ended up using it in the garage, knowing that this would keep some of the noise pollution down, not knowing that our neighbours were running an illegal mini cab company from their caravan and the racket from my typewriter was interfering with their antiquated radio system. I’d grown up, and I’d decided that my stories should grow up too, now that I had a proper typewriter. My parents gave me a wad of yellow typing paper and I started work on a story called The Ghost of Professor Burton, a ghost story set in the fictional village of Englemede. It felt weird writing some that that didn’t have Bill Board as the lead character. In my mind, he was now safely retired from both skiing and being a secret agent, thus allowing me the serenity to work with other characters. The Ghost of Professor Burton was a minor achievement. I asked my sister to draw a front cover for it, and then launched into another ‘book’ based in the fictional village of Englemede. But I missed Bill. Oh, how I missed Bill. Once the second Englemede story was done, I knew that I would easily lose interest in writing unless I did something drastic. And that drastic thing was to bring back Bill Board. Only this time, things were different for Bill, too. The third Englemede story begins with Bill moving to the suburban village and, rather inexplicably, being hired to be the village policeman. His first job is to investigate a shady businessman who wants to build a theme park on the outskirts of the village, and this book, Scheme Park, (and oh, how I loved that title), was probably one of the most important things I’d write. By keeping a character I knew well but changing all of his circumstances at a time when everything was also changing for me, it felt, with hindsight, that Bill was also along for the ride, and that he’d never actually left me. Sure, Clive had moved away. And sure, now he had moved away from Ed and Lenda, but now he was in a new town, with a new job, and a new purpose. And I was on the cusp of my GCSEs and I had discovered that I rather liked men. I was very happy with Scheme Park. Happier still when a classmate called Kevin actually made an electronic Kraftwerk-inspired rap-infused song with Bill as the subject matter. The chorus went, ‘Bill Board, Bill Board, B-b-b-b-ba-Bill Board’, followed by, ‘Englemede, Englemede, Eng-eng-ah-Engle Englemede’. Kevin was a genius before his time. In 1989, I decided that what the Englemede stories needed was more Bill Board. But I was a veritable writing machine. Not satisfied with Englemede, I also wrote Ed and Lenda books, done the old fashioned way in exercise books, detailing their lives running a seaside bed and breakfast, and for some reason, a second hand book shop while getting into the usual japes, scrapes and highjinks. These were of lesser importance, as I was rationing my typewriter ribbon and typing paper for other projects. (Incidentally, I still have The Tripewriter even now and I often use it when I'm a poet in residence at various corporate events). The next Bill Board / Englemede story introduced a new assistant for Bill, in the shape of Justin. Justin was a by-the-rules stick-in-the-mud, and also, in my mind, significantly younger than Bill. In fact, to be honest, I see Justin as representing myself, whereas Bill was more the Bob Newhart kind of character who surrounds himself with eccentric types and bizarre storylines. And once this new partnership of Bill and Justin was established, I also introduced Bill’s girlfriend Polly, (artist and daughter of an inventor who lived in Scilly Isles, because, why not?), and his bosses Sue and James. So by the end of 1989 I had a lot going on with school work, an infatuation with various classmates, the usual throbbing hormones of any 15 year old, a weird interest in American stand-up comedy from the 1950s, and the pop music of the Pet Shop Boys. Things needed simplifying, and this is when I came on the novel idea of ditching the Englemede stories, the Ed and Lenda stories, and combining them all as The Defective Detective Casebook. By this time I’d also started reading other humorous writers. It didn’t matter who they were, so long as they made me laugh. Not only obvious choices like Douglas Adams and PG Wodehouse, but also anything else which used humour primarily, such as the Heroic Book of Failures, the Garfield cartoon strips, and of course, anything by Bob Newhart. As a result, the tone of my writing shifted towards an impulse to crack a joke in almost every sentence. And while this felt great at the time, the results are, sadly, quite unreadable. And in the midst of this maelstrom of gags and meta-fictional narrators who would address the reader personally and say things like, ‘Look what happens in this next sentence’, was Bill Board. Reading my work from this period now can be quite exhausting. It was around this time that my parents bought me an electric typewriter. And to be honest, I don’t blame them. They were probably fed up of the house being shaken to bits by the clunk and crash of my old Tripewriter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the plaster wasn’t falling from the ceiling below my bedroom. But that electric typewriter was a godsend, and it meant that the typing process certainly wasn’t as strenuous as it had been with my old Olivetti. Indeed, for the first few months I would press the keyboard of this new electronic typewriter much more heavily than I actually had to because I wasn’t used to using a machine with such a light touch. Indeed, even today typing these very words, I have to make a conscious effort not to hit certain buttons heavier than others, because I have been so conditioned that certain letters stick. Like Z or X. It’s such a novelty to write words like zebra or xylophone without having to stop everything and prize the hammer away from the page. So by 1990, Bill, Ed, Justin, Lenda and Polly had been consolidated into the Defective Detective series. This made everything much easier. Ed and Lenda still lived at the seaside, but it seemed that every storyline had some reason for Bill and Justin to have to go down to the coast to solve a crime. Or perhaps Ed and Lenda might come back and visit Bill and Polly, and help with whatever case they were working on. Everything seemed right with the world. Also by 1990, I’d moved to sixth form college. And now I was studying for my A-Levels. I was never the world’s greatest student, and it is only recently that I’ve discovered that I’m one of the many people who have dyslexia, which certainly would have made things more difficult when it came to comprehending the higher levels and concepts of A-Level syllabuses. So the fact that I started churning out even more Defective Detective novels really was taking my attention away from my studies. The first Defective Detectives novel was just called Defective Detectives. The second, (and, oh dear, I’d discovered surrealism at this time), was called The Final Revenge of the Boring Spud. The third was called A Healthy Alternative to Suicide. These novels became fairly formulaic, with Bill and Justin tasked by their bosses, Sue and James, to go and investigate some robbery or kidnapping, only to discover that their arch nemesis, Count Ivan Von Wurstfrech, was behind everything. A trip down to the coast would follow, and invariably, a car chase or two, until Count Ivan was stopped in whatever mad scheme he had undertaken. Yet the storyline really served a secondary purpose to various one-liners, jokes and bits of silly wordplay which were probably far more fun to write than to actually read. Take this first paragraph of 1991’s Impending Headache:
Things never seem as bad as they are when seen from a different angle. But then again, things seem worse when they are viewed before they have occurred or if viewed from yet another angle, but things may turn out as expected if expected, but sometimes, if you expect something to happen, it doesn’t happen at all or happens but not as expected. This will cause the expector or expectee to look back upon what had happened and decide whether or not it was better or worse than expected, I expect. Unless he’s dead because of what happened. Or she. Can’t be sexist.
Impending Headache was one of the highlights of the Defective Detectives saga. Indeed, it was my most ambitious piece yet, set at the sixth form college where I was studying and featuring thinly disguised version of my friends and teachers. Bill and Justin went undercover to infiltrate the college, where Count Ivan was up to his usual tricks, and in the process one became a teacher, the other a student. The storyline was the usual faff, but the process of writing Impending Headache was one of the most fun of the whole series. I involved all of my classmates and got them to donate sentences, which became enmeshed in the actual narrative. My best friend Damian helped design a totally bonkers front cover which showed the college and most of the teachers as cartoon characters. At the bottom of each page were totally unrelated cartoon featuring a set of cartoon characters we’d devised, Geoff and his friend Mr Woollytarnish. In between each chapter were hidden extras which had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. The book ended with this legal warning: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without first slipping the author a fiver. All major credit cards accepted. The thing is, I put so much work and effort into Impending Headache, and absolutely none into my A-levels. Consequently, my grades weren’t good enough for university, and in the summer of 1992, I started my first ever job at the local branch of Sainsbury’s. 1992’s first effort was called The Blue Chicken, which seemed a bit mundane after Impending Headache. Bill and Justin were tracking the evil Count Ivan and for some reason he’d ended up at the seaside town where Ed and Lenda had their book shop and guest house. By now, I would say that writing was definitely more of a therapy and an assertion of who I was as a human being. Still closeted, living in a world that was still largely homophobic, too afraid to find love as this was also the height of the AIDS crisis, and now separated from all my friends who had gone off to university, the only thing I could do, apart from cleaning the aisles, storerooms and toilets of the local supermarket, was write. And naturally, I fell in love, and had a brief friendship with someone which didn’t go anywhere much, so coming home every night and writing until about two in the morning seemed the perfect way to take myself away from the world. The Blue Chicken was followed very quickly by Bar Code Blues. This was probably the second best of the Defective Detective books. Kind of following the success of Impending Headache, this time Bill and Justin were sent undercover to the supermarket where I worked, where, surprise surprise, the evil Count Ivan was up to his ghastly schemes. Again, the actual storyline was thin to say the least, but the fun I put into presenting my new work colleagues as barely disguised characters was probably also deeply therapeutic. At around this time, some people in the office at the supermarket started a very short-lived newsletter and I answered a call-out for stories they could use for their monthly circular. And thus, the first half chapter of Bar Code Blues was printed and distributed around the staff rooms of the supermarket. This was the first thing I had ever had printed, and I would sweep the floors of the produce department and dream of the big time, of being a famous writer who got his first break with the staff newsletter of the local supermarket. It was probably read by as many as ten, fifteen people. In truth, at this time, I was probably quite a sad individual. In 1993 I decided to spend some of my wages on my first ever holiday alone. For some reason I chose the town of Looe in Cornwall, and on a Saturday morning I took the train from Reading down to the west country, and I booked into a bed and breakfast. I was 19 years old, and this felt like a big step for me. This would actually be the start of a life spent visiting towns, cities and countries and travelling to some wonderful places around the world, but this was the first time I had ever gone anywhere long distance on my own. And what did I do while I was in Cornwall that week? I started another Bill Board novel. By now I was running out of titles. And secondly, I thought, what’s the point? I don’t even have an audience any more. No more college friends to read the Bill Board stories, and the supermarket newsletter had disappeared after the second edition. And anyway, I thought, what’s the point of titles? I called the next novel 935, because it was the fifth thing I’d worked on in 1993. In the narrative, Bill and Justin had been sent down to Cornwall. The evil Count Ivan was doing something illegal which involved smuggling and the Isles of Scilly, where Polly’s family lived. And that’s about as far as the plot went. However, I did have fun working on the cover for 935 on Polperro beach, spelling out the numbers 9 3 5 in seaweed when the tide went out, and photographing it from several angles. As I say, I was 19 at the time. Three more Bill Board books followed. Last Resort Jack Chopsticks ended 1993 with something of a fizzle, and then in 1994 came A Date with Density, (I wasn’t too bad at titles after all), and then Some Stuff that Happened. (OK, maybe I wasn’t that good with titles). A Date with Density showed Sue and James being fired for incompetence and replaced, so that Bill and Justin had new bosses who they had to impress, but then their new bosses were also fired for incompetence and Sue and James came back. And Some Stuff that Happened kind of ended limply, with Bill, Ed, Polly, Lenda and Justin having Christmas dinner together. You could tell that I’d grown weary of the whole enterprise by this time, as the front cover was drawn in black biro in about three minutes, and the whole novel amounted to a massive thirty something pages. By now I was twenty. My life was a series of underwhelming events. I was still a couple of years away from my first relationship, and I had failed at A-Levels and had a highly prestigious job cleaning toilets. Which I know isn’t a bad thing, but when your friends are all off at university and having the times of their lives, it did kind of make me question several aspects of my life. I wanted to be a writer. Oh, how I ached to be a writer. Yet the Bill Board stories, even I had to admit, were virtually unreadable. One night in late 1994 I bit the bullet and decided that I had to write something - well, something well. And that meant no more Bill Board. By this time I’d made the mistake of discovering existentialism. Whereas before I was reading Douglas Adams, and reading for enjoyment, I was now reading for intellectual curiosity, and because I wanted to be feted as a serious writer. I turned my back on Bill and dived further into the world of existentialism, and as a result, probably further up my own backside. I started wearing black. I went into a shop and tried on a beret. I became the most boring twenty year old in existence. And I knew that one thing I had to do without was humour. If I was ever to be taken as a serious writer, then there couldn’t be any humour. Indeed, the humour only came back in - wait for it - 2009 when I discovered performance poetry, but that’s another story. So for an astonishing 28 years, I didn’t even touch the Bill Board books. I became a performance poet. I spent most of my twenties and thirties having lots of sex. I studied A-Levels, university and post grad university at night school. I moved to Devon. I travelled the world. And all the time, the Bill Board books remained as a kind of memory, as if a TV show I used to watch, the plots of which I could no longer recall, just the characters and the fun I used to have writing them, banging them out on my old Tripewriter. Also, I wonder if there was something deeper going on. At the time I was writing the Bill Board stories, I knew I was gay, but this was never mentioned not once in the text. Bill, Ed, Justin, Clive and James were all straight, in my imagination. (Though I have my doubts about Justin). Bill, Ed and Clive all had girlfriends or got married. The courtship of Bill and Polly is a major part of the later novels, though they never actually got married. It’s almost as if I had created a world where everyone was achingly straight and I, as their omniscient narrator, was therefore straight by association. In late 2021, I decided to start work on a new novel. And for some reason, I thought of Bill, and I wondered what he might have done during the last 28 years, and what he might now be up to. I decided that he would probably have left the police force by now. At the same time, I went to visit a friend and he was telling me the troubles he was having in getting a new recycling bin delivered. Indeed, he delivered this wonderful monologue which I told him should be the basis of an Edinburgh fringe show. And then when I got home that night, I kind of put this idea together with the idea of exploring what Bill might now be up to, and the narrative of Bin just kind of presented itself to me. It’s now the middle of 2022 and working on Bin has been one of the happiest projects I’ve been involved with for quite some time. On various streaming services you can now catch up with Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek, and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, because the trend seems to be for this kind of nostalgic comfort television, and in the same sort of way, this character who appeared in novels which only a sprinkling of college friends, one or two English teachers, and some staff of a suburban supermarket ever encountered, now has a chance, finally, to get something of a more modest appreciation. And only now do I realise, reading this, that Bill was there for me at a very important time of my life. School, college, my first job, and the entirety of my teenage years were echoed in the stories. Bill was there for me, and now, hopefully, I’ll now be there for Bill.
1986 Nobody Can Fold Up the Union Jack 1986 The Return of Hugo First 1986 Steve Cramp and the Flying Robots 1986 Who on Mars is Bill Board? 1986 Wallies at the Winter Olympics 1986 Aravanta 1987 The Phantom Dustcart 1987 The Revenge of Dan Druff 1987 Copellia’s Second Go 1988 Robot on the Rampage
1988 (Englemede) Scheme Park 1989 Defective Detective 1989 (Englemede) The Gold Mush 1989 Defective Detective Two 1989 (Englemede) The Really Interesting Club of Englemede 1990 Defective Detective Three 1990 (Englemede) Too Boring for Real Ghosts 1990 Defective Detective Four 1991 (Englemede) Notre-Dame-de-Bellecombe 1991 Defective Detectives 1991 Defective Detectives Two : A Healthy Alternative to Suicide 1991 Impending Headache 1992 Defective Detectives Three : The Final Revenge of the Boring Spud 1993 The Blue Chicken 1993 Bar Code Blues 1993 935 1994 Last Resort Jack Chopsticks 1994 A Date with Density 1994 Some Stuff that Happened 2022 Bin
I first started writing The Neon Yak about three years ago. I was going through some old poems that I had written while staying with my Grandmother in Surrey, she lived in an old two up two down cottage in the woods and there were glimpses of London in the distance, and I realised what a magic place it all was. And then I started to think about all of the emotions a teenager has at the time, and the events which occur which, looking back, seem magical in themselves. Add to these the usual teenage longings, and the inner struggle of accepting my own homosexuality, and the story just seemed to seep into my consciousness.
The Neon Yak is heavily autobiographical, but not totally. Some of the things which happen in the novel actually did happen to me. In fact, I would say that about three quarters of the ‘supernatural’ events in the novel happened. I’m not sure whether they took place in that strange realm of half dream, half awake, or in actuality, but they felt real and they still feel real now.
And what of The Neon Yak itself? This entity is something I created for my 2017 Edinburgh show, In the Glare of the Neon Yak, but it is based on the local legends and folklore which were prevalent in the area where I grew up of Herne the Hunter. If you’ve never heard of Herne, then a Google search will prove enlightening, though there are theories that he was invented by William Shakespeare for The Merry Wives of Windsor. Whatever the origins, Herne the Hunter seemed real for us kids growing up, and any visit to the woods always carried the risk of being confronted by The Hunter.
The novel takes place during the summer between middle school and secondary school, which is always a strange time when you are growing up. For me it was especially auspicious, because it meant commuting to a busy town in the suburbs of west London instead of staying in our cosy little Surrey village surrounded by woods. The secondary school felt like another world and of course, along with it came a growing sense of my own sexuality, and my own denial of that. The events which are laid out during that summer, in actuality, probably occurred over the space of a few years. If you ask me nicely one day, I might tell you which are real and which are works of imagination.
I wrote the first draft of the novel over a frenetic month in 2023, and then spent the next year refining it and editing. I am hugely grateful to Stoat Books for publishing it.
My novel The Neon Yak is published today by Stoat Books. A tale of growing up, coming of age, magic, folklore, the dark woods of Surrey, and a drag queen called Tina Afterburner.
“Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own life? The Neon Yak is a beautifully written and deeply introspective novel that explores the challenges of growing up different. Set in the heart of 1980s suburbia, it follows Daniel Cooper, a boy caught between his true self and the expectations imposed upon him. As he navigates school bullies, family tensions, and the constant backdrop of motorways and distant city lights, Daniel finds refuge in books, music, and his vivid imagination. Amidst his struggle with societal norms and self-discovery, a voice from within—embodied by the captivating and enigmatic Tina—urges him to embrace his authentic identity.”
Here’s an excerpt from the novel, a short chapter entitled ‘One Day I Levitated’.
I spent my teenage years writing comedy short stories. Eventually I would join a writers’ circle and read these out, but that’s as far as they ever got. Around the year 1999 I decided I wanted to become a serious writer, and got into some very pretentious high literature, such as James Joyce, or Juan Goytisolo, and I dreamed of literary stardom and making a difference. I conceived of a book which would be so special that it wouldn’t even have a name, that’s how pretentious I was back then. At the time, I was young, enthusiastic, newly out, with my first partner and my first flat. My hobby was travelling all over the world, and I really thought I was going to be the most famous writer who ever lived. Ha!
I wrote the book between 2000 and 2004 and then promptly never looked at it again. I never sent it anywhere, and I never let anyone read it. The only thing I did with it was to take the entire second part and make it into a play, ‘Fuselage’, which actually won a theatre writing competition and was performed / rehearse read over two nights by a professional company at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter. That was in 2008. And I hadn’t looked at it since.
Until the other day, when I found the damn thing on a memory stick. It was saved in twelve different parts, so I’ve just spent all of today gluing them together as a word document, (I didn’t use word back then), and the book is now complete for the first time. I’ve decided to give it a title, too – ‘Orbs’, after one of the main characters.
Anyway, I’m not going to do anything else with it. But I thought you might get a kick out of reading the synopsis so that you can see just what a car crash the thing was. It was written in Devon, Copenhagen, Toronto and New York, which is probably the only notable thing about it!
Orbs
Robert Garnham
Part One
Chapter One : Cassandra meets Lucas on a train. She is, apparently, recently bereaved of her boyfriend Aaron. The chapter is narrated by Mister Collins – apparently an ex-lover of Cassandra’s. On the train, the conversation between her and Lucas is overheard by Orbs who announces that Lucas can, if he wants, bring Aaron back to life through literature. Of a sudden the train grinds to a halt.
Chapter Two : Lucas insists on leaving the stranded train. They walk through the woods to a mansion house where they are expected by Mrs Ohspander. Cassandra is insistent that Lucas write Aaron into existence for her. They stay the night. Over dinner Lucas decides not to do as he is asked. Orbs arrives and takes Cassandra out to a chapel in the grounds of the house dedicated to the life of Aaron. Orbs explains that Aaron – (despite being dead) – is the narrator of the chapter.
Chapter Three : Cassandra is distraught. She wanders in the forest and returns to the house. She cannot find her way in. Instead, she spends the night in a heated greenhouse. Lucas arrives and they make love. They discuss the re-invention of Aaron and Lucas declares to her his love. Cassandra drowns Lucas into the pond and returns to the house. In the library she meets Orbs who says that Mr Collins has been watching her. Orbs hints that Cassandra is, in fact, dead, and that it is Mr Collins who has invented her for a character in a book. Aaron is very much alive.
Part Two
Chapter One : Lucas and Jakub have crashed in the desert. Jakub is injured, Lucas cares for him, and a bond of love develops which Jakub does not reciprocate. One day Orbs arrives and cures Jakub’s injured leg, finds them food and water and solves many of their problems. Lucas is convinced that Orbs is an evil spirit intent on separating them. When no-one is looking, Lucas sabotages the radio equipment.
Chapter Two : Orbs organises the makeshift camp and ensures that food and water are available, and Jakub’s leg begins to heal. Lucas is afraid that this will result in the end of his association with the older man. He remembers the cacophony of their crash-landing. A sandstorm blows in and, unnoticed by Jakub, Lucas murders Orbs.
Chapter Three : Jakub questions Orbs’ disappearance, Lucas finally admits to killing him. He walks off into the desert and is rescued, eventually, by Grainer and Shelley, who come back for Jakub and drive them to the nearest city. Grainer asks where Orbs is but Lucas remains silent. Jakub then admits to having crashed the plane on purpose.
Part Three
Chapter One : Rozetta is a curator at a museum of writers in Paris. Meek, ineffectual, she wishes she were more like Jakub, an adventurer who always gets what he wants. They are sent to the mountains in order to secure precious artefacts pertaining to the poet Michael Afff, but there is something about the small kingdom which they both find intimidating. Rozetta rests in her hotel room and hears footsteps approach, menacingly, on the veranda.
(The paragraphs of this chapter have been numbered and mixed up. The reader must choose from three possible combinations in order to read them. Only one is correct. Superfluous, ‘rogue’ paragraphs have also been inserted.)
Chapter Two : Back in the city, Rozetta feels herself changing into a confidant, brash young woman. Jakub, meanwhile, loses all his confidence. Rozetta also feels herself inundated with words and poems. A representative of the mountain kingdom, Orbs, reveals that, in an attempt to bring back Michael Afff, his DNA has been injected into them both. However, a mix-up has resulted in Rozetta being infected with Jakub’s DNA, and vice versa.
(This chapter has footnotes which explain Orbs’ motivations. The footnotes also have footnotes, which spell out a short poem. This, too, has footnotes.)
Chapter Three : (Takes place after Chapter One). In the mountain kingdom, Rozetta walks around, dazed. At the cathedral she watches the High Priest of a cult based on the work of Afff – Orbs himself. Jakub meets Orbs in the park – he explains that this was the only way to bring Afff back. It is hinted, though, that rather than being a mix-up, Rozetta actually is infected with Afff’s DNA, and the poet is taking over.
(This chapter is written entirely back to front. The reader must determine this for themselves. Also, a new mark of punctuation is used, the explanation of which is also contained within the narrative.)
Part Four
Chapter One : Deni is trapped inside a poem in ancient Greece. Rozetta is coming to his rescue armed with a copy of Micheal Afff’s poetry and a river-boat, deep in the jungles of the Amazon. The expedition comes across a statue deep in the foliage of Rozetta herself. Orbs appears in the poem and offers advice to Deni, and then he appears on the river boat as an interested observer. It is hinted, however, that it is Rozetta who is trapped in a poem and that Deni is the author.
Chapter Two : Deni, as the author of Rozetta’s adventure, is himself trapped in a cage in Vienna during a masked ball. Orbs visits him and implores him not to tamper with the narrative, it is having a negative effect on Rozetta’s existence. Meanwhile, in the jungle, Rozetta and Orbs investigate a mysterious abandoned city. Back on the river, their boat is attacked by natives and it sinks below the water.
Chapter Three : Deni is in a cabin of an ocean-going container vessel, he is also an amateur artist. Rozetta and Orbs are travelling through the jungle on an overnight train. In the restaurant car Orbs plays piano jazz, romance is a possibility. The container vessel picks up a man floating in the sea in a life-raft, it is Orbs. On the train in the jungle the brakes are applied – Orbs and Rozetta investigate and discover a container vessel, lifted out of the water and placed one hundred miles from the sea in front of them.
Part Five
Chapter One : Deni and Robert are lovers, living in a caravan at a seaside town. They are conducting a theatrical experiment in which members of the public, unwittingly, are participants in a secret play. Deni’s ex-lover, Orbs, arrives, and they reminisce – Robert feels jealous. After a night of partying in which Orbs’ intentions are frustrated, they wake to find the caravan – and themselves – hundreds of miles away.
Chapter Two : Deni and Robert have been transported to a sand dune and a wide beach, a desolate landscape. Deni bemoans the loss of his desk and his project. Orbs helps reconvene the project in their new location. Robert sees Eeon, a deck-hand on a pleasure boat. Wandering in the sand dunes, he discovers Deni’s desk. Later, on the same pleasure boat, Robert tells Deni that he has seen the desk and Deni reacts angrily, forces the boat back and runs off into the dunes, never to be seen again.
Chapter Three : Robert, Eeon and Orbs are staying at a lighthouse. Robert continues Deni’s project. Eeon picks up foreign stations on his radio, incomprehensible speeches. Robert falls in love with Eeon. Orbs is worried about his place in the universe and his ever-decreasing sense of youth. During a thunderstorm Eeon and Robert listen to the radio – the speaker hints at religious and cultural conflict. Eeon feels lost and uneasy. The foreign speaker then starts mentioning aspects of their private lives, their deepest fears. Running to tell Orbs of this, they discover that it is he who is the speaker.
Part Six
Chapter One : Ostensibly a meditation on my own childhood, the autobiographical sections give way to a narrative based on the imaginings of Eeon’s own childhood in tandem with my own. A kindly relative, Orbs, has spotted the doubt in myself and proclaims to know of a solution – that life should just be lived.
Chapter Two : A comedy tracing the career of Cassandra, a modern artist working in New York, and Robert, a poet, each of whom has run out of inspiration. To advance Cassandra’s career, Robert spends a night in her studio and concocts works of art on her behalf, aided by the janitor, Orbs. On realising the futility of art in life, Robert decides to kill himself by jumping off a crane into the river, but Orbs saves him. Arcs is revealed to be a manifestation of Orbs’ imagination. Examples of Arcs’ work as an artist are placed within the chapter as visual representations.
Chapter Three : Robert is a poet in New York, seemingly without friends or success. His sister, Cassandra, is the subject of a retrospective at the modern art facility. Robert feels left out. At the launch party, he feels distinctly out of sorts, until he sees Cassandra slumped in the corner, depressed by fame. The next day he goes back to the gallery with the help of the janitor, Orbs, and he replaces the works of art in Cassandra’s exhibition with posters of his own poetry. Lost in the gallery, he meets Stefan and they fall in love. Robert becomes successful and he and Stefan host a magnificent party.
I’ve always loved using ink cartridge pens. Indeed, I’ve been using the same Parker pen since 1995. Yes, you read that right. The same Parker Vector stainless steel pen, which I’ve written with almost every day on poems, short stories, you name it. However lately I’ve been branching out and trying other pens, such as a Lamy, a Waterman pen, and recently, a Pilot pen. They’re all very good, though bizarrely the best pen, and certainly the most robust, has been the Jinhao Chinese pen with its chunky design and its metal shaft.
But the pen I’d always wanted was a Kaweco Sport, in particular, the grass version. It looked beautiful and there are plenty of videos on YouTube of people eulogising their Kaweco brass pens and saying how beautiful they looked. So last week I ordered one, paying much more than I normally would have done just for a pen.
And yes, it’s a thing of beauty. It arrives in a tin which reminds me of a sweet tin, or a tobacco tin. And when you first get your hands on them, they’re brassy and shiny and new looking. However within a few days of using them they become wonderfully tarnished and start to look both personal and antique, staining on the parts of the shaft where your fingers go most often.
How does it write? Well, this is where I made a slight error and accidentally ordered the extra wide nib version. It worked perfectly, but as a writer, the thick nib spread the ink too widely for my liking. So I paid ten pounds extra and ordered a medium nib. It was very easy to swap over as the metal casing allows the plastic nib to unscrew easily. And now it writes very well indeed.
The pen is short so that it fits easily into a pocket. You can buy an extra clip to attach it to one’s pocket, which I’ve done, though I admit that I rather like the aesthetic purity of the pen without the clip. It feels excellent to hold and to write with, and I’ve had no problems with ink flow.
So in short, it’s a remarkable pen, sturdy and good to look at!
You know what it's like. It's just gone three in the afternoon And you get a sudden pang For casserole. Not quite as full on as a stew, Not quite as funky as a hot pot, Not quite as opaque as soup Nor even a broth with its Meaty meaty chunks, Casserole, winter warmer, Dumpling soaker, Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
Traipsing round the supermarket aisle Where is the casserole? This'll take a while I tell you what will a-make a-me smile A glimpse of casserole, I would run a mile Like a character from mythology, a personal trial Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
Excuse me mister manager Supermarket manager Where is the casserole, Don't hold it back! Excuse me mister manager Supermarket manager Where is the casserole, It's something that you lack!
Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
And the supermarket manager said
2.
I am the very model of a supermarket manager We have so many bargains here we'd see off any challenger We sell our food in tins and packs and sometimes in a canister And if somebody makes a mess I have to call the janitor. I am so damn professional I'm nothing like an amateur Our shelves are always fully stocked, our sugar it is granular I make a daily sales forecast with several parameters We have a fine display in here of spoons and forks and spatulas Our singles night is Wednesday the place is full of bachelors I am the very model Yes I am the very model Yes I am the very model Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
I have so many colleagues here and staff and several underlings I go straight home it's getting late I strip down to my underthings I'm not about to come on to you if that is what you're wondering Cos I'm a decent sort of chap though often prone to blundering The music that I hear at night is shopping trolleys trundling It fills me with a strange delight I cannot stop from shuddering A queue of shoppers in a row, the slowest till is the one working Our motto is Grab What You Can, a philosophy which underpins Our shareholders and chief exec, our profits they are funnelling I am the very model Yes I am the very model Yes I am the very model Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
But I don't know if we've got Casss-errrrrrr-roooolllllle!
I'll ask Janet.
Oh, Janet?
3.
What?
You got any of the good stuff, Janet?
And iiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiii, Will always loooovee Souuuuuuuuuupppppp.
No Janet, the other thing?
Oh yes.
(To the tune of Alejandro, by Lady Gaga)
I've looked everywhere In the stock room But I haven't got a pack n't got a pack. In the freezer In the stock room Not even in the chiller on the shelf.
You know that I love casserole, Hot like stew or a sausage roll At this point I do suggest Pot Noodle
Don't look like we Have got any Casserole -ole, I'm not your babe With casserole Haven't got none, Not in a pack Nor in a box Just a small back We haven't got We haven't got Any cass'role.
Any cass'role Any cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role
Any cass'role Any cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role
Stop, please! Just let me go!
I've got a spillage in aisle six.
4.
Tell me young man, Why do you like casserole so much?
I live a life devoted to it And it often gets me grumpy That a common misconception is That it's cold and ever so lumpy.
A casserole is different And lifts me high anew It fills me with a warmth inside That you don't really get with stew.
And stroganoff can bugger off Please take away that bowl And if you really love me true Just give me casserole.
I spent a night of bliss with Trish So sexual so winsome so fetching She gave me a plate of beef bourgignon I spent the whole night retching.
Casserole casserole casserole Just the sound of it makes me tingle. Casserole casserole casserole. It's probably why I'm still single.
5.
I'm sorry I can't help you With that food that you do seek The only thing that I suggest Is to come back next week.
Our casserole it takes its toll And I really don't want to harm ya Perhaps young man I could tempt you With a chiller fridge lasagne?
6.
Dinner. I want for dinner A dish that I can have with wine It's the one thing on my mind. Hunger. Increasing hunger. An empty stomach makes a growling sound It's enough to bring me down.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole. And now I will take my leave!
Came in Around 3.30 Thought it would only take a smidge Headed to the chiller fridge Empty It was so empty A gap where obviously it should have been Everyone could hear me scream.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole. And now I will take my leave!
Stocktake, The latest stocktake It says you had some yesterday Now they all have gone away Checking The best before date This supermarket Hasn't got It hasn't got Any casserole This supermarket Hasn't got It hasn't got Any casserole And Now I Will Leeeeeeaaaaavvvvee!
Yo-Yo: Ruminations of an Accidental Poet, published by Puddlehopper, is now available to purchase! Telling stories from fifteen years as a performance poet. Festivals, fringes, fleeting appearances on TV, filming, faffing around with props, flopping at slams, it has it all! Essays from Write Out Loud, Chortle, Litro Magazine and and Torquay Museum’s lecture series, and some written specifically for this collection. Plus one new poem! Details on how to order this book will be revealed shortly.
Here’s the blurb:
In 2008 Robert Garnham thought he’d give performance poetry a try, having never heard of it before. What followed was to be fifteen years of crazy poetry adventures in all sorts of different venues. These collected essays describe, with humour and warmth, gigs in every part of the UK (and further afield), shenanigans at music festivals, angst at the Edinburgh Fringe and every conceivable type of poetic misadventure.
‘As Robert Garnham has been a huge influence on me as a comedy spoken word artist, I read this collection of essays with great anticipation. It didn’t disappoint! A wonderfully entertaining read’. (CLIVE OSEMAN).
It pains me to write this letter, but circumstance has forced my hand. For many years, the Brixham Town Scone Society website has been a valuable tool for members to connect, ask advice, share cooking tips, and buy and sell both equipment and ingredients. There have been no complaints and many of us have both enjoyed, and taken advantage of, this wealth of scone-cooking know-how just a click of the mouse away. However, lately it has come to the attention of this committee that the Classified section of the website has been coming under some abuse from certain members whose interests lay beyond mixing methods and how to create a really cracking milk glaze. The problem first came to light when it was pointed out to me that a lot of our newer subscribers to the website, who filled in the online form, listed the classified section as their main motivation for doing so, yet almost all of them answered the question ‘How many hours a week do you spend cooking scones?’ with the response, ‘None’, and in a lot of cases, ‘I do not like scones’. This was somewhat perplexing and an investigation was launched in case there were some confusion in the title of our website, (Scones A-Plenty.com), or indeed if there were some new boy band or comic perhaps titled ‘Scone Man’, that was leading to this sudden influx in new members. However, after a terrible mix-up (no pun intended) the other day in which one of our senior committee members, Maureen Hepplethwaite, found herself not at a scone cookery demonstration as she had been expecting, but at a swinger’s sex party, it was decided that action was needed. The first thing we noticed was the number of young men offering a variety of different shaped spatulas for sale in the classifieds. While these are great implements in the mixing process, it is probably more common in the scone community to use wooden spoons, so I think it’s fair to say that this raised a few eyebrows among the committee. Most of these spatulas were advertised as being new, ‘or in new condition’, while some were being offered in a slightly battered state. At this stage, alarm-bells didn’t actually start ringing. The admin behind running a pro-scone website means that some matters don’t actually get attended to until there’s some kind of emergency. The Great Flour Shortage of 2005 was one such calamity, and equally fraught was the resignation of our chairman in 2009 when he announced that frankly, he preferred muffins. We then noticed the alarming number of society members offering scones of varying states of completion, some of which were ‘ready to pick up now’, others were, ‘come and collect’, while many were ‘lacking one final ingredient’. ‘Already in the mixing bowl’, apparently, (and according to Reginald, who does not proclaim to be an expert on such matters), means that the ‘seller’ is willing to conduct the process in their own home. ‘On the baking tray’, apparently means that they are willing to travel. And it’s anyone’s guess what ‘ready to be consumed with fresh fresh salad’, means. Suspicions were raised further when Phil Burton (member since 1988), advertised that he had a home-made ready mix featuring fresh sultana pieces and fruity chunks only to receive an email which read, ‘You’re a dirty boy, oh my, you’re a dirty boy!’, followed by someone's phone number. Dear society members, this will just not do. To get to the root of the problem, we have employed a code-breaker whose previous area of expertise was the Egyptian hieroglyphs and also the mating call of the common sparrow. And it was no surprise to learn that the codes adopted by many of the users of our classified pages were also a base form of mating call in themselves . Once she had explained what many of the codes and terminologies were, I, as your brave Chairman, decided to pose online as one of these lovelorn scone-bakers with an advertisement composed specifically to entrap the guilty. Spatula for sale (or rent). Slightly rusty yet ergonomically designed to offer maximum stirring. Mixture in bowl yet also functions on the tray. Fellow mixer must have GSOH. No salad please. Jam and cream to spread as desired. Satisfaction guaranteed. Stirs in an anti-clockwise or circular motion. Alas, the only reply to my classified ad was from another society member who offered me a ‘lasagne’. ‘I don’t get it’, I said to the code-breaker. ‘Nor do I’, she replied. And just to be safe, I haven’t eaten a lasagne since. Dear society member, it is time to put an end to this, and the decision was recently taken at a committee level to put an end to the classified section of our website. We understand that this may very well reduce the number of people who have joined our society, (over twenty thousand new members in the last six weeks, a figure which still manages to perplex us), but we believe that this is the safest method to rid our wholesome community of undesirable attention. Like many of you, I started out as a young man with a head full of ideas and dreams intent on devoting my life to the construction and consumption of the humble scone. Starstruck by such scone-bakers as Ethel P. Anderson and Audrey ‘Iron Knuckles’ McGinty, I saw the society as a means to connect with like minded souls whose purpose and heart were in a similar vein to my own. It has been nothing short of tragic to see our fine institution highjacked by those whose thoughts remain as base as their own animalistic instincts. I see this as an opportunity to root out these wrongdoers and make our society safe again! The moment I’ve finished writing this email, I shall be visiting the committee where no doubt we shall be indulging in the wholesome pursuit of the perfect scone. And yes, fellow committee members, thanks for asking, I shall definitely be bringing my own spatula.
Robert Garnham 