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The Approach

The approach

I could feel the engines throbbing through the joystick, the plane itself skimming the tops of the clouds throwing down a shadow of our outline, the folds and hollows of the piled cumulonimbus hiding within their fluffy exterior hail, thunderstorms, bad weather. It’s a position I’ve been in more times than I can remember, the pulsating turbofans of my craft a comfort, the juddering engines, the pulsating jets, the oscillating power units, all of them at my control.
Bing bong.
I speak into the cabin intercom using that practised drawl.
‘Aaaaaaaaand ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, Captain O. Captain. Yes, I know my surname is Captain, you could say I was destined for this job. We’re about seventy miles from Westbury International. If you look out the port side windows, you’ll see a lovely view of the folds and hollows of the piled cumulonimbus. So we should begin our descent any time soon. Until then, please feel free to be lulled by the pulsating, oscillating, throbbing, juddering of the engines as they soothe us through the sky . . . You know . . . I might even sing to you’.
‘Don’t’, the First Officer suggested.
‘Cabin crew, prepare for . . .’.
‘Landing?’
‘Yes . . Yes . . .’.
Instinctively, I reached out a hand and stroked the topside of the cockpit controls.
‘Bring us home safely, old girl . .’, I whispered.
‘Captain O. Captain’, the First Officer, Ben, said. ‘You really are somewhat eccentric ‘.
I could feel the engines quaking and gibbering through the controls.
‘Ben . . .if that is your name . . . Flying is instinctive. It’s a relationship between not only the captain and their machine, but also solid metal and the laws of physics. It’s like an affirmation of . . I say, are you okay?’
The sweat was rolling down Ben’s face. His upper lip was glistening. He stared straight ahead as if not even noticing the folds and hollows of the piled cumulonimbus,
‘You see . . . The quivering engines . . .’.
All of a sudden Ben yelled, ‘Can’t you see it? Don’t you understand? You’re my father!’
I was silent for a couple of seconds.
‘But . . .’.
‘Don’t try to deny it. You know it’s true. I’ve been waiting years for us to be scheduled on the same flight, just so I could tell you this!’
‘But Brad, we have our pre-landing checklist . . ‘.
‘It’s Ben. Sod the pre-landing checklist! I rose up through the ranks just for this one day, and then the moment . . . The moment I’m with you . . I . . .’. Ben let out a sign, his head silhouetted against the folds and hollows of the piled cumulonimbus clouds. ‘I realise that I can never come between the love you have for aircraft’.
I could feel the vibrations and the trundling of the engines through the controls.
‘So your mother must be Sophie’, I whisper, ‘that winsome mechanic whose coquettish charms lit up the engineering hangar all those years ago, resulting in our tryst in the starboard fan cowling assembly . . .’.
‘That was twenty four years ago’.
‘Jeez, they’re letting you fly planes at twenty three years old, now?!’
‘Captain O. Captain. I mean . . Dad’.
The sun shines brightly on the folds and hollows of the piled cumulonimbus.
‘No time to talk, we’ve got to concentrate. Let’s get this baby on the ground ‘.
‘That’s what she said’.
‘Brad!’
‘Ben’.
We began our descent. The white fluffy clouds of the cumulonimbus gave way to a deep grey and the cockpit window was spotted with rain. A slight turbulence flexed our wings as the engines grinded and rattled through the controls. After a while we were out of the base of the clouds and the runway lights were in view.
‘Every landing’, I whisper, as we levelled and lined up, ‘is a controlled calamity’.
And the runway itself seemed to beckon us in. In much the same way that Sophie had beckoned me up into the starboard fan cowling assembly to show me an interesting leak. And then before we know it we’re down on the ground, wheels touching the runway, reverse thrust applied throwing us ever so gently into our harnesses.
‘You really only ever get one shot at this’, I tell him.
We taxi to the terminal building.
‘You really do . . ‘, I continue, my mind wandering.

An interview with Mary Dickins

When I first started performing I would travel up to London every month or so and perform at open mics. This was a great way to meet new people and see other poets. One of the biggest and noisiest nights was Bang Said the Gun, which took place at the Roebuck pub near Borough, and I would go often, sometimes just to sit and watch, and sometimes to perform.

It was at one such evening that I first saw Mary Dickins. I fell in love with her poetry immediately. Joyous, funny, an delivered in a deadpan that added to the comedy. We would later work together making TV adverts for a certain building society, and at one or two corporate events. Mary’s poetry has a joyful playfulness which masks a serious subtext. Well observed descriptions of every day life combine with a true poetic sense of wonder.

Mary’s book, Happiness FM, has just been published by Burning Eye, and I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to interview her.

How did you get into writing poetry?

I have a distinct memory of writing my first poem when I was four. It was a nonsense poem called “The man wrapped up in a Pin” and it rhymed. I was much more excited about it than the rest of my family. Throughout my life I’ve used poetry and creative writing as a therapeutic outlet but I saw it as more of a hobby and I never thought my work was ‘good’ enough for performance or publication until much later.

I’ve seen you loads of times performing on the London spoken word scene. How did you start performing live?
I have always been interested in the performance aspect of poetry and in my professional life was a conference speaker and lecturer but it wasn’t until I was 60 and attended an Arvon course run by Matt Harvey and Kate Fox that I got the confidence and self-belief to give my poetry a try. This led me to do open mic at the brilliant Bang Said the Gun and for the first time I experienced a really noisy and enthusiastic response. I thought that was wonderful and I wanted more.

Who are your influences as a poet and artist?
My influences are many and varied. I was very taken by the Liverpool poets and the irreverent breath of air that they brought to the poetry establishment in the 60s..  I was an early and devoted fan of John Cooper Clark and John Hegley and also poets such as Maya Angelou and Grace Nicholls. I am now an avid reader of all kinds of poetry and I think I probably take a little bit from everyone I like.

Your collection Happiness FM has a bright, upbeat feel. Was this a conscious decision at the start of the project?
I do feel that the best poetry is usually uplifting in some way so I suppose I do aim for that. I guess this evolved as I thought Happiness FM made a good title poem. My daughter Hannah designed the cover around that and together we aimed for an eye catching joyful feel. I was worried about the irony bringing out  a book with this title at a time when the vast majority of people were feeling singularly unhappy then I thought maybe it could bring a little joy into my readers lives.

You have a wonderful knack at finding the eccentric and the odd beneath everyday reality. How did you develop this quirky worldview?
Is it me that’s quirky? I always think it’s everybody else. I think that feeling excluded while growing up (long story) made me into an acute observer and gave me the ability to step back and view reality objectively. Let’s face it there is plenty about the world that is eccentric and odd so there is no shortage of ideas.

Your poetry can also be deeply serious. Do you think it is a poet’s duty to look at the bigger issues in society and life?
I’m not sure about the word ‘duty’ as this rather saps the enjoyment out of it. Poets describe and interpret the world around them and also chronicle the times they live in so the bigger issues are pretty hard for any of us to avoid. Exploring identity, for example, inevitably leads to us to examine and challenge existing values and systems. Poetry can be a powerful tool for change and personally I do like my poems to contain some kind of social comment however oblique. I think anyone with a public platform has a responsibility to try to make the world a better place and that includes poets. I want the poets I admire to have integrity and be truthful. But they should be allowed to express themselves as they choose.

What is your writing process? Do you have a specific time and place for writing?
I’ve never been very good at keeping to a self-imposed writing schedule although I can be disciplined and dogged if the situation calls for it. A lot of my writing takes place in my head and I find that 2am in the morning is the time when random ideas and solutions suddenly emerge. This means that the kitchen table is often littered with strange and obscure post it notes to self in the morning.  I find poetry courses and writing groups very useful as they give you homework deadlines and a reason to persevere.

What was your best ever gig as a performer?
It has to be when I won the Golden Gun at Bang Said the Gun a few years ago. I performed a somewhat blasphemous poem called “The Richard Dawkins Delusion by God” and Andrew Motion who was Poet Laureate at the time and also performing said how much he liked it. I floated home on the tube that night.

What are you working on at the moment or what will your next project be?
Well this is the rub. At the moment my biggest challenge as someone in a vulnerable category for Coronavirus is how to maintain a poetry presence and promote the book. Luckily there are online opportunities at the moment and I hope these continue as there are a few of us who might be stranded if they don’t. I have a number of new poems up my sleeve so I am looking towards the next collection.

What advice would you give someone who would like to follow on your footsteps and be a poet and a performer?
Don’t wait as long as I did but at the same time it’s never too late to start.

The Curse of the Green Pouffe

The Curse of the Green Pouffe

Strung from lamp post to lamp post, the multicoloured fairy lights wiggled, jiggled and jumped in the wind. An angry sea scratched at the pebble beach. Flecks of sand stung cold raw cheeks. It was dusk.
The world seemed obsolete, nullified by the obviousness of the season. Decay, frost-shredded painted gaiety and cartoon characters diminished by the elements, painted on shuttered ice cream shacks.
‘It’s heaving down here in the summer’, I tell him.
‘How far is it to your flat?’
‘Just a road away. I thought we’d make a detour, so you could see, the, erm . . .’.
We walk huddled hands in coat pockets.
‘You look like your profile picture’.
‘So do you’.
I like the way that the wind ruffles his hair. His cheekbones are much more pronounced than I thought they would be.
‘Wild’, I whisper, meaning the weather.
‘Sorry?’
And he’s slightly taller than me.
There are lights on the horizon out at sea, ships sheltering in the bay, and they twinkle and pulse just like stars, and if it weren’t so cold then maybe I could create my own constellations.
‘I’m cold’, he points out.
And the multicoloured fairy lights throw down a glow which gives us several overlapping shadows, our two forms merged and combined like a pack of cards being shuffled. The iron legs of the old pier stride in to the angry sea like a Victorian lady holding up her petticoats,
‘Really cold’, he says.
‘When we get to my flat’, I tell him, ‘you’ll be warm enough’.

‘What’s that?’, he said, pointing at the pouffe.
‘It’s a pouffe’, I replied.
He walks around the living room, warily, looking at it from several angles.
‘What does it do?’
‘You put your legs on it when you’re sitting on the sofa’.
‘It’s green’.
‘Yes’.
‘Yewwww . . .’.
‘Shall we just sit down and, er, warm up and . .’.
‘With that thing, there?’
I sit down. He lingers for a bit, and then he sits down, too. We look at each other and we smile.
‘I really liked your profile’, I tell him. ‘We’ve got a lot in common, haven’t we? It was great to chat online, but I’m so glad we’ve met’.
‘Seriously’, he says, ‘it’s called a pouffe?’
‘Yes . .’.
He looks at it for several seconds.
‘I can put it out on the landing if you like, if you’ve got a . . . Phobia’.
‘It’s still been in here, though’.
‘Put it out if your mind’.
He smiles.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to’.
And then neither of us says anything for a while. I can hear the clock ticking on the mantelpiece.
‘A green pouffe . . .’.
‘Yes’.
He sighs, leans back in his chair.
‘I was in the jungle’, he whispers. ‘They said I was green. Green meant new, apparently. But I was more likely green because I just felt so unwell. The food, you see . . . And everything in the jungle was green, too. Have you ever really looked at the colour green? There are so many varieties. Green leaves, moss, bark, more leaves, green everywhere. And I felt so bad, I really did feel ill.’
‘That’s a shame. Let’s snuggle . . .’.
‘They reckon I had some sort of disease, brought about by flies. Mosquitoes, probably. They do things to the mind, and affect the way that we see the world. You can never tell how it’s going to go. But with me, it was the effect of everything. The greenery. The predominance of the colour green, just kind of crowded in on me. Made me lose my senses, in a way’.
‘Jeez. So, let’s fool around a bit, you and me. .’
‘And the greenery, it did things to me. I became obsessed. We were there to film a documentary, you see. About slugs, and I was the only newbie there, the only green member of the team. And as I say, I was throwing up the whole time . . ‘.
‘You never mentioned the throwing up.’
I try to put my arm around his shoulders, but he stands up and looks out the window.
‘Sure! A never ending spume of it. I was having visions, it was like some kind of hideous trance that the jungle had put my under. So they flew me home. And the film company, they paid to send me out and recuperate in the countryside. But the countryside, oh, have you ever been to the countryside?’
‘Every now and then. Say, aren’t you hot wearing that big jumper? And those . . Jeans?’
‘There was greenery everywhere. Greenery and scenery. And the scenery was mostly green. There were fields and trees and the fields and trees were green. Especially the evergreens. The greenest evergreens I had ever seen. And there was moss and dappled sun and rhododendrons. And there were villages and villages greens. And the village greens were green. And everyone out there eats their greens. And also some of the tractors were green.’
‘Fascinating. Say, has anyone ever said what nice lips you have? Very kissable . .’.
‘So then I came back to the city . .’.
(‘Here we go . .’).
‘ . . And there was lots of green here, too. The Starbucks logo is mostly green. And so is the fungus in the bus station. And my friend Pete’s car is green. And so is the tie I was wearing yesterday. And the traffic lights are occasionally green. Red, mostly, and amber, and red and amber, but occasionally green. And salt and vinegar crisp packets. Again, green. And the District Line is green. And it passes through Turnham Green. And even though the neon signs are multicoloured, you could probably turn ’em green. Green. Everything is green.’
‘Yes, it is somewhat ubiquitous’.
‘And it does things to me. All this green. It really does affect me very badly. I can’t stand it. I get flashbacks. Green flashbacks. You’ve got to understand’.
I laid my hand on his leg and made a mental note not to include broccoli with dinner.
‘I’ll move the pouffe’, I whisper. ‘Take it away from here, if that makes you feel any better. And then I’ll start on the dinner’.
He smiles.
‘Thank you ‘, he replies. ‘I’m sorry. But it really is giving me the willies’.
I get up and I move the pouffe outside where he can’t see if, and then I come and rejoin him on the sofa.
‘Oh my god’, he says. ‘Is that footstool over there beige? Oh no! I was in the desert, you see, surrounded by miles and miles of beige sand, when I started to feel very ill . . .’.
I let out a deep sigh, lean back on the sofa, and I start peeling an orange.

Branching out

(Here’s a short story I wrote almost twenty years ago.)

Branching Out

There has been much said and written about the following subject in the academic community, it seems almost superfluous to add my own comment to the wealth of material already published on this topic. And yet the story itself seems somewhat compelling, like all good mysteries, and more so because it is, quite defiantly, true. The fact that a senior practitioner in literary matters has attested to the honesty of all involved adds a touch of authenticity to the whole situation, and who are we to argue with the judgement of a colleague so esteemed as Professor Zazzo Thiim?
‘They were branching out, pure and simple’, he told me, one charged evening at the local pub. He leaned back in his chair and seemed, just for a second, incredibly tired, as it the events of the previous week had drained him of energy. ‘I first heard it reported to me by one of my younger students, a naive fellow whose panicked account seemed ill-judged and unworthy of comment. But then other students and colleagues began attesting to the fact. They, too, had heard and seen with their own eyes, that the local skateboarders were quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson. I knew immediately that I would have to probe deeper’.
The old man leans forward across the table and interlaces his fingers. ‘I started that very evening. With a flask of cocoa and a pair of opera glasses, I went down to the local skate ramp and watched them from the bushes. I felt like a television botanist watching the mighty gorillas of some dank, faraway jungle. How incredibly amusing their mannerisms, how obvious the social gradations and rank within their clique, that they might defer to the most able of their group, and lend advice to the weakest. I would surely have watched longer had not I felt a sudden hand on my collar and a policeman inquire as to what I was playing at. ‘We have a name for people like you’, he told me. I can tell you it wasn’t a comforting situation, but when I told him the reasons behind my being there, his face relaxed. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘The poetry thing. We’ve been racking our brains over that one, I can tell you. Come down to the station’.
‘Why?’ I asked, ‘Am I under arrest’.
‘Not at all’, he replied. ‘We’ve just found one of them trying to break into the library. Perhaps you might like to have a quiet word with him’.
The lad in question was a poor specimen, I can tell you, a pathetic, individual whose half-hearted attempt at perfecting the skater-boy look was almost laughable. On being asked exactly why he was breaking into the library he denied all knowledge that it had been such a building, that he was under the impression more that it was the off licence. When the constable slid a copy of Tennyson’s poetry across the table towards him he made a frantic attempt to grab it from his hands, only for the book to be snatched away from him. ‘Not so fast, sonny’, the constable said, in his laconic, laid-back voice. ‘First we need to talk terms. We can help you get your fix, but first you must help us. We need your skateboard’, he continued. ‘You see, there’s a little mystery here, and we need it cleared up’.
The Professor lets out a laugh. ‘I cut quite a figure on the skateboard ramp, I can tell you. Sure, I fell off a few times, but I soon won respect from the posse not only for my aerial acrobatics but also for my detailed knowledge of Romantic-era poetry. Indeed, things were going along quite fine. How glad I was to see that the stories were true – a particularly athletic turn at the board would be greeted with the words, ‘At Arthur’s ordinance, tipt with lessening peak!’, or a bad fall decorated with the expression, ‘lay low and slay him not!’ I must say, I quite enjoyed my spell with the lads, and at no time did they twig that I was a seventy-four year old academic professor, except when I passed around a packet of sanatogan in the mistaken belief that it was a bottle of alco-pops. ‘A fine pinnacle!’, I yelled, heading up the ramp at great speed. ‘And made as a spire to heaven!’ Brad was especially vocal and conversant in Tennyson’s later works and at times he would exclaim, ‘Sluggards and fools, why do you stand and stare? You are no king’s men!’, or even the ultimate insult, ‘Let this be thy last trespass, thou uncomely knave!’ As the sun started to set, the dusk spread out her silken fingers and seemed to caress the shapely ramps, and in the encroaching dark came a camaraderie I have not yet ever felt, not even in the throes of really good group discussion on Hemingway. Joining in with their masculine bravado, I put up the hood of my jacket and, feeling somewhat exuberant, shouted, ‘While Jove’s planet rises yonder, were now to rage and torture the desert!’ Oh, how absolutely wonderful I felt!
The effect, though, was immediate. The skaters stopped in their tracks. One skateboard, bereft of its rider, swung to and fro on the ramps before it, too, fell silent. ‘What was that?’ Brad asked. Flustered, I repeated my quotation. ‘You’, he said, breathing harshly through quivering nostrils, ‘Are an imposter!’
The rest of the group crowded in on me. I stumbled, and tried to make some kind of retraction to my earlier statement, but the damage was done.
‘That was Robert Browning’, Brad pointed out. ‘What are you, some kind of freak? Who quotes from Browning at a skate ramp?’
‘Yeah’, someone else piped up. ‘What kind of a sicko are you?’
I don’t mind telling you that I was scared. I escaped with my life, and for this I am monumentally thankful.
Naturally, the trouble vexed me for ages. Back at the department I toiled at my desk and tried to read into the whole episode some kind of reason, some kind of explanation behind the adoption of Tennyson. I looked at his rhythms, I looked at his metre, I looked at his rhyme scheme, but none of them matched with the rhythms I had heard on the skate park ramps. The content of his poems were also barren in their significance. I could see in his metrical skill and his lyrical genius no link to the satisfactory clatter of skateboard on concrete, no link between his romantic inclinations and narrative expression to the wearing of a hoodie. Late one night, though, thoroughly tired and dejected, I found the skateboard that I had borrowed that night, and the more I looked at it the more I could see that there was, however slight, a connection of sorts. Four wheels, I told myself, and one standing platform, just like the four isolated tenets of romanticism, the stylistically gothicism inherent, the reaction against enlightenment, imagination, vision and idealism, mixed with the surface and sureness of Tennyson’s reign as poet laureate – surely, this was what the skaters were alluding to in their adherence to his work? How relieved I was to get to bed that night’.
The Professor frowns and he lowers his voice. ‘I wrote up my report the next morning and submitted it to the head of my department. That lunchtime I felt free. In the Spring air I could hear the clatter of a distant skateboard and I nodded, knowingly, to myself. The world seemed right, somehow. The world seemed a better place. But that afternoon I received an anonymous letter.
How horrendous the news that it contained! It came from an ex-skater, whose adherance to the poetry of Tennyson had been questioned by some members of the group. He said that the skaters were not quoting from Tennyson – oh no – they were reading. There was a book stuck in the overhanging tree, he explained. And to prove their dexterity on the skateboard, the skaters in question would attempt to read a line at random as they were suspended in mid-air. If it had been a crisp packet, the anonymous writer concluded, then they would have read out the ingredients. There was no mystery.’
The Professor drained the last of his wine and made to stand. ‘The department has been embarrassed by this whole episode,’ he said, ‘As you can probably imagine. I would be grateful if you could not mention some of the more lurid details of this story’, and with that, the old man was off.
I followed a few minutes later. It was a dark night and there were a few stars hung in the sky. As I walked back to my car I was overtaken by a child on a unicycle, and he was quoting Oscar Wilde. But then, it could have been the drink.

Chuckles in the Flophouse

Chuckles in the Flophouse

The boutique hotel used to be a flophouse. And now it was a boutique hotel. The transformation from flophouse to boutique hotel was not a gradual process. One moment it was a flophouse, the next it was a boutique hotel. For the same amount of money that could buy you a night in a perfectly ordinary hotel, you could have the experience of staying in a former flophouse. Roland Garnier liked the idea of this. Or at least, he liked the idea of staying in a boutique hotel. Only so that he could say to people, ‘I stayed in a boutique hotel’. He didn’t really like the idea of staying in a flophouse.
There’s something about the word ‘flophouse’. It’s the ‘flop’ part of the word. One could imagine a weary soul trudging the streets of manhattan in search of work and ‘flopping’ into his tiny cabin for the night, tired, aching and hungry. But there were other connotations, too. For too long, the word ‘flop’ had been predominant in the career of Roland Garnier and it just see,es plain insulting that he should now be staying in a house for those who flop. His last solo show had been a flop and so had his collection of poetry. The only thing he didn’t flop at was flopping. This is why he preferred the term ’boutique hotel ‘. It implied a certain distinction.
At regular intervals, the man in the boutique hotel cabin next to his kept chuckling to himself. Roland hopes that the man wasn’t doing what he thought he might be doing. The walls of the boutique hotel cabins were as thin as cardboard and Roland could hear every noise that his neighbour was making. It must have been like this, too, for the original inhabitants of yen boutique hotel, back in the days when it was a flophouse. Or actually, maybe not. There wasn’t much to chuckle about in those days, in spite of Laurel and Hardy. The whole place could probably have done with a bit of a laugh.
Maybe he wasn’t wanking at all. Maybe Chuckles just liked comedy. In which case, Roland thought about knocking on his door and telling him that he was performing that very weekend, headlining at the famous Duplex Cabaret right in the heart of New York’s gay village, bringing his own brand of whimsical comedic nonsense to the Big Apple. But Roland tended to shy away from this kind of impulsive human interaction, and in any case, at the back of his mind was the thought that Chuckles probably was just a prolific masturbator.
That morning, as he had the previous mornings, Roland had gone for a walk two blocks to a branch of Starbucks for a morning coffee and a breakfast roll. Roland had had no idea that they also had Starbucks in the USA and it had been something of a fortunate surprise to discover something so homely in this scary metropolitan city. The man at the reception desk of the boutique hotel had wished him not a pleasant day, but merely, ‘Be careful’. And this is what he’d also said the morning before. Roland really didn’t care for the implications of the young man’s tone, hinting, as he understood it, that he saw Roland as being too naive or trusting to understand the dangers of walking alone in the former skid row district, a district yet to be fully gentrified even with the transformation of the former flophouse into a boutique hotel. Roland lived in Devon, and there were certain areas of Newton Abbot that one simply wouldn’t walk alone, so he was not immune to the dangers of the lower east side, or any built up urban environment. Maybe the receptionist was worried that the death of one of his guests would reflect badly on the next Trip Adviser review.
The thing with the USA is that it’s like a whole different country. As Roland walked along the pavement, which in the USA is called the sidewalk, but still maintains the function and appearance of a pavement, he felt a kind of weird displacement within him that the culture and infrastructure around him was easily recognisable and navigable and yet by turns completely wacko. The number plates of the cars were all different and so were the buses. And the trucks. Goodness knows what was going on with the trucks. They were big and brutal and they looked like they meant business and it all felt rather unnecessary. The inside of the Starbucks, however, seemed like the inside of any Starbucks. It was almost as if they had modelled it on an English one, because it had a counter and a till and a coffee machine and tables just like the good old fashioned English Starbucksies. And the process was just the same. You bought a coffee, sat down and drank it. It’s just like these things are the same all over the world. Travel is likely to make philosophers of us all.
Roland sipped his coffee and looked out at the traffic. He was a little sad that the young lady at the counter had not even flinched, let alone make a comment, when she had heard his accent. And he’d gone to great lengths to emphasise his Englishness when he’d ordered his coffee. ‘Hello there! And a most pleasant morning to You! I would very much like to purchase a cup of your finest coffee, if I might be so bold! I do hope you might accommodate me in this matter!’, he had said, to which he had replied,
‘Sure’.
And then he had slipped back within himself, sitting at the table in the very corner and looking out at a busy intersection, the trucks and the buses and the hubbub of a major city as it wakes and busies itself for another day.
‘Hi. Excuse me?’
Roland looks up. A young man is standing next to him, a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate with a Danish pastry on it in the other. He’s wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a bum bag.
‘Is anyone sitting there?’
The chair next to him was empty. As were most of the chairs in the place. Roland wondered why he would want to sit there when there were so many other empty chairs in the place. He thought that coming to the USA, he might be immune to the various eccentrics and weirdos who populate Devon, but apparently not.
‘No’, Roland says.
‘Hey, you’re . . Let me guess . . Scottish?’
‘English’.
‘Damn, so close. I’m usually good with accents. I met an Estonian once and guessed his accent immediately.’
‘Remarkable’.
‘You here on business?’
‘Kind of. I’m here for . . Work’.
‘Oh? What’s that?”
‘I work in the . . Entertainment industry’.
‘Cool’.
Bum Bag Man sits down and starts drinking his coffee. He then picks at the Danish pastry and feeds bits of it into his mouth, wiping his fingertips on a paper napkin. He doesn’t say anything for a long time and Roland hopes that this is the end of it. But then he says,
‘I’m from Idaho’.
‘Oh’.
‘So I’m not used to this, you know, we have cities in Idaho, but it’s mostly rural, I’m from a rural community, we got lots of cows where I’m from, dairy you see, that’s why I have milk in my coffee because, you know, you got to support the farmers.’
‘I don’t know much about Idaho’.
‘Not much to tell’.
‘And what do you do?”
‘Me? Well sir, I’m a punch hole salesman’.
‘Punch hole?’
‘Sure. For office supplies’.
‘Oh, you mean holepunch?’
Bum Bag Man kind of makes a grimace.
‘That’s a brand name. There’s an actual company called Hole Punch. Hole Punch Inc. I work for Stevenson’s. We actually invented the punch hole back in the 1800s. Our founder says that the idea came to him as if from god, he just prayed one night, and woke the next morning with the Punch Hole clearly defined in his brain. You know, sir, he fell out with his brother, and it was he who started up the Hole Punch Company. But I’m proud to admit, I have a passion for Stevenson’s products that you can only guess at.’
‘And what happened before the hole Punch . . I mean, the Punch Hole was invented’.
‘I guess people just didn’t have holes in their paper’.
‘Fascinating’.
‘Each year we have a ceremony at the factory, to mark the occasion that our founder, Ichabod J. Stevenson, had that vision from god. And they bring out the first Punch hole. It’s kept in a museum, you see, because it’s the size of a small car, this thing, steam powered, and it has to be kept under tight security ever since it killed that chap a few years back. Since then, of course, we’ve all been told not to wear ties or scarves around it’.
‘And this is in Idaho?’
‘Yes, sir’.
Bum Bag Man goes to put a piece of Danish pastry in his mouth but misses and it goes on the floor.
‘So, are you on holiday, here in New York?’
‘Well, sure, kind of. You see, I just broke up with my girlfriend’.
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that’.
‘We were in the mall. There’s this mall near our town, it’s only a two hour drive away, I’d gone to buy a new phone but when I got there, they only had it in pink. And she laughed, can you believe that? She didn’t feel sorry for me or anything. She just laughed. So there we are in this mall in a suburb of Boise, and she’s just laughing because the phone I wanted was only available in pink. So I ended it. That’s a kind of toxic relationship right there, isn’t it? And I’m any case, she never cared for punch holes. She was a receptionist at a dental surgery’.
‘And you’re here to get over it?’
‘No sir, I’m here to find a new girlfriend. It’s a city of sin, that’s what my pastor says. So if I can find someone, turn them away from sin and towards the wholeness and goodness and purity of Ichabod J. Stevenson, then maybe I’ll be a happier man’.
‘Good luck ‘.
‘I’ll need it. At the moment I’m in my hotel room every night, sobbing.’
‘You’re sobbing?’
‘Oh, yes sir. But I know my time will come. It has to. There’s someone out there for everyone’.
‘Indeed’.
Roland imagined this strange lone figure, miles from his Idaho rural community in a busy city, beaten down by life and lonely, and he started to feel sorry for him. Indeed, if it weren’t for a few subtle differences here and there, they could almost be the same person. Roland had long ago given up hope of finding love himself, and the love that he sought was really no different to that of Bum Bag Man. The only real difference, as far as he could make out, was that Bum Bag Man was wearing a Bum Bag, or fanny pack, as the Americans tended to call them. How could anyone truly be respected if they’re walking around wearing a fanny pack?
Roland looked down at his black coffee. It was starting to go cold. The street outside was as busy as ever. The ability of some people to overshare always made him somewhat uncomfortable and he decided that it was time to move the conversation on to himself.
‘Well, I suppose I had better be going. I’ve got a show tomorrow night and I need to rehearse. Because when you’re headlining at the Duplex, you’ve got to be on top of your game’.
Thus leaving the door open for an inquiry from Bum Bag Man. How could anyone resist such an invitation?
It doesn’t work.
‘Nice to meet you’.
Bum Bag Man hops down off his stool and goes over to the corner where a young lady is working on her laptop.
‘Hey’, Roland hears him say, ‘Is anyone sitting here?’

Two lone souls in a city of infinite busyness, instant forgetting, a machine bigger than any one person, millions of lives, millions of stories, aspirations and dreams. The present moment is but fleeting because the city never stays still, it’s streets smoothed by centuries of souls vibrant one moment and vanished the next. How many others will come and go, how many others will visit this pounding metropolis only to disappear to their own lives once more? Chewed up, spat out, forgotten?
Roland walks back to the boutique hotel and he thinks of Bum Bag Man, and then he thinks of the ex soldiers and sailors who populated the flophouses of skid row, their lives in tatters, destitute and miserable. He gives the receptionist a weary smile as he passes by, climbs the stairs and feels the undercurrent of misery on which the city has been built, the bones of those who did not succeed the foundations on which every other layer has been placed, individuals blinked out never again to be remembered.
He sits on the bed in his cabin and lets out a deep, deep sigh. It all seems so pointless. Not just the present moment and his reasons for being in manhattan, but everything. History is created the second that a moment has passed. He has anticipated the gig at the Duplex for so, so long, but now it was finally close and the anticipation had mutated, changed to a realisation that everything will be forgotten. The generations pass and they never look back. History is an inexorable dance. How else might he approach each day, but with the sense that he will vanish one day, and nobody will ever notice.
The world is a place of misery and hopelessness.
And then Chuckles starts laughing quietly, to himself. And this makes Roland laugh. And then he thinks about hole punchers and he laughs some more. And soon the two of them are laughing, and then the man in the cubicle next to his starts laughing too. And the lady across the corridor. And another lady. And soon, oh yes, within seconds, everyone is laughing.

Shadow Factory and Robert Garnham : In the Glare of the Neon Yak

I first heard a jazz band in Totnes called Shadow Factory a couple of years ago and I was immediately hooked by their style, their experimentation, their reinterpretation of classic songs and by their wonderful original material. They sound absolutely amazing and they are lovely people.

So I was completely blown away when they asked if their could write some original music for my show from last year, In the Glare of the Neon Yak, with a view to a live performance!

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me a huge honour and thrill to announce that I will be teaming up with Shadow Factory for a special performance of my show in Totnes! This will be a really special evening and I hope you can come along!

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

Tickets can be purchased below.

https://www.totnespulse.co.uk/product/in-the-glare-of-the-neon-yak/

Ken Beevers’ new book

Ken Beevers’ book, Aquamarine, is a beautiful concoction of autobiography, humour, timeless emotion and a real sense of physical place. Beautifully put together by Poetry Island Press, it’s a constantly surprising source of that kind of momentary excitement one gets when reading real poetry, the kind that speaks truth and universal experience but with humour and a deftness of touch. A fish and chip shop described as a ‘utopian supper palace’ will forever remain one of my favourite lines in any poetry. Aquamarine is filled with such momentary gems, inviting the reader to read just one more page, oh, go on then, maybe one more. And, unlike a lot of poetry books, it’s got pictures.

In honour of Ken and his book, I have put pen to paper myself. And this is my very own ode to Ken Beevers.

Ken Beevers

A shaft of early morning sun through a crack of curtains.
Another day dawns bright and new.
I jump out of bed energised by the journey this planet has taken
Once more round the sun
And I run
To the bathroom.
Excitedly, I glance in the mirror, then let out a groan.
I’m still not Ken Beevers.

And I don’t think I ever will be.
There’s no mechanism for this,
One cannot simply pull some levers
And become Ken Beevers.
One must look inward if there’s ever a chance
Now and then
To be Ken.

If poetry was like a car
Then mine has just been towed
Like my grandads driving
I’m too middle of the road
Whenever I scribble a note
It hardly comes out as an ode.
But Ken is the real thing
He can shoulder the load
Words are his playthings

He’s the bad boy of south Devon poetry
He’s a trouble maker
An instigator,
Like trying to make a toasted sandwich
With a coffee percolator.
He’s never died on stage so he
Needs no undertaker
His rhymes are so hot
They put him in the refrigerator
He’s so damn cool
It’s because he just came out of the refrigerator
His name is Ken Beevers
But they call him The Beevinator

His poems are exquisite gems,
He needs a guard.
He’s so well hard
He’s the fish bar Bard
Yet he doesn’t expect acclaim
Like some of the other divas
He’s Ken Beevers.
Some of his rhymes are so potent
They often give me fevers
He’s Ken Beevers.
He once dropped his baseball cap
And a friend said,
Is that Justin Bieber’s?
And I said no,
It’s Ken beevers’.
Someone asked once,
Is he rowdy or serious?
And I said, neithers,
He’s Ken beevers.

He stands on the stage
Filled with just the right attitude
He’s so cool he’s got rapitude
He knows his place in the world
Both longitude and latitude
He looked after his neighbours puppy
But he made them pay for the mat it chewed.
Oh I feel such gratitude
In knowing Ken beevers.

So raise a glass and drink to Ken
This super poet
This titan of men
A man more genial is seldom seen
And his book is called Aquamarine
Some poems are risqué
But seldom obscene
He’s the hottest thing
On the Torbay scene
Don’t doubt yourself for a minute,
You’ll become believers
And it’s all thanks to the magic
Of Mighty Kenneth Beevers!

And Jacqui is lovely, too.

An Interview with Jamie Harry Scrutton

Jamie Harry Scrutton is one of my favourite spoken word artists. I first saw him in Manchester at the wonderful Evidently show, where I was co-headlining. Jamie got on stage and performed a poem about Mr Muscle, and it was so utterly unlike anything I’d ever seen. We soon became good friends and I have invited him down to Devon to perform on numerous occasions, where he always wins new friends with audiences with him whimsical musings. Jamie also combines animation with his spoken word, creating a wonderful and very unique mix which has to be experienced.

How did you first get in to spoken word?
I have always had a passion for creative writing but I have never adapted my work in to performance material. I catered my work for publication opposed to physically showcasing them through performance. I have been sending my writing off to various publication outlets since I was twelve years of age. My first submission and first rejection was from The Parragon Publishing House based in London. They responded by letter, reverting me to the book “The Writer and Artists Yearbook” at my local library, where I discovered various other outlets to try and place my work. At the time, I was submitting a Short Story Collection titled “The Complete Short Diary Tales,” which was based on various fictional characters, portraying their life experiences, contained in a diary form. At the age of 15, I fell into Poetry. By the age of 16, I found myself writing rather whimsical verses, which I subsequently began performing at the of 18 and still continue to perform to this day, at the tender age of 29!

When you think of ideas, do you see them initially as poems or animations?
Sometimes, I do write for the purpose of adapting the anecdotes in to Stop Motion Animations but more often, the process is about creating a concept to marry with the character, which would materially be based on observational life.

How long does it take to make an animation?
It depends. I would say between 2-4 weeks. My first Animation which I created titled “MANBUN” took me just over a week to make. The process was consistant 12 hour shifts, delved in to the art of making.

How did you learn the processes to make an animation?
The process came naturally, really. I wanted to create a Short Film which would be different to what I originally would create. I wanted to represent my Fine Art craftmnaship and produce a Film which would visually tell the narrative through a literal fictious character. This is where “MANBUN” rooted from. I filmed a side profile of me narrating the Anecdote and then Sketch by Sketch, I traced over the video to make the Short Film. In the end I must have produced apporximately 900 sketches. I am still learning, adapting and progressing the Art of Animation through to this day. I always birth new processes, in order to be different from my previous Animation.

Who are your influences?
Pam Ayres is definately an influence. I am always inspired by life, pretty much all of the time. Obviously Robert Garnham is a huge inspiration and a very good friend of mine too!

Do you think of the character first, or the story which they tell?
Usually, the story would be the seed and the character would be the plant. I would take a situation from everyday life and then create a character which would then morph the whole narrative of the Anecdote. More often, it could be the other way around.

What does the future have in store for you?
I will be releasing a DVD titled “The Animations of Jamie H Scrutton – Volume One” sometime in January 2019, which contains all 12 Animations of mine. I will be releasing an Animated Music Video I have produced for a brilliant Spoken Word Artist and very good friend of mine named Lence. The Animated Music Video is titled “Heard” and we will be releasing it on the 8th January 2019 at Kino 101, based in London. Another Animation of mine titled “My Husband Has Booked Our Funeral” has been selected to be screened at The Horror On Sea Film Festival on the 13th January 2019, based in Southend On Sea. I am in talks of creating a comedic Music Video for another good friend of mine in the new year. Also, I am planning to take a bit of time out from spring 2019, in order to create new future projects. I am planning to visit Leicester again and refilm three of my student Short Films at the end of 2019 in commemoration of 10 years working in Film. One of the Films will be “Havisham,” where I will be reprising the role of the deluded Miss Havisham. They will be a twist of Animation in all three pieces and the processes I have learned within film over the past decade!