On the hottest day of the year I went down to the docks and just watched the trawlers and those working on and around them.
Hive of activity on the hottest day of the year
Welders and painters, sparks flying
From angle grinders, clouds of
Black exhaust, electricity generators,
Shouts and yelling and drilling and movement
And fork lifts and pick-ups and crates
Of fresh catch fish ice packed and
Unloaded as ropes are slung and
Boats tied secure and everywhere a motion
‘Of individuals and yellow wellies and
Sweat brows wiped and amidst all
This toil unnoticed across the trawler
Basin entrance, a lone paddle-boarder,
Vain and so painfully superfluous.
One of the most unsettling things of living in Brixham is the presence of a perpetual hum. Not everyone can hear it and these hums have also been heard in other places around the world. Some people reckon that this is a supernatural manifestation. And while I’m not discounting that, the most likely explanation for Brixham is that it is the ice factory down on the quay, manufacturing ice for the trawlers to use for their catch.
All-night humming at the ice factory
At night I dream of the ice factory Manufacturing glittered frost under corrugated iron, Snow on cue, sleet on demand, I dream as it chills the night for me And glaciers the dawn. Three in the morning, in sweated sheets Flung aside! Windows open and not a breath of air, There’s a humming noise coming from the quay. What could that purring Possibly be? I’d like a snowdrift, please, And ice so fine you can See right through it! I want to see my breath In the trawler lights! The sweat is rolling down my face, And the hum, that’s just adding to the Intensity of it all, And a throb of engines too, The sweat is rolling down my face. Don’t tease me. Freeze me. be my icy queen!
Get me through this night! At night I dream of the ice factory, An ice conveyer belt and iced up workers, Hauling ice and shovelling ice And moaning about the cold. Snow on cue, sleet on demand, Blizzarding the morning as the sun rises Over the trawler basin And I moan and sweat as a clock strikes three.
They cling to the hills like multicoloured limpets,
Slate tile roofs shining, fish scales reflecting
Sodium streetlights, the salt air
Curling in from a dark abyss.
This whole place is yours, right?
No, just two rooms on the second floor.
And is either of those a private cinema?
No, but you can get nextdoor’s wifi in the khazi.
I like it here.
This corner of the universe.
I dream of escape
But I’ll never leave.
I like it here.
It matches my soul
The centuries fold in
They embrace me.
I like it here.
So cosy here.
It feels I’m the century’s daughter
Though I feel like a fish out of water.
I like it here.
I feel no fear.
I can be me here.
I like it here,
This is my home.
If only I didn’t
Feel so . .
(Get a proper place)
I like it here
(Move on to another town)
I like it here
(Buy a mansion in the Hollywood hills)
I like it here
(Let me show you the world!)
I like it here
I like it here
I like it here
They cling to the hills like multicoloured limpets,
Slate tile roofs shining, fish scales reflecting
Sodium streetlights, the salt air
Curling in from a dark abyss.
I like it here.
A single blast from the horn
Echoes from the quayside wall –
Margaret of Ladram
Moves at a crawl,
Stately in her choreographed dance,
With a slow turn, churns the sea
And moves with a surprising ease,
This hulk of metal and rope and hope,
Yellow beams high like a surrendering thief.
As a part of the ongoing Squidbox project, I spent an enjoyable half hour or so on a trawler in the harbour owned by a wonderful chap called Tristan, who told me all about his job as a solo skipper on the smallest boat in the Brixham fleet.
Solo skipper
Just for a moment, when you’re out there
With the sun and the gulls and the sea,
If you have time, you let out a sigh
And think,
‘I am my own boss, master of my destiny.
I have grabbed the day and made it mine!’
I may be a solo skipper,
A crew of one on the smallest boat in the fleet,
But I’m part of something larger,
A passion that is in my blood and in the souls
Of everyone in this town whose livelihoods
And dreams are at one with the tides.
It doesn’t really matter what I catch
So long as it’s got eyes and an arsehole,
It’s caught by me, from sea to shore and sold by me,
A lonely dot on the wild wide sea,
From net to quay,
Yes, master of my destiny!
Through winter squalls and the squawk of gulls
To the slap of waves on the bow and the hull,
Through summer sun and autumn fogs
To the warm embrace of this rock-clung port,
This sixty year-old sturdy machine
Purrs and throbs like a living thing.
When tides are rough and times are tough
And the day is an ache and you’ve had enough,
Tomorrow will be different,
The sea less belligerent,
And though I’m always vigilant I’ll feel that sweetness
Deep inside enmeshed in belief
And the usual, eternal pride.
In the Glare of the Neon Yak was written between 2016 and 2017 having gone through several incarnations, starting as a show called Vestibule Dreams, about people standing at the end of a packed train and sharing their stories.
The story of the Yak is based on that of Herne the Hunter, the mythical ghost who used to haunt several places including Windsor Great Park, near where I grew up.
I took the show all over the UK to various fringes and festivals culminating in a run at Edinburgh. And in 2019 I did a live version with the Totnes jazz band Shadow Factory.
A poem about a small town in West Virginia where I spent the night as a teenager.
Poem (Burnsville)
The car is big, brash and American,
As American as a baseball game,
And just like a baseball game,
It seems to go on forever.
The size of a frigate, this thing,
Burns enough fuel to power a small city.
You be navigator, my uncle says,
Which is easy as there’s only one road
Here in the mountains of West Virginia,
Even I can’t muck this up.
I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror.
You’re a long way from Basingstoke, sonny jim.
We’re on a road trip through America.
The scenery and grandeur are simply stunning
But I haven’t had a sausage roll in ages.
A teenage lad,
Overcompensating his obvious campiness
By wearing an Arsenal football shirt,
(I have no idea who Arsenal are,
I just like the fact they’ve got
Arse in their name),
And my uncle looks like Leslie Neilsen.
No wonder that diner back there
Went very quiet the moment we walked in.
And jeez, I’ve become so terribly English.
The Americans really seem to like it,
A waitress made me read from the TV Guide
And she couldn’t stop laughing.
And no, I’ve never met Benny Hill.
Why is everyone here obsessed with Benny Hill?
A muggy, huggy, humid day.
The moment I step from the car,
Everything goes Moist.
The constant heat has led to some serious chafing.
As the sun sets the highway announces
A small town called Burnsville,
We stop for the night,
Leslie Neilsen swings the frigate off the freeway
And we book into a small motel.
The adjacent highway sighs
As if it’s all too much.
The hillsides loom,
The Neon buzzes.
Passing trucks growl and
The world smells of diesel,
Melting tarmac and decomposing weasel.
It’s gritty,
But not in a Harold Pinter sort of way,
But in the way that grit is gritty.
There’s something sticky and
Unsettling in the heat of the night,
A bit Like finding half of a frog
In a packet of Quavers.
Restless dreams in wooden homes,
This covered fold, this
Hidden valley, and I,
Jolted up from hours of driving
And awash with hormones and teenage desires,
Suddenly turned on by absolutely everything,
Which I can only quell by singing
The refrain of a tv advert for Bran Flakes.
‘They’re tasty, tasty,
Very very tasty!
They’re very tasty!’
My room is hot.
I’ve seen these places
In so many films.
A bed, a bathroom, a bible.
I open the window and the moths fly in,
Thousands of the fluttering bastards,
Moths on the Tv screen, moths
Circling the lights, moths on the window frame,
And even the bastard moths are turning me on.
I try to bat them with the bible
But the bible turns me on.
I try to shoo them out the door
But the door handle turns me on,
And the door frame,
And the door turns me on,
And I turn off the light and then
Turn it on
But even turning it on turns me on,
And I realise that I have to get away,
Oh yes,
I have to get away.
I place my hands on my head and through
Gritted teeth I sing,
‘They’re tasty, tasty,
Very very tasty!
They’re very tasty!’
It’s warmer outside, and dark, so dark.
I walk down to a dried up stream
Behind the motel,
Turn and look at the wooded valley slopes,
It’s all so quiet and ethereal but bloody hell,
After a while it starts to turn me on.
I tell myself there must be monsters here,
Gun toting wild men,
World hating survivalists,
Angry war veterans, how masculine,
How beautifully masculine,
Sensuous and masculine,
How it turns me on!
I try to look for some natural splendour,
But all I can see is a Coca Cola machine,
Humming and electric and brash
And vibrating ever so softly, like a lover,
Which turns me on.
So I walk, I walk up to the main road,
The highway, long grass crickets chirruping,
Like the springs of a bed, (impersonate),
oh god!, back to the motel,
The motel where so many slumbering naked people
Have tossed and turned,
Oh dearie me,
How dreadfully even this motel turns me on,
And just as I’m thinking I should really
Get a grip,
I see the open door to the motel laundry room.
Bright lit fluorescent glaring in the sultry night,
And two shining hot shirtless lads operating
The machines, nonchalant, slyly sexual, the
Glistening sweat causing their lithe bodies to writhe
And contort with an ethereal glow,
They’re tasty, they’re tasty,
Oh my, they’re very, very tasty,
They’re very tasty indeed.
And all of a sudden the motel is just a motel,
The moths, the crickets, the Coca Cola machine,
The doorway and the light switch,
They are what they are,
And I am what I am,
And the lads, oh mumma!
We all know what they are.
I go back to my room,
Boy oh boy,
Do I go back to my room!
Whooo!
The next morning we load
Our luggage into the frigate
And Leslie Neilsen asks me
What I’d like for breakfast.
For some reason I have
Sudden hankering for Bran Flakes.
Most of the Ikebana club has been taking performance-enhancing steroids
Careful with those secateurs, Enid!
Shove the bastard in the pot,
All nuance has gone, hasn’t it?
Can someone help me pick up this
Heavy bad of Grow-More compost, oh,
It’s OK, Molly’s got it.
The judges in Biddeford last week
Thought something was amiss.
The winning creation looked more like
It had been threatened with a severe beating
And had assumed those convoluted shapes
Of its own free will.
When asked to provide a urine sample,
Ethel went berserk with a trowel.
She’s already got a two-year ban from all
Officially sanctioned ikebana competitions.
Maud was seen in the chemists
Collecting a suspicious package from a
Pharmacist who gave a knowing wink.
She’s in contention for a sixth title this year.
She also got my brother’s Fiat Punto out of a ditch.
Harold did something creative with some cherry blossom
But was too interested in
Showing everyone his glistening abs.
He’d oiled them up, apparently, with Bonjela.
Trevor’s suddenly built like a brick shithouse.
He’s got the branch of an oak tree
Rammed in a water butt and he ain’t leaving
Until he’s had it out with the committee.
Robert Garnham 