Spout is an hour show featuring poems, comedy and songs all around the theme of tea. If you’ve ever enjoyed a cup of tea, or are a coffee drinker eager to make that leap, then Spout is the show for you! Spout is sure to create a stir.
Meet Robert’s gran, who’s very fussy about how she likes her tea. Meet Aunt Rosie, who likes to sing while she’s boiling the kettle. Hear the harrowing story of the sexy barista and a date at a museum of smoke alarms. Learn about Tea Astrology, and what to do when someone says, ‘Thirsty work, this’. Also, learn about the history of tea, and how it unites people. This whole show will make you see tea anew!
Robert Garnham is an award winning LGBT writer, humorist and performer from Surrey. He has been long listed three times as spoken word artist of the year and has featured in TV advertisements for a certain building society, as well as Britain’s Got Talent. Spout is his ode, his love letter, to this beverage of kings, this everyday magic potion, tea!
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Spout
If you’ve enjoyed listening to this show, or would like to buy me a coffee, (!), my tip jar is https://ko-fi.com/robertgarnham
During lockdown I was asked by Torbay Council to write poems about the Brixham trawlers and the fishing industry in general. It was not something I knew much about and came as something of a surprise for an LGBTQIA etc poet whose normal output concerns all sorts of urban foibles such as why do they re-arrange supermarket displays, and being envious of beards.
During the writing process my producer, (yes!, they assigned me a producer. How grown up is that?), suggested I look at the environment around Brixham. As it was, I was also doing a free course online to pass the time, about the ecosystem of seagrass and mangrove environments.
Go to Fishcombe Cove, she said, and see what you might come up with. And this poem was it.
Capability Brown dance for me wig boy flatten those hillocks never touched a shovel in his life
Capability Brown I salute your pastel gilet drain that lake I left my mobile phone in the charabanc
Capability Brown call that a scrotum? turf over that peat bog I gravitate with sadness to your clinical arboretum
Capability Brown no lover of fungus undulate that grassy knoll you told me to grow edible herbs, such sage advice
Capability Brown here comes a mallard duck! aiyeeeek yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk oh it was a seagull
Capability Brown I salute your pastel gilet Flatten those hillocks you were born in 1716, no wonder you’re dead
Capability Brown here comes a mallard Turf over that peat bog never touched a shovel in his life
Capability Brown call that a scrotum? drain that lake you were both in 1716, that’s just after quarter past five
Capability Brown shoving shrubs in your underpants Rearrange that copse I gravitate with sadness to your clinical arboretum
Capability Brown he’s the dog’s bollocks flatten those hillocks The trouble with French is that they haven’t got a word for entrepreneur
Capability Brown no lover of fungus undulate that grassy knoll someone threw cheese at me, which wasn’t very mature
Capability Brown I salute your pastel bollocks drain that mallard every time I paint the skirting board I get very emulsional
Capability Brown Rhododendrons in your y-fronts can I prance on your lawn? I gravitate with sadness to your clinical arboretum I gravitate with sadness to your clinical arboretum I gravitate with sadness to your clinical arboretum
Arboretum? I only just met ‘em. Capability Brown! What a tosser.
There was nothing else on. i was watching a documentary about The Good Life. Not on how to live the good life, But the 1970’s TV sitcom The Good Life, But as I say, There was nothing else on, So rather than ponder in silence my own Innate sadness and the crushing loneliness Of existence, I thought I’d watch it.
At least it will kill half an hour. Something mildly diverting. They showed some interviews with celebrities Laughing conveniently at the clip They just showed. Jonathan Ross thought that Margot falling in the mud Was comedy gold. James May liked the bit with the pig. Just before the advert break, as a teaser, They show Margot saying, ‘Well thank you, Tom’, While the narrator said, ’And there was one cast member no-one got on with. Stay tuned to find out who that was’.
My curiosity piqued, after five minutes Of adverts for sofas and stairlifts, (My god, they know their demographic), Came the second part. Richard Briers apparently didn’t like vegetables And Susan Colman thought Tom cleaning out his own chimney with inevitable Soot-based complications Was comedy gold. As a teaser for the next part, They show Margot saying, ‘Well thank you, Tom’, While the narrator said, ’And there was one cast member no-one got on with. Stay tuned to find out who that was’.
How long is this programme?, I pondered. Part three started with Felicity Kendall Talking about dungarees And Sir Trevor Macdonald Thinking that the episode in which a donkey Got stuck in the shed Was comedy gold. As a teaser for the next part, They show Margot saying, ‘Well thank you, Tom’, While the narrator said, ’And there was one cast member no-one got on with. Stay tuned to find out who that was’.
By now it’s been an hour And it shows no sign of stopping And there’s been no mention yet of the Juicy gossip or even of Margot saying ’Well thank you, Tom’. Jo Brand came on to say that The episode in which Tom Gets kicked in the goolies by a cow is comedy gold. As a teaser for the next part, They show Margot saying, ‘Well thank you, Tom’, While the narrator said, ’And there was one cast member no-one got on with. Stay tuned to find out who that was’.
And now it’s been an hour and a half And I’m worried that I’ve stumbled into another dimension In which I’m cursed to watch a documentary About The Good Life For the rest of time. And the Archbishop of Sodding Canterbury comes on and says The episode in which a sheep is sick On Margot’s shag pile rug Is comedy gold, And I’m thinking I don’t care, I never watched it I never liked it I just want to find out which cast member they didn’t like I’m sitting here watching this crap What does that say about me? As a teaser for the next part, They show Margot saying, ‘Well thank you, Tom’, While the narrator said, ’And there was one cast member no-one got on with. Stay tuned to find out who that was’.
And there are more adverts for dandruff medication And a vacuum cleaner that picks up invisible dust And I think, if it’s invisible dust, Then how do you know when the bag is full? And the sodding documentary is back on and finally They show the clip of Margot saying, ’Well thank you, Tom’, And the audience hoots like it’s flipping hilarious And finally oh so finally The narrator says ‘And there’s one cast member that nobody got on with’. And it turns out to be the fucking goat. The fucking goat. Two hours of my life I sat here waiting for this. I want to throw the TV out the window. Two bloody hours. The fucking goat. And the bloody thing ends limply with the end credits. Nobody got on with the fucking goat.
I turn the TV off. And I sit there for a bit. I’ve learned a valuable lesson.
No doubt you’ve realised that I haven’t been performing much of late. There are many small reasons for this, though the urge to perform remains as strong as ever, as does the enjoyment I get from it. At the beginning of last year, my day job role changed considerably, which means lots of daily travel and a level of uncertainty as to where I shall be on any particular day. In such a way, without booking days off, (of which I get a modest amount a year), I could not commit to being able to turn up at gigs, and the time that I would normally spend rehearsing, (early mornings before work), was now taken up with early morning trains and waits at station platforms.
On top of this, I now had to spend time away from home in hotels in small towns throughout the south of England, some of which I’d never heard of before. (Midsomer Norton?! They just made that one up, surely!). What this meant was that yes, I had less time to rehearse and faff about with props and learn lines, but it did mean that I had much, much more time to write.
You may know that before I was a performer, I was a writer, and that was all I ever wanted to be. When my school friends dreamed of playing football (or cricket, as I was brought up in Surrey), I only ever wanted to be a published writer and win the Booker Prize instead of the FU Cup.
About three years ago, I started work on a novel which resurrected a character I’d created when I was 12 years old. The character is called Bill. Bill started as a skier who solved crimes in his spare time, (yeah, I know). The first Bill story was written around 1985. By 1990, Bill was now a detective, (his skiing career was over), and I wrote the Bill stories all through my teenage years. I then promptly forgot all about him for thirty years. This new story, Bin, was about Bill’s efforts to get a recycling bin for his new flat, and that’s all that happened in the novel. It was more a test, so that I could get back into writing Bill stories, and seriously, it was like we’d never been apart.
Two years ago, using the tricks I’d learned with Bin, I started a new novel, which I hoped would be a hymn to seaside towns. Red Sand was the result, a novel in which Bill had come down to the seaside to spend time with his old friend Ed, (who was also in those teenage stories), only to find that Ed had gone missing. I’m incredibly happy with Red Sand, particularly its unusual premise in which the whole novel is narrated by Paignton Pier, who is a character in the narrative in their own right.
Last year, I applied to the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course with Red Sand, and wouldn’t you know it, I was chosen. I was lucky enough to have a wonderful class of fellow students online and an amazing tutor in Suzannah Dunn, the author, who was very encouraging and who absolutely loved the novel, and in particular, Bill as a character. Her enthusiasm and kind words certainly made me think that I had the beginnings of something I could work with. She even contacted me when the course finished requesting a copy of a certain chapter which, she said, had stayed in her head long after the course had finished, which I took to be a very good sign.
Red Sand is now finished, (or at least, this draft of it). But I knew I could do better, and write something, well, easier to sell. Over the last few months an idea for a novel came to me, employing the tricks I’ve learned from Bin and Red Sand, and especially from the Curtis Brown course and my fellow students. I am currently working on a new novel called The Hibiscus Throne, again with Bill as the main character. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but it is ostensibly a romantasy fiction which plays around with the genre, with lots more going on under the bonnet. I’m currently deep in the writing of the first draft, churning out sometimes 2000 words a day and, as any writer of a novel will tell you, the characters live in my head constantly, vying for attention and commenting on the world around me.
My day currently looks like this: I get up at five, and write from six until eight. At eight, I go to the station and I catch a train, and I get a table seat on which I then pump in another half hour of writing. I work until five, catch a train home, have dinner, and then do another writing session from seven until nine. I’ve been doing this for the last two months, mostly ensconced in the narrative and writing, writing, writing. Every weekend I go and visit my mother in Brixham, and I spend the whole day writing again, in a room at the back of her garage which I previously used for rehearsing poems.
I cannot wait until The Hibiscus Throne is finished. I have never been interested in romance or fantasy, and while the premise of the story means that it is not really either, I do enjoy the ‘world building’ aspect of it. And I can’t wait for people to see it. It’s quite a departure from my two existing published novels, Reception and The Neon Yak, both of which are still out there.
So, will I get back to performing? Yes, I miss it dreadfully. I miss the people and I miss my poem friends, and I miss having an audience and immediate feedback. Writing often feels a solitary pursuit, somewhat insincere, but I kind of love the madness of that insincerity. Over the last few months I have exchanged letters with a very well-respected and famous writer in which he has imparted some amazing advice not only about what it is that we do as artists, but on life in general, too, the solitary nature of writing, and the worlds that we create.
Nobody believes it possible that a novel, left unopened on the shelf of a library, say, or a private house, might alter its substance internally, subtly, change paragraphs here and there, the exact wording of certain phrases, even its slant or view on one subject or another, that the next time the book is read it has altered enough to be a new book entirely. Is it not conceivable that the human brain – surely a more complex and rich piece of equipment than a humble novel – might approach, each time, the novel in exactly the frame of mind, only to find the novel changed? Such a prognosis had to be investigated
It took years to find an institution where my ideas would find support. Most universities and research facilities shied away from such a controversial approach, while many did not even answer my letters of inquiry. As luck would have it, one of the last institutions I contacted responded with a letter not only of interest, but a research team of my own to investigate the phenomenon of literary self-reconfiguration. When I visited the institute and asked who it was who had shown such an interest in my ideas – for I hardly believed the news myself – I was introduced to a humble man by the name of Professor Zazzo Thim.
We hit it off immediately, the professor and I. He took me to a local cafe where, over steaming mugs of hot chocolate, he enthused over the implications that literary self-reconfiguration had on the world at large.
‘Don’t you understand’, he said. ‘For so long we have thought that each generation attempted a wealth of literature from the past from a slightly different angle. Now it seems that it is the books which change, that human consciousness remains the same’.
‘Indeed’, I agreed. ‘Is it not indicative of human weakness of character that we have assumed our race to be getting less intelligent when, all the time, it is literature itself which is altering, mutating? If you read subsection three of my report, you will find that I blame most chemicals used in the production of ink for the changes which are taking place in classical literature. It seems the older the volume, the more changes there have been. The character Polonius, for example, has almost been edited out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, while Esmerelda has negotiated such a large part for herself in Hugo’s ‘Notre Dame’ that the whole hunchback issue is now nothing but a sub-plot. This is an important issue, and one which we must address with considerable haste’
The old professor looked down at his fingers on the surface of the cafe table. Feebly, he threw his scarf over his shoulder, then looked at me with sad, red eyes. ‘This’, he whispered, ‘Could very well be my last adventure in literature. Unlike the average novel, I am no more timeless than the common sparrow. This investigation will give me the chance to approach life with some meaning each morning, and I look forward to that one moment of discovery where all mysteries are solved’. He lifted up his hand, which I shook, delicately, in fear that I may hurt the old man’s fingers. At last he smiled, bravely. To us’, he said, ‘And literary self-reconfiguraton.’
We began our investigations on a windy Tuesday morning. The old library in which we’d set up our equipment seemed to shake and shudder with each gust, while the tall, gothic windows at the far end of the room whistled and moaned, as if the books themselves were trying to expel us from the building. An ethereal, overcast light spilled into the room, tinged green and red by the stained glass of the upper windows. Zazzo was in his element, scampering between the rows of books and leaning over the railings of the upper gallery, waving his walking stick in the air and declaring that literature shall hide no secrets from us!’ At last we settled around a large table on the ground floor, placing several books open, flat on the desk, under the omnipotent gaze of a high-powered lamp and several cameras.
‘And now’, I told the old man, ‘We sit back and wait.
Zazzo parked himself on an old librarian’s chair at the side of the table, and leaned his chin on the top of his cane. I sat on the other side of him, and, over our equipment, regarded his form somewhat enviously. How like Zazzo I truly wanted to be! A man who had dedicated his whole life to fiction, to the glare of words printed on the page, the honesty of their grammar, the timelessness of ancient stories, modernist experimentations. Likewise, Zazzo stared back at me, hardly shifting from his pose as if he didn’t want to budge an inch from his chair. How obstinate in character, how determined to have carved such a life for himself. He saw me, I was sure, as a rival, as an usurper wishing to take his crown, and claim his glory for myself.
Barely five minutes into our experiment, and I decided I would have to show the world that this was all my own work.
‘Why don’t you go home?’, I asked him, ‘And have yourself a rest?’
He looked up at me. ‘What for?’
‘It’s very unlikely that we shall make any advancements in our first few hours. You must be tired from your exertions’
‘Nonsense’, he laughed. ‘On the contrary, I am in my element. Having lived a life so defined by books and ancient volumes, fear it is you, my young friend, who should leave me be, that I may commune my soul to whatever internal spirit holds this magnificent library together’.
The crafty old man! Already he was trying to hide me from my moment of glory! How senseless I had been to the logic and temperament of this aged professor! That he, in his twilight years, should claim all the plaudits and the celebrations! I’m staying right here, I told him, crossing my arms, defiantly, across my chest.
And so we remained, for the next six hours, silent, quietly seething from across the desk. I decided I would have to take drastic measures.
I spent the night in a cheap hotel not far from the library where, amid the damp bedclothes and the peeling wallpaper, and entertained only by the music from passing cars, the rhythmical grunting from the brothel nextdoor, I carefully removed half a dozen pages from a number of volumes and then, under a magnifying glass, re-arranged certain words and nuances of grammar to create, while not a new work in themselves, a mere variation on the same theme.
It was eleven ‘o’clock when the pounding music started, a sleazy thump-thump through the thin walls which vibrated the table on which I worked and caused the cheap decorative pictures to swing ever so slightly in their frames. Yet I hardly noticed any of it, so intent was I in carrying out my fiendish plan.
And oh, what a joy I had in my endeavours! I went to bed that night with an image of the aged professor, Zazzo Thim, dressed in a mothballed tuxedo, explaining to the gathered scientists and members of literary circles his theory of self-reconfiguration, only to be shocked, dismayed as I stand, waving a pair of scissors and a stick of glue, declaring his whole research to be nothing but a hoax, an ill-timed, unmitigated disaster! And how I would chuckle to myself, using a scalpel to remove the words, the letters, even the punctuation of Jane Austen’s
‘Mansfield Park’, only to replace them just millimeters to the left or the right. The sweet joy of my conquest!
Yet my labours were not without stress. Each night, the tenant of the room next to my own would, quite regularly, indulge his passions with one of the young ladies from the lower floor. At first, the excitement of my quest meant that his exertions were nothing but a minor distraction, but soon I could concentrate on nothing else but his seemingly endless enthusiasm for the opposite sex, his insatiable desire to explore every avenue in his lovemaking repertoire.
As the season drew on the nights became hotter, until I reduced myself to banging on the wall with a hardback copy of Ivanhoe, desperately, the tears running down my sweating face, the tiny letters I had cut from the volume flying into the air and landing around me like a perfect snow. I knew I would have to finish my project very soon.
Slowly, I would replace the books in the library on the table in front of my aged colleague. Yet the old fool would not notice a change in them, nor did he spot the more glaring alterations – such as the new sub-plot in Wuthering Heights dealing with a harlequin on a pogo-stick. Yet he was so worried about his appearance to me that he would get up every now and then, tinker with the electronic gadgets we had assembled on the next table, adjust the lense of the camera, bend the light closer to the table.
‘Nothing again today’, he would say.
‘Really? Oh dear, what a shame. I must bow – as ever – to your superior knowledge’.
No matter how significant the change, Zazzo Thim did not spot a thing. And such lengths I went to! I changed the rhyme scheme of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets from iambic pentameter to twenty-five syllables each line. I removed all of the exclamation marks from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I inserted a product endorsement for Coca-Cola halfway through the Canterbury Tales. Yet nothing I could do registered with Zazzo Thim. How obstinate he remained in his ignorance.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, stranger things started to occur. In the odd moments that Zazzo left his post to visit the toilet, I would open some of the books at random to admire my handiwork, only to find that the novels had gone back to their original states, that the extra syllables had vanished, that certain lines were printed exactly as the original writers had intended. At first I was perplexed, but then I realised that there was a greater significance at work. Rather than reconfigure themselves, I now knew that books had the ability to heal themselves whatever damage had occurred to them. Oh, the possibilites! started to see that Zazzo’s supposed discovery would be nothing compared to this new twist!
Each night I left the gothic library and returned to my dreary hotel. I knew there was only the one course open to me – I would have to eradicate every mention of a whale from Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’. Zazzo would discover this anomaly and present it to the world, only for me to step in with my greater discovery. It was a mammoth task and would need all night to carry out my fiendish plot before, that next morning, allowing Thim to discover the latest reconfiguration by himself. I sat down at the desk at eight ‘o’clock with a scalpel, a magnifying glass and a tube of Uhu, and began work on chapter one feeling within me the persistence of a marathon runner, the tenacity of a soldier in battle.
At eleven ‘o’clock the man next door began his aerobics. At first I tried to expel it from my mind, and concentrate on the task at hand. Yet the more resolved to dedicate myself to my work, the more his grunting and pleasured yelping began to intensity, until the bedsprings seemed as if they were attached to my eardrums and the banging of the bedhead against the wall was occurring right on the very top of my scalp. The sweat began to pour from my head and my clumsy fingers began to miss their mark, until I accidentally edited Queueg from a vital scene involving a bar-room brawl. In trying to make amends for this error, went too tar and gave Captain Ahab two legs, and then, when trying to cut one of them off again, forgot which one it was that he had originally lost. Bang, bang, bang, grunt, grunt, grunt. I wiped my arm across my eyes, the tiny scissors stuck on my thumb. Oh, Melissa! Melissa. Grunt, grunt, grunt! I picked up a spare page to fan myself only to see Jim from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island insert himself in the text. Grunt, grunt, grunt! And that’s when I flipped. I stood up, opened my door, marched down the passageway and pounded on the door of my neighbour. ‘For God’s sake!’, I yelled, ‘Cease this unending barrage of noise! Rest for an hour, and allow the female species at least some respite from your neverending appetite! For goodness sake, what stamina can a man possibly have to keep up such endeavours hour after hour! Can’t you see, you’re driving me mad?’.
The door opened at last, and Professor Zazzo Thim stood before me, quite naked apart from a towel, while Melissa looked over his shoulder.
‘Was I keeping you up?’ he asked
‘Don’t you understand what you have done to me?’, I asked. ‘You’ve made my life a living hell! How can I possibly work when you are busily satisfying whatever cravings that ancient body can still afford? You have ruined these last few weeks for me, and caused a hole deep in my psyche! How can I ever finish my work?’
‘What work?’, he asked.
‘Well, erm…. The point is, your incessant lovemaking has been a severe distraction to me!’
‘Lovemaking?’, the old man asked. ‘Melissa, here, is showing me how to use the pogo stick. It’s something l.. read somewhere.
‘Pogo stick?’, I stuttered
‘In any case, what work could you possibly have away from the library?’
The moment I looked over his shoulder, I knew what was occurring. On the desk against the wall I saw, much like in my own room, a couple of volumes, a scalpel, a magnifying glass, and a tube of Uhu. The old fool was taking the books I had altered home from the library, and changing them back! So keen was he that I should not discover the self-reconfiguration, that he was eliminating all evidence before I could find it! Or was it all a trap? Was he making me believe that the books were mending themselves, that I should announce to the world this miraculous literary discovery only to be laughed at, as I had planned for him? He glared at me, and I glared right back at him.
‘I’m putting the kettle on’, Melissa said.
Of course, the part that hurt the most was that he was able to spend more time on his hobbies than on the execution of his own plan. No wonder he looked so tired at the library, I told myself.
And yet, what a genius, that he should carry out such a plan with such elan, with such cunning and dedication to his task.
We met at the library again the next day, and sat on either side of the table. And there we sat, for the next five months, not noticing anything except the arrival of dust mites, until our funding was, eventually, transferred to another area.
Oh Mr Bassman, you’ve got that c-certain s-something when you go . . .
Believe it or not that was my dad’s favourite song. he used to sing it all the time when we were kids.
Oh Mr Bassman, you’ve got that c-certain s-something when you go . . . A-aye yi a-aye yi aye yi
I had no idea what it was about. Neither did my sister. neither did my dad. what even is a bassman? I was too young to know much about music. I just thought it was a man who really liked skirting boards.
Oh Mr Bassman, you’ve got that c-certain s-something when you go . . . A-aye yi a-aye yi aye yi I wanna be a bassman too.
I think he only sung it to us because it had weird sounds in it. The only other song he sang a lot was I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. no time to say hello goodbye I’m late I’m late I’m late. But Mr Bassman. Oh, Mr Bassman was the thing.
Oh Mr Bassman, you’ve got that c-certain s-something when you go . . . A-aye yi a-aye yi aye yi I wanna be a bassman too. Bur b-b-bur b-b-bur b-b-bur b-bur bur
I was listening to the radio. It was Sounds of the Sixties presented by Brian Mathews. (‘This is your old mate Brian Mathews saying, that’s your lot for this week, see you next week’). And he said, The next song is from 1961 And it was a minor hit for Johnny Cymbal and it’s called Mr Bassman, and seriously, it was like a kick in the goolies.
And the song started. and the song played. and the song came out of the radio and all this time I’d thought it was just a song that my dad had made up and all the time I thought it was a piece of genius that my dad had made up and I tell you that a small piece of my childhood suddenly dissolved.
but the more I listened, the more I thought, oh, he’s doing it wrong. Johnny Cymbal has cocked it up. Johnny Cymbal is singing the wrong words. This is nothing like the song my dad used to sing. this is not how the song goes. this is not how the song goes. THIS is how the song goes.
Oh Mr Bassman, you’ve got that c-certain s-something when you go . . . A-aye yi a-aye yi aye yi I wanna be a bassman too. Bur b-b-bur b-b-bur b-b-bur b-bur bur BUR BUR BURRR B-B-B-BURR BURR!
(Pause).
Anyway, Just thought I’d tell you that. I’d better be off, now. I’d better be off.
Robert Garnham 