Biscuit donkey chocolate eclair. Weston-Super-Mare. Traffic light pomegranate Yogi Bear Weston-Super-Mare. Slam dunk Bill’s big hair. Weston-Super-Mare. Almost bought a pair of trousers there. Weston-Super-Mare. Don’t look Timmy it’s rude to stare. Weston-Super-Mare. Weston-Super-Mare. Weston Super, Weston Super, Weston-Super-Mare.
Guess where the villain has his secret lair. Weston-Super-Mare. Debonair kitchenware chemical warfare Weston-Super-Mare. Can I take your photo? Don’t you dare. Weston-Super-Mare. I lost my virginity there. Where? Bournemouth. Who wants to be a millionaire? Weston-Super-Mare. Have you got a ticket pay your excess fare Weston-Super-Mare. Don’t move you’ve got something crawling in your hair. Weston-Super-Mare. Weston-Super-Mare. Weston Super Weston Super Weston-Super-Mare.
Underwear everywhere ready to wear Weston-Super-Mare Thoroughfare deckchair devil may care Weston-Super-Mare Solitaire questionnaire update on your software Weston-Super-Mare Can I take your photo? Don’t you dare. Weston Super Mare My sheds in a state of disrepair Weston super mare Loose floorboard on the twenty third stair Weston super mare Elton John once sneezed on the mayor Weston-Super-Mare. Weston-Super-Mare. Weston Super Weston Super Weston-Super-Mare. Weston super mare (oi!) Weston super mare (oi!) Weston Super Weston Super Weston-Super-Mare.
One of the things I’m proudest of are the poetry films I made with London’s Muddy Feet Poetry Films. I first met Peter Hayhoe at Bang Said The Gun, the raucous poetry night which I’d attend every time I went to London. He invited me along to a recording session in a studio in the east of the city which he’d booked for the day, and various poets would come and go and he would film them performing their poems. Over the years I returned twice more and we would have all sorts of fun, working out angles and scenery and the such. The last time I went up to London, the recording session had to be cancelled due to logistical reasons. No problem, Peter said, let’s film anyway. So we went to a park in South London and filmed the poem on the gym equipment. Anyway, here are the videos we made. I hope you like them.
I was chatting to a friend. Yes, I have friends. And this one was called Adam. And I said to this friend, this Adam, I’m off to see Vanessa tomorrow, Because she’s another friend, And Adam said, Tell her I said hello.
What am I, I thought, Your hello outsourcing service? Offering hellos by proxy Retrieved with none of the actual feeling Of a proper hello? I thought, I didn’t actually say this Because I’m not like that, I thought, if you want to say hello So badly, Then bloody well say hello yourself. But I was off to see Vanessa. And Adam said, Tell her I said hello.
But he didn’t actually say hello. He just said, Tell her I said hello. He didn’t say, Hello, That was for Vanessa. Or, hello, that’s what I’d say If I saw Vanessa. And you can tell her that I’ve just said hello, Which strictly speaking would have been lying, But anyway I said I would.
Vanessa was in a real crabby mood. Her latest money-making venture, Selling fake moustaches to people As they enter the sexual health clinic, Had failed, Because as a society we are more open now About such things, And anyway, The police had told her to move along, And we had a row, And she told me that I was about as usual as an Air vent on a submarine, And I told her that if intelligence Skipped a generation Then her kids would be geniuses And she said That I couldn’t possibly be as daft As I looked, And I said up yours, Because I’d run out of insults, And then I said, By the way, Adam says hello.
I saw Adam the next day. Did you say hello?, he asked. I said hello, I said. And next time you want to say hello, I said, Don’t get me to say hello, I said. Go to the person you want to say hello to, And say hello, I said. And he said, Did she say hello? And I said, Actually, no, she didn’t.
He said if I were lucky I could win The main prize in the raffle, A ride on a traction engine! And though I was hoping more for the bottle of Cheap red Which would knock me as blotto as a Hippopotamus, I was one number out, and wouldn’t you know it, I’d won A ride on a traction engine.
And by the way, they said, It’s compulsory.
I wanted to get it over with, I mean, Wouldn’t you? Flat caps always make me look like A farmer with a penchant for porn, Yet there I stood mid morning with mild mannered Matt In a field near Yeovil, Matt, Whose passion for traction engines far outstripped Any passion of my own save that I have long harboured For Walls Viennettas. Honestly, said Matt, In his jaunty hat, As we climbed into the cab, This will be better than sex.
It went Chugga chugga latty boom boom Chugga chugga latty clank Boom boom ranching boom boom ranching Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop.
Just like sex.
Chugga chugga latty boom boom Chugga chugga latty clank Boom boom ranching boom boom ranching Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop.
Here we go, said Matt, And it juddered, and shook, and rattled And lurched forward and Soon we were chugging across the field Boom boom wadda wadda boom boom wadda wadda Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop.
And Matt yelled, What do you think? Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop. And I yelled I think my filling just came out Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop. And Matt said When was the last time you were jostled And battered and oscillated in such a manner? And I thought of my Steven In the days when we used to do it Like turning on and off a tap But now we haven’t done it in quite some time And I touched his leg the other night and he said, As if I were a dog about to eat a cigarette packet, No! And to be honest Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop. I’m thinking of dumping the bastard.
But isn’t that just like me? Boom boom ranching boom boom ranching And Matt’s busy manhandling various Gears columns cogs wheels vents And we get to the end of the field and he Turns that fucker around and we Come all the way back again.
Chugga chugga latty boom boom Chugga chugga latty boom Boom boom ranching boom boom ranching Pop quizzy bang quizzy bang quizzy pop. Ca-chur Ca-chur Ca-chur Ka-ping! Oh, blast, said Matt, And we shuddered to a halt.
It’s blown a gasket, Matt said, Brian will have to come over with his tool box, And I clambered down from the cab And I wiped the grime from my borrowed dungarees And I grinned in a way that I hadn’t since Last October’s orgasm When I’d shouted, One hundred and eighttyyyy! And Steven had said, Will you keep it quiet up there?
I stepped into a tropical bar. Simon Reeve was there in a slow dance, And I lost myself to his floppy fringe Whose sweat-soaked flappy fronds would Tickle my blushing cheeks, Whose stubble scraped at the twilit skies Like a cat’s claws on anaglypta, Whose come-to-bed eyes betrayed none Of the entitlement of his classical features But a yearning for a sweetness so virile That he could have been a treacle tart And I ached, how I ached, To be the custard.
Backpack merely decorative, Naive tone a faux Theroux, Poor man’s Palin, Cargo-trousered doyen of sand dunes And jungle trains, No armchair droner he, Riven with Reevisms, river crossings, Barrier reef rovings, Now gyrating for my pleasure in the aptly named Club Flamingo.
Simon Reeve whose dimpled smile Hauls in the night like a Titicatan net-lobber, Whose unblemished skin betrays the Goodness of various restorative unguents, Whose manly chin is jutted like the Bulbous bow of a speeding Shinkansen And probably twice as purposeful, Whose sensitive eyebrows are seldom parabolic, Yet neither do they quiver intense for Reevsie is an empathic soul, Whose backpack is admittedly superfluous, Whose torso is Michaelangeloian in its Sculpted accommodation of his lean yet Muscular frame on whose bounty I would Willingly consume a quadruple-decker cheeseburger Dipping a chip in a reservoir of mayonnaise Stored for convenience sake in his belly button.
Action man for aunties. Secret poet banging sand out his boots. Earnest and eager though neither over with either. Mortal enemy of Professor Brian Cox. No world-weary Whicker he, but a clamorous compassion And the kind of face That would make even Vladimir Putin Contemplate a five minute fumble In the broom cupboard.
Simon Reeve, whose tousled locks hold Within their definitely un-dyed verdantness A vitality that would put Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to shame, Whose rich deep Colombian coffee coloured eyes Might penetrate x-ray-like beneath layers so effectively As to pass right through the earth’s core every time He bends down to pat a puppy. Whose nostrils hardly flare. Whose afterthought goatee clings on like A countryside hilltop copse stunted By the choking emissions from a nearby pig farm Yet in whose branches barn owls berate the night With their haunted warbling, Whose luscious lips have tempted many a plastic surgeon To bemoan the artifice of their own creations And now before is delicate tongue-moistened plumpness, Whose sturdy shoulders in their perfect powerful paralleogramatic Precision Would easily raise a live rhinoceros clear out Of the Serengeti mud hole Into which it had stumbled probably distracted By the beauty of Simon Reeve’s face in the first place.
And I, Simon Reeve, I am that rhinoceros And this ain’t no mud hole, It’s the Club Flamingo And our song has now ended And our dance has now ended And you’ve picked up your backpack Which definitely doesn’t contain Just a couple of pillows to make it look full for the cameras, And off you go.
Three hundred or so low guttural individual voices Combine into a cohesive whole, a chorus of Feral anticipation as these custard coloured titans Skip on to the pitch, the first among them kind of Punches limply through a paper hoop Emblazoned with their team sponsor’s logo, J. Arthur Bowyer’s Synchro-Boost Houseplant Compost, Three half-hearted palm slaps and then the paper gives way, These athletic specimens of masculinity and matching socks, Shiny blue polyester shorts a-gleam under the spotlights, Back slaps and star jumps, half-hearted jogging, While the opposing team, who must have had an Awfully long bus ride, kind of slouch on to the field, Mooching along the sides of the pitch like slugs around lettuce.
I’d brought a book to read assuming there would be seats. Instead I was pressed up against the lanky frame of an Ever so friendly thought unusually potty-mouthed Scrote of a lad whose replica custard coloured shirt Had last year’s sponsor, McClintock’s Polystyrene Coving Ltd., And who suggested at top column that the home team Might like to consider breaking the fucking legs of the opposition. Someone then tried to start a chant going, ‘Oh we do like to beat them beside the seaside! We’re gonna beat you by two or three!’ But it kind of got drowned out To a chant of ‘Put them all in intensive care! Put them all in intensive care! Put them all in intensive care! Captain Ollie’s got great hair!’
I have come with a friend who’s there for the football But also to show me the football and he Made a kind of grimace when I said I’d brought a book. The home team did some warm up exercises. ‘They’re dancing!’ I said, ‘it’s all a bit camp, isn’t it?’ Number 32 is just my type, bleach blond hair, stubble, Long legs and snake hips. ‘Coooo-eeeee! Over here! Yoooo-hooooo!’ My pal said, ‘He’s on loan from Bournemouth’. I said, ‘That’s okay, I’d give him back in one piece’.
The stadium announcer extols the virtues of both teams And attests to the veracity of J. Arthur Bowyer’s Synchro-Boost Houseplant Compost, And the game begins, number 32’s elegant fingers splayed As he dribbles the ball, like he’s a ballet dancer, Or a gymnast balancing on a beam, though even The home team audience yells that he’s a useless Time wasting tossbag who gets the ball and does fuck all, Go back to Bournemouth you useless waste of space. He’s got lovely eyes.
The ground rumbles and thuds as they race from one end To the other, kicking up clods of grass and winning The applause of the audience who shout encouragement, These lads in custard who aim at the goal at the other end, Someone misses a sitter, someone else scuffs it, And then the ball goes in the corner and two opposing players Prance and dance around it like Torville and Dean. My eyes kind of wander off to the other side Where twenty or so or the away team supporters chirrup And you can just make out the faded lettering of Last years sponsor showing through under a new coat of paint, McClintock’s Polystyrene Coving Ltd. Is Better Than Any Competition. Only the word ‘tit’ is still showing.
My pal has already told me in advance The skill of number 10, whose speciality is Less the sublime and precocious nature of his craft, More his knack for falling over at just the right moment, Now he goes down like a sack of spuds and the Audience erupts, apparently this is a good thing, He’s allowed to aim a ball at the keeper and boom, In it goes, I almost spill my cup of tea As I’m jostled and the lad next to me flings His arms around my neck, jumps up and down, the Tea oscillates as I breathe in his Lynx Africa antiperspirant, I must say I enjoy it a lot. And now I want number 10 to fall over again.
Wouldn’t you know it, he does, never fails to disappoint, Fortune smiles twice in the low setting sun, Achilles in his death throes, Icarus mid melt, Our hero is downfallen and rolling in the mud like a hippo, The ref’s cheek bones inflate as his blows his whistle. Boom, scores! The audience is enraptured once again, Another clingy embrace of Lynx Africa, I’m a cuppa carrying eucalyptus and he’s my own personal koala, Number 32 looks down wistfully as if jealous, I hope, Oh, I hope, of me and my new found tame delinquent Who sips a surreptitious beer from a paper bag and Chinks against my half spilled Darjeeling, cheers! Caught up in the joy of the moment I attempt to start a chant Based on the third movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony But it doesn’t take hold.
Really, I’m only here for my pal who’s brought me along. This is his culture and I’m an interloper. But I want to show that I understand life Beyond the cliche, broaden my mind and experience Every nuance of our shared cultural history. ‘We’re winning ‘, he says during the interval As we queue for pies sold from a shed Next to the unoccupied press box. ‘Well, they are’, I point out, ‘We’re just watching’. I’m taking him to a drag show next weekend.
And then the announcer wants us all to sing happy birthday For Little Liam, whose favourite player is number ten. And Little Jimmy, whose favourite player is number ten, And Little Jack, whose favourite player is number ten, And he reminds us that we can all vote for the J. Arthur Bowyer’s Synchro-Boost Houseplant Compost Man of the Match, which is usually won by number ten. ‘I’d like to vote for number 32’, I say, perhaps too loudly, And everyone around me laughs and says how funny, They love my sense of irony.
Two more goals soon after the interval. Perhaps the audience has tired itself out, I’m the only one who seems excited, and my new friend In the McClintock shirt hardly seems inclined at all To repeat his usual celebratory hijinx, no doubt Enervated by his enthusiasm and the two litre bottle of cider Stuffed down the front of his trackie bottoms, And when the ref calls a halt to the show I pat My pal on the back and ask whether four nil in some kind Of club record. It was two all, he says, they switched ends. They did what? Why didn’t the announcer explain this Before I got excited over nothing?
Oh, this communal kickabout, this colossal crowd clapping This unified oneness this matey definitely not homoerotic bonding, This celebration of the hunter’s skill this All-encompassing rough and tumble this slippery sport a spurt on the turf With spurious curiosities this worship of the physical This proof of prayer this spectacle this weird excuse To suddenly bellow ‘Nice tackle!’ and no one bats an eyelid This playing out of certain urges but would they ever let me Join in? No, probably not, and number ten has got mud all over him.
What did you think?, my pal asks As we file like clocked-off factory workers Into the adjacent streets, not that he’s interested really, Immediately he then adds, shall we get some chips?
I think of number 32 Isolated In the dressing room.
No sense of closure from that dream last night. You were back and dancing sublime and you said That those who live in cul-de-sac places Feel nothing but anger when the dreams refuse to come.
You would never have been so philosophical in real life, Though we both lived in dead-end places, Cul-de-sacs leading nowhere and bungalows of derision. There’s no place to go when there’s only one way in.
I’d like to be more adventurous and I'd like to take chance. I’d like to live, but just being with you Was adventure enough, and you said that you needed more Than love and security, and that defined our difference.
Only the one way in, and one way out, and you felt Hidden away from the world, and your dreams were on a Larger canvas, a widescreen for the soul, You said my focus was too narrow, that I was
Easily satisfied with the status quo, which is to say, The comforts of a life hidden from potential harm. And yet I’d dream the same dreams as any damn fool, And I’d write them in a notebook, closure or not.
And now those very same dreams exclude a man Who never sought finality. I look out at my cul-de-sac, Hidden off from the main road where dreams often die, Narratives which end far too neatly for my tastes.
Just for a minute I’d like to fall asleep and dream Of neat resolutions, and maybe from time to time, You’ll pop up and say hello, and wave, and we’ll be Ever so cosy in our cul-de-sac, with the world calling, But we won’t answer, and we’ll both be laughing.
No sense of closure from that dream last night. No sense of closure from that dream last night.
Greetings puny earth people. I come in peace. Take me to you leader! Actually, maybe not, I’ve seen him in action. Take me to the most Significant person, According to your Earth transmissions Take me to Rylan!
I am Zignor, Of the planet Pupaluvious 5, Which orbits a star Which until recently was called PUV 621R But Thanks to someone on your planet Buying its name as a fiftieth birthday present It’s now called Barry Jenkins. All hail Barry Jenkins! May death come quickly to his enemies.
I arrived just after lunch And I shall now attempt What appears to be your common greeting As it was the first thing said to me When I arrived. ‘You can’t park that there, mate’.
I have come to spread a Message of peace And if anyone says I haven’t then I’ll Punch their lights out. I saw your planet from Across the vast emptiness of space While lying in a field on Pupaluvious 5 And my first thought was, Oh, I’d love to go there And my second thought was Someone’s nicked my tent.
Pupaluvious 5 has eight moons. You’ve only got the one. Half of it was in shade tonight. I suppose It’s just a phase it’s going through.
Your puny planet is Ripe for alien invasion. We just don’t want to. It’s a sleepy backwater With terrible parking. It’s kind of the solar system’s equivalent to Newton Abbot. And every time we visit We feel we have to have a damn good shower. As I say, It’s the solar system’s equivalent to Newton Abbot. It smells a bit. Newton Abbot.
I suppose on your planet I’m known as an ET. Oh look, I heard someone say just now, An ET. Someone else said, What’s ET short for? And he replied, Because he’s got little legs.
I offered to take him To see Jupiter. He replied that if he wanted To see a gas filled giant, We’d visit his Uncle Darren.
But here I am, I come in peace. Here I am Don’t call the police. I’ve travelled far In an interdimensional zone On a spaceship made for one I was very alone I tried telepathy on Donald Trump. All I got was The engaged tone.
I leave you now, my interstellar friends. Once again, sorry about those EarthLink satellites I hit on the way down. Roswell was an insurance job. Let me finish with this saying From my home world, ‘Flooga zappy looppa-looga’, Which roughly translate as ‘Geoff, your Tentacles are showing’. Doreen, Beam me up, Doreen!
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).
Robert Garnham 