BBC World Service have just been in touch to see if I’d write them a little piece about Fred Goodwin losing his knighthood. I penned the following:
A Poem for Fred Goodwin
So Toodle pip then Fred the Shred
a nation’s anger on your head
there’s many out there want you dead,
they took away your gong instead.
Your friends have claimed it quite unfair A scapegoat for the whole affair!
They blame the mess on Brown and Blair
and though I think they’re half right there
someone’s got to be the first
and with our fury fit to burst
and pension pots unreimbursed
well, frankly Fred you looked the worst.
But come on fellah, dry your tears
you’ve still 400k a year
while angry kids who stole sports gear
got punishments far more severe
and lost the lot, their freedom, homes
these lads whose lives are monochrome
and have to throw their sticks and stones
’cause they’ve no voice to call their own.
Don’t panic Fred, there’s nothing changed
the order’s not been rearranged
the way of things is much the same
it’s only you that’s out the game
and even that was all for show
a gesture so the press can crow
a tabloid sacrifice and lo
we get to keep the status quo.
I’ve been on a little tour. I started out on Tuesday night in Wivenhoe. I used to live in Wivenhoe in 2005/6. I have very happy memories from that time of my life. While in Wivenhoe I proposed to my wife, wrote my first solo show and toured Aisle16′s Poetry Boyband pretty extensively. I also lived next door to my friend and mentor, the poet Martin Newell. Martin and I are still in contact and I saw him briefly before my gig on Tuesday. Those of you unaware of his work are missing out. He laments Old England like a bolshie, modern day Betjeman and his comic verse is unparalleled in its inventiveness. Look at his website – www.martinnewell.co.uk.
My gig was for PoetryWivenhoe. I’ve gigged for them before but at their old venue of The Greyhound. This time they were at The Royal British Legion and it was a nice room, feeling rammed with the 50 or so paying punters they had. I did two sets and performed all the new stuff alongside a couple of ballads. It was a really special gig, the audience were sharp and laughed hard at all the bits I most like myself.
Afterwards I slouched at the bar and chewed the fat with the landlord Martyn before heading over to the Greyhound for a few minutes to watch Martin Newell and his pals jamming old rock and roll classics. That’s something you don’t see in your average pub – a bunch of guys sitting round and jamming, and jamming well.
I stayed with my parents in Coggeshall and the next day headed off to London for a pre-record for The Verb, Ian McMillan’s excellent language and literature show on Radio 3. It’s on tonight by the way, 9.15, I think, but best check that. I was there to talk about and read a sizeable chunk of my work-in-progress – REVOLT!
It was good to give REVOLT! another airing but I have so much more to write and I’ve got to restart the process sooner rather than later. I need to do some research and I hate research. It’s boring. I like writing rhyming, metered verse and not really much else if truth be told.
After Broadcasting House I hauled shell* to Paddington where I ran into Simon Munnery. He had a wheely suitcase. I was pleased to see I travel lighter than the great man. In fact travelling lightly is one of few things I am genuinely good at. I got a vile train packed full of middle class cunts** to Oxford where I was met by my good friend Tom, with whom I had a couple of pints and chewed the proverbial.
My gig was for The Oxford University Poetry Society (OUPS). The society is now being run by one of my old students – Anna McCrory. Anna is one of the most delightful people I have ever met and I’m dead glad we have kept in touch. Hopefully all my students will rise to positions of power one day and I can live the Life of Riley.
I had a longer set this time and used the opportunity to debut my next Edinburgh show. As it stands it goes:
The Paunch! | Jean-Claude Gendarme | Scandal! | Barry Vs. The Blob | Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything | The Model & The Spot | Weekday Dad | Bloody Hell, It’s Barbara.
It came to 50 mins or so, and there are few little intro bits that I haven’t learned yet so it’s long enough. A lot will depend on what I call it as the title will frame the show. It’s not got a tight theme and it’s not telling a story, which is why I considered calling it Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything (and other poems) simply because it’s a memorable title. Though I fear it might also be too silly and therefore put people off.
However, there is a loose common theme. All the poems have been written to be funny, accessible, bawdy and sensationalist. I have had a tabloid newspaper aesthetic in mind for these poems. For that reason I am considering the title – TABLOID! I think it would be a cleverer title but the drawback is that it might raise expectations that the show is more coherent than it really is. Or perhaps mean that I feel the need to shoehorn poems in more.
I think, on reflection, I will try the TABLOID! route and see what the little bits of script around the poems feel like.
I left Oxford after an average cooked breakfast in town and travelled to Birmingham at Thursday lunchtime. I’ve gigged in Birmingham remarkably few times in the last 13 years – last night was my 3rd time. I was feeling pretty ill (as I am now) by the time I arrived so I spent the afternoon in bed, which is a shame as I’d have liked to have seen the city beyond the depressing sprawl of interconnecting shopping centres that surround the station.
The gig was for Apples & Snakes West Midlands, which is run by the lovely Bohdan Piasecki. It was in the upstairs room of a pub called The Victoria, which is right on the edge of Chinatown. I was closing the gig and by the time I got on stage I was aswim in booze and snot but I turned out a pretty solid performance and the poems went down really well. In fact, I really enjoyed it – the audience were sharp and they laughed well at the jokes.
It’s fun working out which poems are your bankers when you have a new set. I have started opening on The Paunch! because it’s easy, not too fast and gets across something of myself to the audience. It went down really well all week, but particularly so in Brum where the audience seemed more comedy-inclined.
Jean-Claude Gendarme is the oldest poem in this new show (18 months now) and it’s a banker, except with teenagers who don’t seem to go for the Carry On style humour.
Barry Vs The Blob goes down better in some places than others – usually when the audience are more of a poetry crowd and they realise how tricky it must have been to write. That said, it’s unusual enough that it’s a real banker now.
Jeremy is perhaps a bit less so, it’s never bombed but it’s perhaps a bit juvenile for some audiences.
Barbara is perhaps a bit crude for others but the performance of it means that I get away with it, and besides it has enough clever rhymes to twist a few laughs out of any audience.
Weekday Dad doesn’t always kill, a younger audience is less interested, obviously, and the opening stuff works much better with an audience that has some knowledge of feminist theory (but really only a little is needed, it ain’t clever or anything). That said, I think most people appreciate the sentiment and it’s a nice counter to the filth.
I’ve done Scandal twice this week and I had really positive feedback from people in Oxford. It is really long and it is about politics so it will inevitably put people off. I will continue to road test it.
That leaves The Model and the Spot which is the one I’m considering dropping. Subject wise it’s pretty horrible as it stands and that will put some people off. Doing it as a duet with Tim Clare over the summer for Aisle16 R Kool! helped add to the sense of silly pantomime which is what I want for it, but the jury is still out on it as a solo piece.
I guess it all depends whether I write a suitable replacement before August, which I guess I might. Until then I will continue to experiment with what I have.
Anywho, I’m on the train back now. I’ve got a gig in Beccles tomorrow and one next Friday in Diss and then I’m pretty much done until after the baby has arrived. Lorks!
Oh, and I had a poem published in the Spectator last week. For those of you not into right-wing periodicals, here it is:
Clean Slate
You cheated on your girlfriend
so now she’s at my place bitching with my wife
while I carry your life
down staircases in torn plastic bags.
We load my car with lever arch files
in boxes meant for oranges.
It’s shabby. These things are not you:
the pink plastic backpack, the forgotten fleece,
The Tesseract by Alex Garland.
We shift unloved items
through the still night.
You show me your new house,
its Bond villain windows
and too many chairs.
You tell me about your new girlfriend,
she’s American, maybe you’ll go and live there.
I get it.
The attraction of starting again.
I talk up a clean slate as we lug boxes
and reassemble shelves. You toast cut ties.
Until the sweat starts to dry
and it’s time for me to go home to my wife and son
and leave you hanging curtains.
* I don’t have an actual shell
** I am also a middle class cunt, that’s probably what was so horrible about it – like looking in a mirror
Wotcha gang. It’s weird how web communication works for me. Some weeks I am mad keen to get on line and share my epiphanal discharge with the world, and others I couldn’t imagine anything less appealing. I spent last week away at The Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank, Ted Hughes old farm house, now a writers’ retreat. I couldn’t write blogs very easily there and I got out the habit. But it’s strange, these past few days I’ve scarcely even wanted to tweet. My brain has not been working that way at all. Nothing I had in it was public. And now, I guess I’m coming out the other side of that.
That’s probably because I did a gig last night. A great gig in fact. It was in Wivenhoe in Essex, where I used to live about seven years ago. We had about 50 people crammed into The British Legion for PoetryWivenhoe and it was bloody great. I did two sets, each about 25 mins long. I debuted SCANDAL! and it didn’t bomb and the rest of the new material seemed to hit the spot nicely. I did two ballads (Chip Shop and Cartwrights) but I didn’t do The Model & The Spot, so I’m guessing I’m perhaps one long poem, or two shorter ones away from having enough for a new Edinburgh show, perhaps less if I do a bit more chat. Tonight I’m playing The Oxford University Poetry Society, which is as illustrious a society its name suggests. I’ve done a gig for them before, in 2009, but it was before I had written all but three of my ballads, so I’ll have loads of new stuff for them. I might try and do the new show in its entirety as I have 45 mins.
Anyway, blah, blah, blah – it’ll all come good in the end. I really need to start worrying about getting more of REVOLT! written. The stand-up show will take care of itself.
I finished the Hornchurch poems btw. The final one felt like pulling teeth but on reflection I rather like it. The problem was trying to talk up the charm of the suburbs when I looking down a stunning Yorkshire valley at Hebden Bridge and feeling totally bowled over by nature. That obviously influences the poem below, but it made it hard to write. The difference between my own poems and commissions is that I always 100% feel and mean my own work, even if it is something silly like Jeremy, Who Drew Penises on Everything. However, with a commission it has to get finished, even if you don’t really mean it. It’s the truth that is missing. The mainly matters to me, but I’m sure it’s lurking there for any reader. Anyway, now I’ve done it down, here’s the piece:
The View from a Suburban Window
My northern friends, their thoughts bricked-up with mills
and views that knock the sense right out your heart,
will never see what I can from this sill.
They think the very daybreak should be art!
But like the city folk they play a part
in something else’s life. Bits in a machine,
they’re still swallowed, it’s just a different scene.
We haven’t got the swagger of a city;
the boom of northern hills and sheer, sheer drops;
our neat, suburban streets are far less pretty
than Suffolk’s skew-whiff, wattled Tudor shops.
We’re mostly free of all those well-worn props
of poetry and art, thank God, it leaves
the local people room enough to breathe.
For life is not all ecstasy and tears
and most of us I think are glad it’s not.
We trade adrenaline for fewer fears,
we strive to be content with what we’ve got
and then we dig foundations for our lot.
So towns like these are monuments to peace
it’s narrow here, perhaps, but life is deep.
The other news is that my album – We’re All In This Together – is now available from iTunes (and other mp3 stores, or will be soon). You can ‘download’ it, like the kids are doing these days. Why not do that? Huh? Go on. Click here. More on the album to follow.
It’s my birthday today, I’m 30. Woah. My son (2.5 years) is at my mum and dad’s so we’re kicking heels in a very pleasant way and making the most of this quietness before the baby comes. I just had a fry up and later there’s a curry. Hurrah.
I didn’t get a lie in though. I was up at 7am and writing another Hornchurch poem. This is the penultimate one. This is a conversation piece, nothing too flash, but I think it’ll work quite well in performance. The rhythm of the first piece is really fun, it builds nicely.
The London/Essex Dilemma
YOUNG MAN:
If anybody asks me, I’m from London
never Essex, rarely Hornchurch, London
East end, it’s the beating heart of London
got the tube, in my book mate, that’s London
drink my pints and sow my oats in London
sweat and earn and sleep and piss in London
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets here in London
half the world was governed here in London
Richardsons and Krays sliced throats in London
buzz of fourteen million in London
cloak of anonymity, that’s London
sweat of seven thousands boozers – London
heat of bodies packed in tight, that’s London
greatest city in the world is London.
So really mate, why choose to be from “Essex?”
OLDER MAN:
Well firstly friend, I see you like your hist’ry
but really Krays and Shakespeare, come on mate
that’s tourist stuff and as for boasts of empire
what’s next, a little ode to Wills & Kate?
See, pride in where you come from starts with hist’ry
so you should know, I hate to break your heart,
traditionally old Hornchurch is in Essex
and London was a fair slog from these parts.
You’re bowing down to roads and tubes and planning
you’re letting them dictate your past to you
but Essex is the county of rebellion
two fingers to smoke, that’s what we do.
John Ball, Wat Tyler, working men revolting
Essex, it’s the county of the free
that monkey they call Mayor in the blonde wig
you have him mate, he’s not to do with me
It’s not all green, green grass and Little England
it’s room to breath away from the machine.
It’s not all loads-a-money/TOWIE/Blingland
that’s London seeping up the a13.
So keep your smog and sad serrated sky
I’m Essex and I’m Essex till I die.
This is another dramatic monologue for the Hornchurch project. This is kind of me putting myself into my worst nightmare. It somewhat affected me when I was writing it, so I have no idea if it’s any good or not. I feel it might be, but too close to tell.
Weekend Dad
It’s every other Friday after school.
Not long enough for me to be exotic
just long enough to not know what to say.
You used to tear across the tarmac, throw
your arms around my neck and softly sob.
Your Bob The Builder bag flung to the floor
your bright green scarf half off, your half
familiar smell … I could tell already
how much you’d changed in thirteen restless nights.
It broke my heart, the way you’d cling to me
the weight of absence buried in my neck.
Then later how you’d use words differently
or pick at food I’d made your special way;
how I was out of touch with all your friends;
your life abridged to a flat omnibus.
I watched this thing on Channel 4 last week
about these refugees from World War Two
left wandering in Italy for years,
the white hot pain of battle cooled to nothing.
It made me think of us, how now we shuffle
up and down this High street every fortnight,
displaced but numb, our cuts and wounds well scabbed;
the Happy Meals and Argos toys a bobbin
round which we wind our cotton-thin rapport.
Sometimes I take you into Roy’s for pie
my dad took me in there when I was young
our family’s lived round Hornchurch way for years
These streets are in my veins, they’re in yours too
I never thought we’d leave, I never thought …
But I can’t stop your mother and her fella
from moving down there, crazy though it seems
so I suppose I’ll see you there my boy
on every other Friday after school.
In truth, I wouldn’t want to seem exotic
I hope in time you’ll come to realise that;
that I was always there, and know it counts.
I’m involved in a project called Smile For London. Poets have been paired with animators to make short poem videos for The London Underground. I was paired with Peter Menich who has done a bloody brilliant job with my short poem. You can see the results below. Big thanks to Jo Kotas who asked me to be involved and to Inua Ellams, a poet friend who recommended me.
Followers of this blog and me in general will know I’ve been working on a long poem/theatre piece about riots and revolt. It’s a dual narrative set in 2011 and also in 1381 during the Peasant’s Revolt. When it’s finished it will be about 50 minutes long. I’ll be performing it at a few exciting festivals this summer. Here is the first 15 minutes. As you can see we’ve not got to any rioting yet, but there’s something rotten in the air. The 2011 narrative is written in ottava rima and the 1381 narrative in an Anglo-saxon/early English alliterative style, where 3 of the 4 stresses in each is alliterative. I’d love your thoughts on it:
REVOLT!
2011, Part One
Let’s start our story in the present day,
well, cast your minds back, say a month or three,
before the heat of youth rampaged its way
down gap-toothed high streets – angry, cruel and free.
In Britain, where we’re keen they Have Their Say.
In Britain, with our Big Society.
Before the Sky News choppers churn and whirr
let’s listen to an average Friday’s burr.
So London first (why not?) that town’s a beast:
the mouths of Oxford Circus breathing out
a smoke of suits and buttered skin. Up east
horns honk at Shoreditch High Street, dickheads spout
abuse from vans; while underground they’re greased
with sweat and slapped on tubes where adverts tout
apologies from banks with shitty grins
or vitamins. A dearth of litter bins
mean right-wing rags accumulate on seats
parading cancer causes, ubermensch
and ghostly girls strangled on their own streets:
Found with one breast exposed, concern is drenched
in gory details, then reduced to Tweets.
What price a victim’s shame when you can quench
the idle curiosities of millions
preserve it all in columns of opinion?
And every front page headline sings the chorus
of Brookes and Coulson writhing on their swords
The media serpent playing Ouroboros:
it eats itself to fill the Stop Press boards.
The lengths they’ll go in order not to don’t bore us!
The depths they go for tit-bits for their hordes
of hateful kids, insatiable and callous
raised on Schaudenfreude, sex and malice.
But come now, it’s not late enough for that.
Meet Nick, a journalist, the measured type
his paper shuns the tabloid rat-a-tat
of scandal, lies, skullduggery and hype
or so they claim, though still they have their spats,
occasionally some doggerel and tripe,
but mostly they were good and Nick had dreamed
of writing for them since his early teens.
Which, I should say, were not that long ago
young Nick is young, I’m guessing twenty-four,
right now, he’s drinking in the Barley Mow
with mates. They’re idealistic, talking war,
Murdoch and Arab Spring but not for show
they’re galvanised by change and want some more.
They talk of ’81, of ’68
Tweet apathy to rights until its late.
Then half-sloshed in his room as grime core scrobbles
Nick bashes out a blog, all left-wing gristle
while bottles smash on Cardiff’s carless cobbles
and shirtless blokes shout fuming, mad epistles
(well, Coldplay songs) as post-work geezers gobble
kebabs while trying to protect their whistles.
A hundred farm boys piss down safety glass
a woman pulls her knickers out her arse.
As thirty-something birds in York alight
a train all wearing Shelagh’s Hen Do tees
a lipstick pink, they plough the muggy night
in search of sickly shots and DJ-ed cheese;
of hairy-chested lads who like a fight;
of somewhere dark to get down on their knees
and spill their liquored guts like summer rain
to clear them out so they can start again.
While up the road in Terrington Samantha
Trample runs her MP’s surgery
blue rinse brigade not fussed about the bankers
just gypsy sites and NIMBY-ism pleas.
A few congratulate or simply thank her
(she’s just been the made the junior secretary
for home affairs), life’s good, so say the polls
last one of these, and then she’s off on hols.
She glances briefly at her Twitter app
that nit-wit from The Guardian has spammed
her feed again with bolshy, pious crap
re her expenses. Christ, you’d think I’d scammed
the needy of their dinner. Trample taps
ineptly at the screen, Well I’ll be damned
if this will spoil my night. She presses block
@NickTheDigger’s angry missives stop.
In Acton town a print works shuts up shop
and lays-off fifteen staff, progress I know
inevitable these days, a fair cop,
we’re going digital, we have to sow
our future’s seeds on last year’s mangy crop.
But you tell that to Si who has to go
back home and tell his pregnant wife the news -
they’ve fifteen quid a week for food and booze.
So Si and her sit in the strip light hum
of rented kitchen, bills and calculator.
She makes the tea, he taps the keys and drums
an ink-stained finger, a tuna baked potato
goes cold, congeals as Simon thinks in sums:
Fat use that evening class, a waiter’s
all blokes like me can hope for now, he sighs
upstairs their two year old son wakes and cries.
Let’s pass through well-healed green Commuter Land
where limestone pargeting, resplendent oaks
and rugged elms all dutifully stand
as sentinels to very English blokes
and nice, well meaning ladies, their lives bland
and inoffensive, their well-worn remotes
their weapons in a war on awkward facts -
it’s not to do with us, we pay our tax -
and venture back up North beyond the border
past Hadrian’s symbolic little fence
up stream like Salmon witness the new order
in Holyrood rehearsing arguments
that if successful promise English Lords their
comeuppance, where the atmosphere is tense
where harmony and union are brittle
and social norms are set to fly like skittles.
Then soar on shallow winds round Glasgow schemes
where bus shelter glass prisms on a fist
its owner’s missus totters off, blood streams
like Merlot at a wedding down his wrist
he doubles like a marionette and screams Y’fucking bitch through woozy cider mist
we follow the expletive from his mouth
into the balmy night and turn back south
to Manchester where scallies, trainer clad
and congregating in a Moss Side playground,
lob Panda Pops and swear and giggle. Lads
and lasses pissed on youth, they make their way round
the terraced neighbourhoods their mums and dads
once did their courting in. They too will stay round
here their whole lives. There’s some things never change,
so what then makes these kids appear so strange
to Mister Habit popping down the Spar?
He eyes them warily across the road:
a female shrieks then spits, it hits a car
a large male taunts another, who then goads
him back. There’s pushing, laughing, it’s bizarre
and Habit picks away at it like code
imagining their habitats, their mothers
he files it all for keeping under Other.
And prides like this are native all through Britain
observed from front room curtain-twitching hives
they’re creatures to be feared or so its written
in frothing slingshot journalese that thrives
on grainy CCTV stills that shit on
any notion that these children’s lives
resemble ours. They say their love is lewd
their tinny music noise, their morals skewed,
their language just a badly spelt perversion
of ours, their clothes nefarious, their manners … Huh! What manners? These yobbos on excursions
to London with their whining homemade banners
who trashed the Centotaph. A sad inversion
of everything our boys fought for in Flanders!
And so the haughty column inches spool
’til chaps like Habit fear the local school.
And add to this the constant thrum of ads,
the black dog of consumerism barking,
a lack of jobs or training, absent dads,
their local playgrounds auctioned off for parking,
their protests shunned, no wonder they’re half mad
these kids like third world countries always sparking
chin-stroked debate that’s never acted on!
And so our camera pans to Clapton Pond
to street-light glow and Lisa Low who scuffs
her sorry way back home this Friday night
abandoned by Chantelle for Greg she cuffs
her runny nose, thinks Bitch, they’ll only fight
again, she’ll text by two. She’s had enough
of fickle mates, she clenches her fists tight
and ups her pace, the beats bead in her head
a pissy stairwell, key in lock, then bed.
But nasty secrets seep through paper walls
her slack-jawed stepdad laying down the law,
a gruff hiss: All she does is hang round malls
she’s finished school, it’s time she knew the score
she pissed, on drugs, most nights, she crawls
back home gone one, I want her our that door.
And Lisa thinks how many nights she’s cried
in here, it’s not as if she hasn’t tried
to get a job, it’s just that, well it’s hard
her mate who had a baby got a flat
ground floor, two bedrooms, with a little yard …
… and Tesco’s all that hiring, pay like that
won’t get her nix, it’s like she’s barred
by all those smug, well educated twats
from anything worth having and she’s scared
she terrified she’ll always been ensnared
in nights like these. Turns over, hunkers down
and bites her lip and hopes something will happen
as Simon, wide awake in Acton Town
stokes baby’s bump and prays something will happen
as Nick who’s reading Klein his sorrows drowned
dreams fresh revolt and wills something to happen.
For anything to happen and it will
the riots in their minds are set to spill.
1381, Part One
Let’s marry our modern tale with the medieval
perfectly appropriate given the pictures of mayhem
those cynical scenes, sickening and raw
that’ll soon dominate our dreary sunday dinners.
Let’s hark back with hindsight to a heinous epoch
a time when people perished with plague
when nasty was normal and opinion enough
to have you hung or hacked to bits by henchmen.
Ta-ra then rich and restful Blighty
and welcome to a warped and wicked Albion.
To Fobbing where the fucked-up feudal laws
had eased as they had everywhere in England
since plague had picked off peasants like tics
and entire territories had gone untilled.
Now the lucre-loving Lords were desperate for labour
and men could demand more money for their work.
In some cases these serfs were successful in getting
a better bargain from their bullying barons
but life was still lousy and their days too long.
And to top their terrors off taxes spiralled.
Simon Sudbury, insidious Lord Chancellor,
greedy for the groats of good, honest men,
imposed a perfidious poll tax on the people
which tripled over time to a tricky three groats.
A fellow called Bampton was sent to fetch it from Fobbing
one murky morning in the month of May
and what happened would haul history to this village.
Let’s watch it unfold with Will Waterer
a big-bellied, bawdy ploughman of a bloke
and his rosy-cheeked inamorata, Ros.
Usually Will was not one for worrying
he just pulled his plough and prayed on Sundays
in the lazy style of a simple soul.
He didn’t like liturgies and he liked Lords less
but he nodded now and again like a normal
so he could make his way home for mead and the missus.
But there’d been talk in the town before Bampton turned up
and this had thoroughly stuck in his thoughts: Three groats! God, where would he get it?
These loonies in London had no idea about the labourer!
The females fetched them from the fields at ten
and Ros, with child, her robes rucked up
as she hiked up the hill, caused his heart
to beat like a battering ram in its bone cage.
Right then he’s pay any price to the politicians
just to scoop his scrumptious squeeze up and saunter off.
He hooked a hammy arm around her.
His mates mirrored him, thirty muddy men
and their wives wandering back to the wattle and daub
of Fobbing to face the fellow from London.
Thomas Baker, landowner and Bill’s boss
was it seemed for once willing to help his workers.
Solitary he stood in the Village’s central square
his clothes cut from a cloth far finer than his charge’s
and made a speech to the muttering mob as it amassed. Good folk of Fobbing, he flapped his arms about,
giving the geezers good reason to giggle, a corpulent collector is currently coming
to this very village to vigourously relieve you
of your hard won and well-deserved wage.
Pray, what’s this prick prattling on about now?
Will’s mate Larry laughed in his lug-hole, He’s saying that sod from the city’s a shit
Larry was about to bother Bill with – What bloody sod?
when a crappy horn cried out across the houses
and the locals looked as one to see a little
rabble of raffish fellows riding horses
approaching in soft sunlight from the south. Terrific, quipped Larry, let’s irk these idiots!
‘Til the tossers take off to some other town.
He purposefully pumped his palms together
and followed Baker and the other Fobbing folk
towards the well-to-do wankers from London. We’ve come to collect on behalf of the King
three groats from every Englishman in this area.
said Bampton sneering on his snorting stead
his fingers louchly lingering over his lapels. As reeve, Baker remonstrated, I refuse
it’s risible and ridiculous to expect these regular
fellows to find that sort of fee.
Bampton just humpfed, haughty and hostile
he was more than a match for the mummsy Reeve
he knew his brogue was better suited than Baker’s
to public speaking and the peasants felt pressured. Will! hissed his wife, you’re well-liked here you must say something to this sneering city boy
or we shall all have pay his pricy poll tax!
Now Will was not one for waving his arms
not given to giving garrulous speeches
but for his wonderful wife, the words came easy.
Oi prissy prick! Yeah, you London prat!
Bampton flinched, wrong-footed, afraid there’s no peasant here who’ll pay your poll tax
so sling your hook you sorry sod
go gather your groats from the guilds!
The mob of muddy men went crazy
shouts of Shits! and Sods! rung round
each beat the air with a brawny bunch of fives
’till the raffish rabble reared on their horses
and their towny faces twisted in terror.
Simon Sudbury shall hear of this deceit!
Bampton bellowed over the bellicose chorus
rucking the reigns of his reluctant ride. Be sure to recount your cowardice kind sir,
Ros quipped to the cackles of the crowd
and the tax men took off, totally trumped
by the plucky protests of the Fobbing peasants.
A skyful of stones and swearwords following
while Will was lifted way up high and walked
through the village, the virtuous hero of their victory.
But as the folk of Fobbing frolicked and drank
the details of their disobedient deed
spread through the spindly streets of Essex
like herpes in a half-priced whorehouse.
Stories bubbled in Basildon and Brentwood,
rumours raged through Rettendon and Stanford
discontent drove them down to Kent
across the corn-growing county of Hertfordshire
and lastly to London where the Lord Chancellor
pounded his palsied fist in his palm.
Miranda Sawyer has written and interesting article in The Guardian today (ish, I saw it online today). You should read it, gets the juices flowing. I think we have fallen into an unhelpful trap of being ‘outraged’ and ‘offended’ for political purposes. The enemies of the offenders jump on out of context remarks and use them as a way of getting rid of their enemies. That’s certainly what a lot of us on the left did to Clarkson after the “take them outside and shoot them in front of their families” comment. I’d like to think that’s what people were doing, I’d rather think of us as trying to oust an opponent in an underhand manner than if we had entirely lost our senses of humour and actually believed he meant that.
However, I disagree with Sawyer when she (sort of concludes) that “perhaps we should all adopt the kids-on-the-bus attitude: accept that everyone is different, make jokes about it, but don’t take offence unless it’s meant. As Finn said to me: “It’s about how you take a word, as much as what people mean by it. It’s just words.” How personal do you want to get?”
I really don’t think dumbing down is the answer. Words mean things and while those words will shift in meaning over time we need to be aware of where they have come from and what they mean for huge numbers of people. Sawyer mentions that the youth she meets at Live magazine use the word “gay” to mean “rubbish.” I have heard hundreds of kids defend the use of the word “gay” saying it means “rubbish.” And why does it mean that, I wonder? Am I really to believe as kids have tried to convince me that “it used to mean happy, and now it means rubbish.” Bollocks! Casual homophobia is rife amongst school kids today and ignorance of what they are doing should not be an excuse.
We are never going to get this 100% right and I don’t think freedom of speech should be curved. But we should similarly not drown out the cries of “politically incorrect!”
I think there are essentially two different attitudes. You can say: “we should all lighten up a bit,” or you can say: “we should take time to understand words and understand the effect they have.” I think we should be going for the latter option. Educating ourselves and using language in a more nuanced way is surely a better option than just saying anything, no matter how offensive, and qualifying it with context.
It’s official, I’m taller than Twiggy. Much taller. Another feather for my cap. I wrote a poem about my meeting Twiggy on Saturday Live earning me kudos with my dad, it is below. Twiggy signed an album for my dad and I signed the poem for her. Rumour has it it will be hung in her downstairs loo.
It was a lovely show as usual. I realised as I left that I probably won’t be back on the show until our baby arrives. That is indeed … I was going to say “sobering news” which is perhaps too much, it will after all be a very happy thing. However, it is a reality check. I need to sleep now. Sleep lots.
Here are me poems, short topical one and then the Twiggy piece, which is written in heroic couplets. I love heroic couplets, they are so wonderfully camp and silly.
The race for The White House has started in earnest
the world is along for the ride
they’re shooting their shotguns up into the ether
and claiming the Lord’s on their side.
And 2008 seems a long time ago
when I hear Rick Santorum’s shrill voice
and I know that the church is inclusive and that
but they can’t all be Jesus’ Choice.
*
Dear listener, you’ll be surprised to hear
that if you were to go back several years
and listen to my teenage poetry
it’s possible you might think less of me.
And you’d be right, for truly I was dreadful:
pretentious woe and bathos by the shedful
and so we must not harshly judge my dad
who went a shade of white and looked quite sad
when I announced for better or for worse
I planned to make a living from this wretched verse.
But credit where it’s due and here it is
he lets my mother drag him to my gigs
and though I’m sure he finds the most part vile
occasionally I see him crack a smile.
And that’ll do for me, my ego fed,
but then this week the thing turned on its head
I told him that our star guest was a biggy
and then the ears perked up, “oh really, Twiggy?
I wonder, Luke if could I lend a hand …”
my once suspicious father’s now my biggest fan.
So thank-you Twiggy, truly, much obliged
our father-son relationship now thrives
our living room has one less elephant
for now, at least, my doggerel’s more relevant.
Last night I went to Charter Hall, the large conference hall attached to Colchester’s Leisure World complex, to hand out the prizes/a-level certificates to about 400 ex-Colchester 6th Form College Students. It was a huge event, there were about 800 people there and I was on stage for about an hour and a half shaking hands and saying “well done” and “congratulations.” To be adventurous sometimes I would say “well done” first, and others I would say “congratulations” first. Living by the seat of my pants. Sometimes I would dry up and when I went to speak I’d just sort of squeak. Sometimes I’d address the students by name, other times I’d just look them between the eyes and whisper “never come back here.”*
After the prize-giving I had to give a speech. I didn’t prepare anything on paper, I obviously gave it some thought before hand, but as I stepped up to the podium in that MASSIVE hall I wasn’t entirely sure how to start. I wasn’t sure if this was deliberate attempt to be off-the-cuff or a monumental game of social-chicken with my own sloth. On reflection I think it was the former. I was genuinely moved by the experience. Each of those students stepping up on stage to receive their certificates is the star of a story just beginning. Some of those stories will end gloriously, other less so, but there in front of me was life itself.
It made me realise how important our roots are, how all our stories start somewhere. It made me remember Kevin Murphy who used to teach English at 6th Form College and who gave me my first ever gig on The Concourse. To him it was a small favour, letting an enthusiastic student read his (rubbish) poems at lunchtime in front of a largely hostile crowd of townies who were trying to eat their lunch, but to me it was a small step that lead to half my life.
I have no doubt some of those students are unmoved by their time at that college, some might still be waiting for those tiny/huge moments, but there are plenty of others who will have been set on a monumental path by a teacher or peer in the last two years. I felt humbled to be a guest of honour last night; that someone trusted me to say a few words to bring an event like that to a close. I hope I acquitted myself well. People didn’t avoid me afterwards, so I don’t think it was an utter disaster.
After the event I had a lovely time talking to old teachers and a few Saturday Live listeners. Which reminds me, I’m on Saturday Live tomorrow with none other than Twiggy, who my dad informs me is “a bit of alright.” Maybe I’ll write a poem about my dad fancying Twiggy. It was embarrass my dad (and probably Twiggy too) and that is reason enough.
* I’d like to stress that I never did this. That was a joke.
I’m off to record my new spoken word album today. It’s called We’re All In This Together and the cover features me wearing what one friend described as a “poo dress.” Pretty cool, huh?
The provisional track listing is:
The Drunk Train
The Ballad of Fat Josh
Jean Claude Gendarme
Weekday Dad
Melody, Who Had None
The Luck of the Brungers
Camping Dad
B-Movie: Barry Vs The Blob
Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything
Bloody Hell It’s Barbara!
The Ballad of Mr & Mrs P Cartwright, Extreme SKI-ers
Luke’s Got A Joke
The Ballad of Chris & Ann’s Fish Bar
The Drunk Train (Part II)
Mondeo Man
I might do a “hidden track” like in the 90s.
I’m recording the album at a studio in Beccles, which is about 6 miles away from where I live. I like that this is an all-Suffolk production and that I didn’t need to go anywhere near a city to do it. I expect I’ll have copies for sale via nastylittlepress.org by February.
My son’s favourite pastime is watching an old Bob The Builder video. I put it on for him when I make the porridge in the morning. He calls it “BoldaBolda”, which isn’t great given his age (2.5 years), his ability to say other words and the fact that he WATCHES IT EVERYDAY! Sometimes he likes to clutch the box while he watches, I know he wants this when he asks for “BoldaBoldaBox.” Obvs. To be honest BoldaBolda is a bit childish for me. I don’t mind Neil Morrissey (John Osborne hates him) and the theme tune is pretty cool. I also like the fact that Spud the scarecrow remind me of my mate Gommy. I just don’t find the set-up very plausible. The anthropomorphised machines are one thing, that might happen, but what I can’t get over is the “yes we can” bit. No builder in the history of the world on being asked “can you fix it?” has ever replied “yes, we can!” For added realism the slogan should instead be a sharp intake of breath followed by the words: “it’s gonna cost ya.”
I didn’t get round to making my pie yesterday so I’ve been cooking since 8am. It’s not ready for the pastry. My mum and dad are coming round and my wife’s parent’s are still here so we have an Outnumbered situation, except instead of kids it’s babyboomers – what could go wrong?
My Hornchurch scribblings are going well. I have another to show you (see below). That’ll probably be it for this week as I have to work on this speech for sixth form and then I’m on Saturday Live on Saturday so I’ll be working on a poem for that on Friday. Also, and this is exciting, I’m recording a new spoken word album tomorrow afternoon – that’ll be exciting. It’ll feature poems from Cynical Ballads and my forthcoming show, plus a couple of older ones, like Camping Dad. I haven’t done an album since 2007, so I figured it was high-time I got some more up-to-date material out there in audio form. More on that later…
My now though, here’s that poem. Not sure about a title yet (suggestions please!), I’m pretty pleased with it, my favourite so far I reckon …
District Line (working title)
It’s Winter and I leave my home in darkness
to schlep down Suttons Gardens, Stations Lane
then past the rows of houses lost to commerce
the florist, cabbies, bookies, café, train.
They call this game the rat race but it’s not
these sad and silty mornings pocked with sighs
there’s nothing fast about this way of life -
just deep ruts cut slow into the mind’s eye.
I spend my Mondays living for the weekend
who doesn’t here, eh, that’s the way it works
that’s why we brought our families to the suburbs
to live on London’s green and pleasant skirt.
Inside this fizzing fence of motorway
our tiny crumbs of Essex neatly mortgaged
a low-rent Metroland for boys done good;
a place to deckchair doze in heavy August.
And for that right we clatter down these traintracks
through greyish sprawl from Dagenham to Bow
where London’s mouth lies waiting, that’s all life is:
inhale, exhale then underground you go.
Oh, it’s blowing up a gail here in Bungay today. My son (2.5 years old) has just set off with his Nanna and Grandad in their enormous campervan to go and visit so friends. It’s a left-hand drive van and he’s in his car seat sitting on the right-hand side, so at a glance it looks like a little moon-faced two year old is driving a 2 ton machine. That’ll be fun for drivers of the A143.
I’ve got some books to send out for Nasty Little Press as our editorial assistant is on Xmas hols in Essex. Talking of NLP, we recently signed up for Amazon officially. We now make 5p on each book sold through that site, so if you’re considering going to them – DON’T. We have a very good online shop, and I may even lick the envelope myself.
I found a funny Tumblr yesterday – Goths Up Trees – do go and have a peek. I also recommend Girl On The Net, but be warned, if you like to pretend sex doesn’t exist, this is not the blog for you. I think she’s very funny.
I’ll be carrying on with my Hornchurch poems today, you can see yesterday’s effort below. I’ve also got to make a pie (send in your best recipes – I have feed 8) and write a speech for Thursday night when I will be handing out the prizes at my old sixth form college’s prize giving. How weird is that? I’m chuffed to be asked, I used to love sixth form, especially after I had hated my school so much. But still, I’m kind of surprised they asked. The sixth form (it’s in Colchester) has been going for over 20 years so they try and have alumni back every other year to do the prize giving. I’m following in the footsteps on Dermot O’Leary, who I have been told is television presenter.
Here’s the poem …
We’re Cultured Here in Hornchurch!
Dear Essex folk, I bring news that
there’s some who think our learning lacks
it’s high time that we answered back
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
There’s lots of highbrow things to do
we’ve Fairtkytes and we’ve Bretons too
our wine is fine, our cheese is blue
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
The cuisine’s mostly Corden Bleu
the Queen would like our restauranteurs
we’ve named our theatre after her
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
Cry hip-horray for Hornchurch mate, the Paris of South Essex
A kind of landlocked venice with East Anglian Aesthetics.
The chaps round here are gentlemen
no swords, they much prefer the pen
Romfordians? No we’re not like them
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
The ladies too would scarce carouse
so fine, the virtues they espouse
why, Jilly Cooper’s one of ours
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
The Essex town that theatre kissed
round here we know our Brahms from Liszt
I think by now you get the gist
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
The standard’s high in Hornchurch chaps, though other towns stoop low
the destination’s Essex but there’s other ways to go.
In Hornchurch don’t y’know we’re arty
Hark! I hear the tones of Sarti!
Look here, there’s the literarti
in the theatre sipping latte
next week there’s a garden party
Cultured here in Hornchurch!
So Romford keep your dingy pubs,
that “music” bleeding from your clubs
we want The Bard – Aye! There’s the rub!
We’re cultured here in Hornchurch!
So one more time for Hornchurch pals, near Rainham on a map
I’ve nothing else to say for now, I think I’ll shut my trap.
Helen Mort wrote a good blog this morning, in which she quotes Larkin’s Wants and a couplet from Michael Donaghy’s Upon a Claude Glass, which is fantastic, I think. Especially as it is a commission. Admittedly having all the wonders of the V&A to inspire you makes it a bit easier than having two Saturday Live stories to chose from but the inclusion of the personal at the end of the piece gives it a real clout. Anyway, do read it, and Helen’s blog too.
Talking of commissions, I’m one poem down in my Hornchurch adventures now. I have ideas for the next four. I don’t want to write another character piece though. One of the great pleasures of writing poetry for me is using my own voice. I find it really hard to rhyme when doing a character piece. My poetry voice naturally uses a wide lexicon and has a built-in ironic lilt that lets me get away with audacious rhymes and a level of artifice that I couldn’t get away with in the poem I wrote yesterday. Consequently I found it quite hard work to get right. I’m pleased with the result and I think it will work well delivered by the actor, but today I shall write with greater aplomb, something more bombastic.
So here is yesterday’s poem. I have decided to post them as you may enjoy them and I doubt somehow the hundred or so regular readers I have will spoil the ‘guerrilla’ performances. It is to be read by a woman in her late 20s and the chorus are two or three men in their 20s. I’d like the chorus to speak together roughly, swapping lines and talking over each other. It will be set in a pub.
The Ballad of Kerry & Gav
KERRY:
He lived on Abbs Cross lane, my Gav
a semi with his mum
across the road from school which meant
at half past three we’d come
back to his and fool about.
His mum, she used to work
so we had the house to ourselves
his hands under my school skirt …
Close my eyes, I feel it now
those first few times, the fear.
You never feel that way again …
We were in our final year
Gav was never one for school
me neither I suppose
we planned to leave and both get jobs
the garage up the road
for him, cos Gav, he loved his cars
not that he could drive
well not officially at least
his friends, they all had rides.
He’d always had much older mates
I thought it made him cool
always more mature than all
the other boys at school.
We’d drink in here on Saturdays
his mates had loads of cash
they worked you see, or so they claimed
I only saw them smashed.
And then we go out cruising through
the Easter park estates
the bonnet vents, the alloy wheels
the cavs with custom plates
and proper old skool UK garage
these crazy massive subs
the base would churn your insides up
much louder than the clubs.
CHORUS:
From Fatling & Firkin to Cold Harbour Lane
Gav’s gone and brought his missus again
the under car neons, the uprated brakes
the tire paint burnt on the Rainham estates
a hundred or so on the bridge and the sides
a seig heil of bottles at roundabout slides
the sports exhaust howl and the sub-woofer bleed
who needs love at that speed
who needs love at that speed
KERRY:
June, in nineteen ninety-nine
on study leave, a doss
just smoking weed in bed all day
we didn’t give a toss
about exams and school and stuff,
we didn’t need all that
I’d got a job in Sainsbury’s
we were waiting for a flat
the days were hot and sunlight spilled
like honey through the air
we talked in glances, jokes and smiles
he used to stroke my hair
and Gav weren’t fussed ’bout cruising now
because we had each other
just me and him against the world
under duvet covers.
CHORUS:
A boy can’t play house, at least not at sixteen
a name on your sunstrip won’t block out the scene.
When the tick in the brain turns to revs when you kiss
it’s a clear indictator its speed that you miss
till the itch in your foot is a kick in the balls
and your leg starts to twitch when the country lane calls
these high octane dreams grow from customised seeds
who needs love at that speed
who needs love at that speed
KERRY:
It was slow and sticky Friday night
I wasn’t feeling well
we’d spent the whole day stacking fights
until the whole lot fell.
I think he knew, I’m sure I did
I tried to just forget
we’d never been that careful …
he was just upset
he said some things he didn’t mean
I tell myself that now
ironic cos until that day
we’d never had a row …
and now that fight will never end
I pick at it like code
the night my whole world crumbled to
some flowers by a road.
CHORUS:
But who needs love at that speed, who need love at that speed
when brakes lock and gears crash and you can’t stop or breathe
who needs love at that speed, who needs love at that speed.
When my son (2.5 years old) is playing up, ie refusing to go upstairs/to the kitchen/to bed etc etc we ask him twice and then we say something along the lines of “I’m going to count to three and if you’re not up those stairs I’m going to get very cross.” And it works like a dream. I mean, he’ll always wait until we’ve got to two, but it just WORKS. It’s amazing the power numbers have. I wonder if Kim Jong-Il did it that way too?
It’s certainly made an impression on him. Yesterday I was in my study writing when I heard these words: “Nanna sit down. SIT DOWN NANNA! One … Two …” Brilliant! And it worked on her too! It was the BEST thing ever. My wife reckons her mum should say no to him a bit more but I disagree. We need to keep his faith that the numbers work. The day it fails, the day we get to three and he sees that “very cross” is just shouting or time-out, will be very sad indeed, a total Wizard of Oz moment. And if his nanna has to sit down once in a while on his command that is a price worth paying.
My other best thing is my lack of hangover. How good is that? And I drank all the wine. Aaaand, I have nearly finished my first poem for the Hornchurch project. It’s from the point of view of a young-ish woman about her great lost love, set against a backdrop of Rainham boy racers. I want the guerrilla performance to take place in a pub on the High Street in Hornchurch. Maybe I’ll post it when it’s done. Or maybe not. It strikes me that these guerrilla performances might be a bit less guerrilla-ish if I keep banging on about them, to my knowledge Che Guevara didn’t have a blog. But then he didn’t do performance poetry either, turns out there are more effective ways to bring on a revolution.
Talking of revolutions, here is my New Year’s resolution:
TRY HARDER
It’s the same as the one I had last year. I think I did OK last year but this year I am determined to do better. By TRY HARDER I mean at everything. From being a more attentive father and husband to bleaching the black sludge off the double glazing a bit more regularly. I genuinely believe the more you put into life the more you get out – I am doing this for myself, I want MORE.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours editing a poem by Elvis McGonagall for his forthcoming Nasty Little Press pamphlet. I’ve been working on the title poem Mostly Dreich. The opening line is “Dark lours the tempest that howls overhead.” It feels appropriate, my feet have been cold for days now. Can you imagine how weather like this must have felt in the olden days, like the 1970s? I barely want to carry on and I have an iPad. How did you all survive?
New Year’s Eve, eh? Not having a big one, obvs. Going to stay in with my wife, in-laws and a couple of mates. Russel Howard will probably be on BBC3, so that’s something, eh? Personally I just want this period of festive fun over and done with. I’ve done my reflecting (see previous blog, that’s about as reflective as I get) and I want to get on with things. I’m not a good relaxer and I don’t see why I should have to be. My life is quite lazy enough without having to build in periods of rest and leisure.
I think a lot of people in my sort of positon feel the same. My poet mates aren’t very good at time off either. We have turned our hobby, our fun thing, into a career and we’re pretty happy just to keep on at it all year round. I have gone through periods of rejecting this natural inclination – of declaring myself in need of more robust compartmentalising – but now I don’t know, why fight it?
So bring on the new year and work and travel and new things.
Yesterday, a friend said I could stay with him in Oxford when I’m gigging there in late Jan (details tbc, keep your eyes on the gigs page poetry lovers!). Without really thinking I replied with the single phrase “wickedy-woo-wah.” I used to be cooler than this. Yet these days I seem to take delight in being as cringe-worthy as I can.
I also used to care about my appearance. Yet now I write this wearing yesterday’s shirt which has baby snot on one shoulder, tomato sauce down the front and, on the other shoulder, a rare sort of paste formed from ginger biscuit and baby dribble. I’ve also shaved all my hair off because “I can’t be fucked.” Some days I feel sort of retired; that I’m over the hump of middle age and slowly drifting towards a mediocre dotage. I’m 29 for fuck’s sake!
Actually, that may be the problem: 29. I’ll be 30 in two weeks. In my mind I’ve substituted “30″ for “dotage.” I realise that this is preposterous and I should stress this not a crisis. I mean, I’m not sad about it or anything. I’m just aware that something is ending. I think with one child you can in some ways carry on living a version of the life you had before. Now with the second child imminent, due only a few weeks after my 30th birthday, I think the sub-conscious I usually do so well to suppress is trying to tell me my youth is truly over. And there’s nothing awful about that. I’ve had a good innings.
In fact I’ve spent the last few years embracing the sort of life one settles into in their thirties: marriage, mortgage, countryside, children. But now with the inevitability of time stacked against me I do have the slight twinge of losing something I shall miss. An almost-feeling that I shouldn’t have rushed to kick my twenties into touch. Ach, ’tis nothing but nostalgia I suppose, and at least I am ahead of the game in terms of being thirty. Still I shall miss those years of starting out and lying in. And besides, no one is making me pile on the pounds and say “wickedy-woo-wah” – sometimes I’m just a bit of a nob, and I doubt age can do anything about that.
It’s bloody miserable in Bungay today. The wind is howling and it makes me want to climb inside my rolltop desk and hide until March. Can’t though, that’d be weird. And I’d die.
My son (2.5 years old) is watching Peppa Pig – short, animated tales about a 4 year old pig. The narrator sounds ever so slightly sarcastic, which provides some light relief for the parents. It’s not what I want to watch. I want to watch something heavy and important, ideally set in the 1920s/30s. Not the new(ish) adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. That made me want to rip out my own eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch it anymore. In the end I just turned it off.
Everyone’s a bit ill in this house. My son has a constant cold and my wife has the pregnancy aches and pains. I’m just a bit fed up. Oh dear, Peppa has just lost her shoes in the garden. I have six poems to write about Hornchurch by 12 January. I haven’t written any yet. But I have tidied my desk, so that’s something. I have also written a script of sorts that links together 10 new poems which will form the basis of my new show. I think I will call the show Jeremy, Who Drew Penises On Everything (and other poems). Then I can have a self-important picture of myself on the poster with a cartoon cock drawn on my forehead. Though, as I write that, I start to wonder exactly why I would want to.
Peppa and her family have gone to Windy Castle now. Maybe I should go and do some parenting.
Consider now the grainy long lens snap,
the shocked CAPS LOCK, the exclamation mark,
the leading light of tinsel town who’s papped
“dog walking” at midnight in the park,
the naughty businessman who likes more slap
than tickle and the brandy-loosened nark!
Yes, scandal’s what I speak of and it’s true
we Brits, it seems, have little else to do
than coo and wince and bite our bottom lips
or tell a 5 Live phone-in: It’s disgraceful -
bazookas fired yawning from our hips.
We lap it up and then say It’s distasteful
the way the media pries and nigh-on rips
through people’s lives, it’s bordering on hateful.
But you forget, you pillars with the hump,
the tale of Rupert and Minerva Crump.
Huh? Rupert and Minerva who? You say.
Well naturally I’ve changed their names of course,
one has to be so careful now these days,
my poesy’s far too sensitive for court.
And Steve, my publicist, is going grey
injunctions on this verse won’t help his cause.
But rest assured the contents of this story
are true, and it concerns a horrid Tory.
Oh, not more Tory bashing Luke, you cry!
Well, trust me folks the Tories aren’t my quarry
it just so happened Rupert caught my eye
that fact he’s one of that lot shouldn’t worry
you, my politics won’t make me lie.
And should I bend the truth I shan’t be sorry
corruption swings from my satiric rope
if you don’t like it, read some Wendy Cope.
So, Rupert Crump – let’s put him on your maps:
he claimed to be “just one of life’s eccentrics”
a reedy, thin-lipped, gormless sort of chap.
At uni while his peers got stoned to Hendrix
he trod the boards and doffed his velvet cap
to right-wing ideology, a blend which
would serve him well. Think Powell with added fizz
the Mike Yarwood of Young Conservatives.
The rest at best is cliched so we’ll race:
the Bar, of course, then greasing-up the right
gnarled dinosaur at Smith’s Square, then a brace
of failed elections, ’till one muggy night
he finally experienced the taste
of power he so longed for when a might
of housewives pleased with life in Cheshire
sent Rupert off to Westminster, with pleasure.
And with him went his bride of not a week:
Minerva – curvy, bossy, doctor’s daughter.
More jolly hockey-sticks than London chic
a good home-counties catch and Rupert caught her.
This pre-existing member of the clique
an MP’s secretary, which had taught her
how to be the perfect Tory wife,
and that, she thought, would always be her life.
For this was eighty-three and Thatcher’s reign
looked stiffer than a swift kick in the balls
the cliched line of Necessary pain
was bellowed from the dispatch box with gall.
The northern towns were bled, the state was drained
the chances of a Kinnock charge were small.
And in this brave new pinstripe-plated world
the champers flowed for Rupert and his girl.
He made his Commons mark with plucky speeches:
all anti child-support and immigration
the poor, he claimed, were lazy, luckless leeches,
and cuts would cure the market’s constipation.
His ideology made Friedriche Neitche’s
look more like Desmond Tutu’s Rainbow Nation.
And while the country cowered from this hate
hors derves were served Chez Crump to Britain’s great.
On TV screens all gawdy hue and square
they dined away a decade in this manner.
From Kelvin’s POOFS OF POP to SUN BACKS BLAIR
an endless listless dance under the banner
of nasty-party-rich-with-none-to-spare
exterminate the state and Sing Hosanna.
I know, I know, I know I’m getting partial
but trust me please, this fellow was an arsehole.
They made him Minister, of course they did,
there’s nothing like an arsehole for that job
but Rupert found it hard to keep a lid
on all the rubbish spewing from his gob.
He’d rather just play parliamentary wit
and seek another way to earn a bob.
Another way to keep life smelling sweet -
so Rupert traded on his Commons seat.
Now friends before you judge consider this -
poor Crump was up to nothing very new
Lloyd George and Churchill stuffed their pudgy fists!
You don’t believe me? Look it up, it’s true!
Still, stuff like that propels a journo’s wrist
and soon enough some Bolshy lefties knew.
They splashed it all across The Grauniad
and CASH FOR QUESTIONS? – Well, it just looks bad.
His financier was Tariq Al Atrash
the owner of a famous British shop
as deals go, the move was somewhat rash
for Al Atrash’s cake hole rarely stopped
inevitable he’d blab about the cash
and so he did, whoops missus, call the cops!
And so began the cries of Vicious Libel!
I’ll swear on it! Good sir, pass me that Bible!
But Crump, ex-prancing actor, knew his Wilde -
when libel cases fail your problems start
a Westminster committee’s much more mild,
duplicitous and well-skilled in the art
of pardoning its own. But don’t be riled
what happened next will truly warm the heart -
before MPs could do their limp inspection
Crump had to fight a general election.
Democracy, that boobie, has her days
and this was surely up there with the best!
A TV newsman – name of Peter Bray -
self-righteous to the last and smugly dressed
from head to toe in white strode into the fray
and promptly took the seat for Cheshire West.
O! Heady times when hope was in the air
and decent people still believed in Blair?
But one good thing to come from all the pain -
Minerva’s fifteen minutes in the lights
her snipes at Bray had spiced-up Crump’s campaign
and got her on the goggle-box most nights
she’d earned herself a clichéd sort of fame:
the battleaxe who’s spoiling for a fight.
You can’t accuse the press of being varied:
women – they’re either sexy or they’re scary.
So, as the century which gave us Einstein,
computers and The Beatles sucked its last
the scandal-sullied Crumps were out of fine wines
and using up their old friend’s grace quite fast.
In lieu of politics they went for prime time
it left the stiffs of Westminster aghast.
This former Tory MP and his wife
living the glamour model’s sort of life.
They went on TV quizzes and they laughed
about the charges levelled at their door.
Did Panto in the Midlands where they arsed
about on stage like bouncy Labradors.
They poured their hearts whenever they were asked
in ways the good and proper would deplore!
They took the scandal clinging to their name
and spun it into cash and easy fame.
And true to form we Brits were glued to them
we tutted, sure, but still we slowed and gawped.
They sold out at the Fringe and yearly penned
a slew of articles the tabloids bought.
For while we hate a liar, in the end
it’s well trumped by our love of a good sport.
Embracing what is trying to devour you
can often mean that thing just re-en-powers you.
And thus the meeja did for Ru and Min.
In interviews they never moaned or whined
just trotted-out this bouncy bit of spin:
We’ve left the sham of politics behind
for the real world of show business, cue grin.
And that of course will always be the line
it has to be but what I want to know
is how they function when the film crews go?
On dark nights of the soul are thighs still slapped?
Is singing for your supper still so gay?
And were they really pleased their phones weren’t hacked
cause no one thinks them grand enough these days?
Or do they gaze at photos feeling trapped
like phantoms, do they beg and cry and pray
and wake in cold sweats wishing it untrue?
Oh Rupert love, oh love what did you do!?
And if they do, is that what they deserve?
Is scandal democratic punishment?
A dish of last resorts the public serves
when law is limp or slack and judges bent?
Or is it tyranny with added verve
a modern noose to ease our discontent?
Well, I don’t know, perhaps it’s just the drool
Narcissus makes while staring at the pool?
I was on the Sony Award-winning Saturday Live this morning. The show was charming as always. Richard Coles is good for the soul. It was nice and relaxed. I wrote my longer poem in response to the story of a British teenager going to the Vaganova Ballet School in St Petersburg. It’s very silly. The first, little piece is pretty self-explanatory. I really admired Christopher Hitchens. Even if one didn’t agree with the points he was making one always knew he had searched his own mind with intense scrutiny to get his ideas and that was always admirable and impressive.
For The Hitch
So long then Mr Hitchens
your perfect rage still burning bright
off to meet your maker
or maybe not, if you were right.
*
Luke Wright at The Vaganova School of Ballet
Six foot four and eighteen stone
a fag and bottle of Cote du Rhone
they’d always make me dance alone
at the Vaganova School of Ballet
A Playdoh lump of carnal sin
a whiff of l’eau de own-brand gin
no one knows who let me in
to the Vaganova School of Ballet
My pas de chat was more like dog
my chasse had them all a-gog
each jambre like a redwood log
at the Vaganova School of Ballet
In leotards I’d dilly-dally
somewhere in the Neva valley
less Swan Lake more Dead Duck Alley
at the Vaganova School of Ballet
They said my attitude was bad
my demi-plie not quite trad.
I looked a bit like someone’s dad
at the Vaganova School of Ballet
So much for those open bras
never once did I hear da
they kicked me out, just like the Csar
at the Vaganova School of Ballet
