Back To Reality
Returning to Leamington Spa after three weeks of holiday was a hell of a shock to the system.
It had been wonderful being in the Lake District for a week and then at the Edinburgh Fringe for another seven days. My third week on holiday I spent at home in the Lewes Garret, which was relaxing in its own way, although everything around me seemed to be breaking (the car, the internet router, my watch et cetera).
I drove back up the M23, M25 and M40 in a car with a broken head gasket, wondering when it (the car) would conk out (it didn't), feeling depression descending upon me. My first week back has been tough.
The district council has introduced pay meter parking on my street, without even telling the residents. You have to pay for any parking you do between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week. Another money-spinning public rip-off! Even my efforts to get a parking permit failed. Apparently, Warwickshire County Council has listed my street as a business zone so you are not allowed to be a resident there, even though they are more than happy to take council tax off you!
Moreover, I spent a lot of time on holiday writing poems for a poetry competition, but after all my effort, I fear I have pushed my entry into a redundant post box so it may never even get to the judges. How stupid is that!
And... wasps keep swarming into the Leamington Garret (and my room has the smell of fungus about it). Welcome back to Leamington!
Naturally, the day-job is a mass of work and problems, which I had almost forgotten about. I am not feeling great.
I suppose holidays do that to you: lift you up and drop you down again.
On a positive note, I have given up eating cheese to try to reduce the number of horrible nightmares I have. It seems to be working. I still have dreams but they are not as vicious.
We stayed in a place called Loweswater in the Lake District. It truly was an amazing spot. One day we climbed the great fell Hay Stacks which was an extraordinary experience. We got quite lost; it was amazingly open and spacious at the top of that mountain. Like a mini-Lakeland in itself.
The whole holiday was really good and the holiday house out of this world.
In Edinburgh, it was my 11th year at the Fringe Festival writing for The Stage newspaper, and my 10th reviewing comedy shows (the first year I had covered the hateful Television Festival). I enjoyed this year - but didn't have anywhere near as many really late, drunken nights as I used to enjoy!
One extraordinary thing was that I bumped into a former colleague from the Hull Daily Mail whom I had not seen for 21 years. The following day I chanced upon him again in the street and he introduced me to his father, a very famous novelist.
From a comedy perspective, so many of the people I have known since I was doing open spots with them in 1995, are now showing their age (as I suppose I must be). That seemed strange.
I saw some great shows. Brendon Burns was superb (I was pleased to see that my prediction in my review in The Stage that he would win the If.comeddies Award proved correct), as were Jerry Sadowitz and Phil Nichol. I enjoyed Tim Key's Slut In The Hut show and the Poetry Party on the Meadows, organised and ably compered by Luke Wright.
I went away determined to write my own Edinburgh Fringe show, on which I have actually started work. I mustn't let it drop. I have already done quite a bit of work on the ideas. Turning them into a script, however, is another matter entirely.
Another good thing about Edinburgh was hanging out with Tom Hughes, promoter and compere of The Reckless Moment comedy club in Leamington Spa. It was also pleasing to see one of their regular acts, Ivan Brackenbury's Hospital Radio, get short-listed for the if.commedies at Edinburgh, even though I could see it had been a tough one to make work as a full-length show.
Now I am back, I also want to do more journalism again. It was the way I made my living for 17 years and writing those reviews for The Stage has given me the appetite again.
The nights are already drawing in. It is eight o'clock in the evening and it is almost dark outside. And as I write overlooking a burgeoning fairground in the Pump Room Gardens below me, it is still August!
How many more years have I still to serve here in Leamington? It seems remarkably hard for me to get away - I wonder if I ever shall!
While I was on holiday, the usual round of sad demises occurred. The Cockney comic Mike Reid died. I always found him a very open and helpful interviewee when he was in EastEnders. In the late 80s, I was backstage once at the London Palladium and watched from the wings as he did his act. He was a remarkable performer - brilliantly quick with great timing. Years on, I was interviewing him and we got into a discussion about stand-up comedy. I asked him how much of his material he wrote himself. He replied: 'None at all - I'm not that clever.'
Lord Bill Deedes also died. He was a lovely man. When I was working for the Sunday Telegraph, I remember drinking with him at the bar at Davies wine bar / pub. He bought pitchers of beer and was pouring pints for all (he must have been about 85 then). We had a very lively and entertaining conversation about the state of British television. Funnily enough, I noticed this week that British TV was the subject of Bill's last column in the Daily Telegraph - the column he did not quite complete and was published posthumously.
Bill always looked forward - never back, something I could learn from him.
Saddest of all for me was an e-missive I received from my brother Nic while in Edinburgh. It was entitled: 'John Constantino - sad news'. Of course I knew instantly my old school friend was dead and waited resignedly as the creaking computer struggled to open the file.
What can I say about John? He was incredibly kind, gentle, intelligent, a brilliant linguist and a polymath. I have no idea why I lost touch with him. He was my closest friend in the fifth form at Poole Grammar School. I would hang out with him and a boy called Russell Tandy. We made a strange trio. John's family moved away to Dorking and then Marlow, I think, where his father managed posh hotels. I visited him there and kept in touch into the time I started working on the Hull Daily Mail. He came to my Last Night at Park Squat party, when I evicted myself from my squat on Little Park Street, near Hull city centre (the image of John is from that occasion).
He visited me once again but after that, for no apparent reason, we lost touch and never saw each other again. I thought last month I would love to see John Constantino.
I have no contact details for his family, although my brother had heard from a mutual friend that John had married and had a daughter. Other than that, I know little.
The experience caused me to go onto the Friends Reunited website where I tend to divide the boys listed from Poole Grammar School into those who bullied or mistreated me and those who didn't.
John Constantino had no listing at all, but Russell Tandy was there, having thrown years of unemployment in London to teach at a cyberspace universe in South Korea. Good for him! I even splashed out the seven pounds fifty to congratulate him, although his email address no longer seems valid. No reply came from Russell Tandy.
In a way I was glad, I couldn't face telling him about John's death.
Subsequently, I heard that John had been involved in a choral society in Swindon and emailed it through its website. Yesterday, a friend of John's from the society telephoned me.
It was fascinating talking to her about John, like posthumously catching on an old friend, half of whose life you had missed. John had married and has a 14-year-old daughter. He worked in IT and enjoyed surfing. He had become a Roman Catholic (as I am), and his mother and brother had moved back to Portugal (his dad, a wonderful man, had died seven years before).
Hearing it all made me all the sadder that I had lost touch with John Constantino. Suddenly a memory came back of when, on my 16th birthday, we had gone to a party in Canford Heath, near Poole, which had been invaded by a large group of mods.
John had been kicked in the head by one of them, and, greatly outnumbered, we decided to beat a retreat. As we left the house, I kicked the first in a long line of parked scooters. They went down like dominoes, their manifold mirrors smashing.
With mods in hot pursuit, we ran for our lives through the labyrinthal underpasses of the Canford Heath estate, laughing like idiots.
Dear John, even though I hadn't seen him for at least 20 years, I shall still miss him greatly.
It had been wonderful being in the Lake District for a week and then at the Edinburgh Fringe for another seven days. My third week on holiday I spent at home in the Lewes Garret, which was relaxing in its own way, although everything around me seemed to be breaking (the car, the internet router, my watch et cetera).I drove back up the M23, M25 and M40 in a car with a broken head gasket, wondering when it (the car) would conk out (it didn't), feeling depression descending upon me. My first week back has been tough.
The district council has introduced pay meter parking on my street, without even telling the residents. You have to pay for any parking you do between 8am and 8pm, seven days a week. Another money-spinning public rip-off! Even my efforts to get a parking permit failed. Apparently, Warwickshire County Council has listed my street as a business zone so you are not allowed to be a resident there, even though they are more than happy to take council tax off you!Moreover, I spent a lot of time on holiday writing poems for a poetry competition, but after all my effort, I fear I have pushed my entry into a redundant post box so it may never even get to the judges. How stupid is that!
And... wasps keep swarming into the Leamington Garret (and my room has the smell of fungus about it). Welcome back to Leamington!
Naturally, the day-job is a mass of work and problems, which I had almost forgotten about. I am not feeling great.
I suppose holidays do that to you: lift you up and drop you down again.
On a positive note, I have given up eating cheese to try to reduce the number of horrible nightmares I have. It seems to be working. I still have dreams but they are not as vicious.
We stayed in a place called Loweswater in the Lake District. It truly was an amazing spot. One day we climbed the great fell Hay Stacks which was an extraordinary experience. We got quite lost; it was amazingly open and spacious at the top of that mountain. Like a mini-Lakeland in itself.The whole holiday was really good and the holiday house out of this world.
In Edinburgh, it was my 11th year at the Fringe Festival writing for The Stage newspaper, and my 10th reviewing comedy shows (the first year I had covered the hateful Television Festival). I enjoyed this year - but didn't have anywhere near as many really late, drunken nights as I used to enjoy!
One extraordinary thing was that I bumped into a former colleague from the Hull Daily Mail whom I had not seen for 21 years. The following day I chanced upon him again in the street and he introduced me to his father, a very famous novelist.From a comedy perspective, so many of the people I have known since I was doing open spots with them in 1995, are now showing their age (as I suppose I must be). That seemed strange.
I saw some great shows. Brendon Burns was superb (I was pleased to see that my prediction in my review in The Stage that he would win the If.comeddies Award proved correct), as were Jerry Sadowitz and Phil Nichol. I enjoyed Tim Key's Slut In The Hut show and the Poetry Party on the Meadows, organised and ably compered by Luke Wright.I went away determined to write my own Edinburgh Fringe show, on which I have actually started work. I mustn't let it drop. I have already done quite a bit of work on the ideas. Turning them into a script, however, is another matter entirely.
Another good thing about Edinburgh was hanging out with Tom Hughes, promoter and compere of The Reckless Moment comedy club in Leamington Spa. It was also pleasing to see one of their regular acts, Ivan Brackenbury's Hospital Radio, get short-listed for the if.commedies at Edinburgh, even though I could see it had been a tough one to make work as a full-length show.
Now I am back, I also want to do more journalism again. It was the way I made my living for 17 years and writing those reviews for The Stage has given me the appetite again.
The nights are already drawing in. It is eight o'clock in the evening and it is almost dark outside. And as I write overlooking a burgeoning fairground in the Pump Room Gardens below me, it is still August!
How many more years have I still to serve here in Leamington? It seems remarkably hard for me to get away - I wonder if I ever shall!
While I was on holiday, the usual round of sad demises occurred. The Cockney comic Mike Reid died. I always found him a very open and helpful interviewee when he was in EastEnders. In the late 80s, I was backstage once at the London Palladium and watched from the wings as he did his act. He was a remarkable performer - brilliantly quick with great timing. Years on, I was interviewing him and we got into a discussion about stand-up comedy. I asked him how much of his material he wrote himself. He replied: 'None at all - I'm not that clever.'
Lord Bill Deedes also died. He was a lovely man. When I was working for the Sunday Telegraph, I remember drinking with him at the bar at Davies wine bar / pub. He bought pitchers of beer and was pouring pints for all (he must have been about 85 then). We had a very lively and entertaining conversation about the state of British television. Funnily enough, I noticed this week that British TV was the subject of Bill's last column in the Daily Telegraph - the column he did not quite complete and was published posthumously.
Bill always looked forward - never back, something I could learn from him.
Saddest of all for me was an e-missive I received from my brother Nic while in Edinburgh. It was entitled: 'John Constantino - sad news'. Of course I knew instantly my old school friend was dead and waited resignedly as the creaking computer struggled to open the file.
What can I say about John? He was incredibly kind, gentle, intelligent, a brilliant linguist and a polymath. I have no idea why I lost touch with him. He was my closest friend in the fifth form at Poole Grammar School. I would hang out with him and a boy called Russell Tandy. We made a strange trio. John's family moved away to Dorking and then Marlow, I think, where his father managed posh hotels. I visited him there and kept in touch into the time I started working on the Hull Daily Mail. He came to my Last Night at Park Squat party, when I evicted myself from my squat on Little Park Street, near Hull city centre (the image of John is from that occasion).
He visited me once again but after that, for no apparent reason, we lost touch and never saw each other again. I thought last month I would love to see John Constantino.I have no contact details for his family, although my brother had heard from a mutual friend that John had married and had a daughter. Other than that, I know little.
The experience caused me to go onto the Friends Reunited website where I tend to divide the boys listed from Poole Grammar School into those who bullied or mistreated me and those who didn't.
John Constantino had no listing at all, but Russell Tandy was there, having thrown years of unemployment in London to teach at a cyberspace universe in South Korea. Good for him! I even splashed out the seven pounds fifty to congratulate him, although his email address no longer seems valid. No reply came from Russell Tandy.
In a way I was glad, I couldn't face telling him about John's death.
Subsequently, I heard that John had been involved in a choral society in Swindon and emailed it through its website. Yesterday, a friend of John's from the society telephoned me.
It was fascinating talking to her about John, like posthumously catching on an old friend, half of whose life you had missed. John had married and has a 14-year-old daughter. He worked in IT and enjoyed surfing. He had become a Roman Catholic (as I am), and his mother and brother had moved back to Portugal (his dad, a wonderful man, had died seven years before).
Hearing it all made me all the sadder that I had lost touch with John Constantino. Suddenly a memory came back of when, on my 16th birthday, we had gone to a party in Canford Heath, near Poole, which had been invaded by a large group of mods.
John had been kicked in the head by one of them, and, greatly outnumbered, we decided to beat a retreat. As we left the house, I kicked the first in a long line of parked scooters. They went down like dominoes, their manifold mirrors smashing.
With mods in hot pursuit, we ran for our lives through the labyrinthal underpasses of the Canford Heath estate, laughing like idiots.
Dear John, even though I hadn't seen him for at least 20 years, I shall still miss him greatly.
Labels: Bill Deedes, Edinburgh Fringe, John Constantino, Lake District, Leamington Spa, poetry
posted by Ollie at
11:00 am
9 Comments:
Sorry for your trouble Oliver, as we Irish say.
What a great memory re your old friend and the mods though!
At least it sounds like you had a good holiday.
I'm sure there are worse places than Leam to be entwined with (I lived in Coventry for far too long!), but I hope you get out soon if that's what you want or at least find a career that you're happier with.
You do seem to know an awful lot of people in high places - would it really be so hard to go back into journalism full-time with all your skills and experience?
The Edinburgh Show sounds a fine ambition. All the best with it. Did you catch Julian Fox or Project Adorno? (both friends of mine)
Hi Oliver,
I'm still in regular contact with Russell Tandy, and I can ask him to make contact with you if you wish (for privacy reasons obviously I can't pass on anyone's e-mail address without his/her consent). I told him of John's death.
I was the rehearsal pianist for Swindon Choral Society at the time when John Constantino joined. When we were reunited we certainly had a few nostalgic laughs remembering the past, including a party in 1978 (not the one which you mention). I liked John, but after about 25 years we had established very different lifestyles so we did not really become friends again. It was no fault of John, and no fault of mine - it's just that time marches on and one can't quite recapture the past.
Cheers
Raymond Clarke (Poole Grammar School, 1975-1981)
My contact address is available via the 'contacting people' link (staff section) at Bristol University's website: www.bristol.ac.uk
It's amazing what a google search of your own name can bring up! I'm still teaching in South Korea, although at a different (and better) university...
I'll send a message via Raymond...
I am assuming by the verbal mugshot describing yourself as one third of the 'Dreikaiserbund with John Constantino and Russell Tandy, that you are... well you know who you are, 'Oliver' notwithstanding (no doubt an alias resulting from numerous libel procedings from your journalist days).
I am John Constantino's brother Tony (or Little Manuel as the great Tandy baptized me, due to a presumed resemblance to the little Mexican boys who would hold horses in spaghetti westerns).
I was deeply touched by your reference to my brother, who of course I dearly miss, and who was the only person in the world who understood a word of what I said, and reply without combining exclamation and question marks. In the days between his death and funeral, I tried, in vein, to get in touch with both you and Russell,
and would very much like to do so now, perhaps because I still have a copy of 'The Dinner Party' which I showed to Quentin Tarantino, who was very interested.
Incidentally, I have spent some time in South Korea, and am not surprised that the great Tandy has chosen that outrageous place to put the chocks under his undercarriage. I gather that you yourself have long abandoned the flesh-pots of Bridlington for 'The Smoke'.
I myself left your shores twenty odd years ago, and if you wish to know where and what, then mail me and I'll give you an account longer that is appropriate for a poetry blog, though hopefully shorter than that which my countryman Raphael 'Nonsenso' gave Thomas More of his adventures in Utopia.
Hello Oliver :)
I'm Dorothy Constantino, John's daughter and having read your lovely tribute to my dad, i was roaring with laughter at the thought of you and him being chased by MODS! hahaha. Cool picture aswell of dad with a nice cold beer haha. I'm coming up for my 16th Birthday and am having a party which i wish my dad could have been at, I miss him alot as I was really close to him. I guess you could say that I'm quite alot like him in my personality. My Mum says that she remembers the lady from the Swindon Choral getting in touch with one of Dads old friends. It turns out my Grandma (Bernadete) had been talking to my mum about your family only the week before.
At my dad's funeral i wrote and read a poem :) which ill put here but I'd like to say that Im glad that my dad has such a appriciative friend as you. He always reminissed about his days at Poole Grammar, telling me how the teacher would always shout CONSTANTINO haha. Im glad they dont do that anymore!
Here's the Poem :
My Daddy
When you held me for the first time you knew we had a special bond.
You knew we would become best of friends.
You knew that you would do anything for your baby girl.
You’d tell me stories and hold me in your arms.
Nothing could tear us apart.
When you were alive you were like a brick wall supporting me.
Now that Jesus holds you in his arms as you did for me,
You’re the summer breeze kissing my cheeks as I follow in your footsteps.
We spent so many good times together.
Funny times.
Special times.
Unforgettable times.
So many memories that you made, that you built.
You tried your best to make a comfortable life for us.
You succeeded Daddy.
Your best was good enough.
Although I had to let go of you on earth.
I’ll never let go of you in my heart.
So until we meet again...
I say Beijinhos e Obragada Pae
I Love You Daddy.
You’re My Angel.
Best Wishes & Thanks
Dorothy & Valerie Constantino
Hi Dorothy,
I am very moved by your comment and poem.
Yes, your dad was a good friend of mine when I was a youngster. I am very sad I lost touch with him.
The picture you mentioned was taken in a pub in Hull before a most wild party at the run-down flat I was then squatting in. The year: 1985.
It was a crazy night and many a cold beer was drunk by your dad and me - not to mention my friends and colleagues from the Hull Daily Mail and the literally hundreds of uninvited guests who gatecrashed (no Mods this time, thankfully).
I also have happy memories of visitng John at your grandparents' house in Broadstone, Dorset, and later staying with them at the luxury hotels your grandpa managed in Dorking and in Marlow.
At a party John threw at one of them, I think it was The White Horse in Dorking, there was a lot of falling in the swimming pool, after too much to drink, I seem to recall!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy your 16th birthday party, Dorothy.
I have no doubt your dad will be there in spirit.
If it is all right with you, I will publish your poem on the Oliver's Poetry website.
It would be fitting tribute to John.
Best regards, Chris
Hi again Oliver
John's wife Valerie here. Thought I would visit your site again as it was the second anniversary of John's passing. Hope you don't mind,i just included your photo of John on a tribute of mine. Was delighted to hear you went to Zell am See over Christmas. John and i went there from Salzburg by train in May 2006 for the day. We couldn't make it the previous year for a family holiday. So in a way you have walked in his steps all these years later. Thought you may like to know. Cheers Valerie
Hi Valerie,
It is good to hear from you again.
Yes, the second anniversary is a very sad occasion and, of course, it is no problem for you to use the image.
I think I have one or two others of John I could send you if you wish.
Just email me at oliverspoetry@hotmail.co.uk and I'll email them in due course.
It is amazing John and you went to Zell am See. What a coincidence!
A beautiful place.
Best regards, Ollie (Chris)
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