Sun Sets on The Astra Martin

The Astra Martin is dead – long live the Astra Martin!

My beloved motor went to Vauxhall Estate Heaven this afternoon, having clocked up more than 183,600 miles.

Readers of this blog may know my dream was to get her up to 200,000 miles - but it was not to be.

Her heart – or “head-gasket” – gave out again and, sadly this time, there was no way back.

I had no strong feelings about the car when I first drove her some five years ago.

But during my two-year weekday incarceration in Leamington, I captained her constantly up and down the M23, M25 and M40.



Soon I gave up the five-hour Monday morning crawl to the desolate field in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, where I worked.

Instead, I would preen the Astra Martin on a Sunday afternoon and then let the pedal hit the metal.

Often I did the 150-plus mile journey – from the centre of lovely Lewes to the centre of (whisper it) Leamington – in two hours and 17 minutes.

However hard I tried to better that time, I could not.

Granted, I am no Lewis Hamilton and the Astra Martin is no super-Max FI S&M spunky spank-mobile, but I would sometimes achieve remarkable speeds on the superslab, only for the town centre or M25 to let me down.

Still, I’d often make the journey in the 2hrs. 17mins. and go straight on to performing at a Sunday night poetry gig, before collaping with exhaustion and joyance in the Garret at midnight.

The Astra Martin’s finest drives were reserved, however, for the journey home.

Like in the Great Escape, I would tunnel my way out of the field hut on Thursday afternoons and drive from Stoneleigh to Lewes like there were no tomorrow.



Of course, the M25 gridlock often clipped the Astra Martin’s wings.

But cometh the M23, cometh the woman!

With South Downs air in her lungs, she would be tonning it - Thin Lizzy or Van Morrison playing at full-volume on the boogie-box - with me struggling with all my thew to keep the old girl on the winding road as her 1.7 litre diesel engine burnt off Porsches, mother-effed Mercs, roaring like a tigress. . .

The Astra Martin R.I.P.

Seven Things I Love (and Seven Things I Hate) About Leamington Spa - The Final Leamington Blog

This is my final missive to you from Leamington Spa...

After more than two years writing this journal from my garret in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, I am going home - to Lewes and London.

It is a strange feeling. I have often daydreamed of this moment, but now it has finally arrived I have very mixed feelings about it.

Not that I want to stay. No way, Jose!

It is just that somehow I have made this schizoid life work, and now I have to dismantle it and that is easier said than done.



I have moved home many times in my life but have never had such a complicated departure, with enormous issues with handing over my day-job and with getting my chattels out of the Leamington Garret and into the Lewes Garret.

In truth I am leaving most of my possessions. Just abandoning them. That includes a music system, the computer, two sofas, an armchair, a triple bed, duvet, all the kitchen utensils, pots and pans, iron and ironing board, broadband router, telephone et cetera.



Even getting my CDs, clothes and books into the Lewes Garret has proved difficult. So I have no choice but to ditch the rest of the stuff.

An added complication is that I am planning to go on holiday to France the day after my leaving do, so I absolutely must not leave the Leamington Garret that day with more than a suitcase of stuff!



The Garret is weird now.

After Attila Szalo’s departure, I have been living on my own in an increasingly desolate pad, oftentimes high winds howling outside.

The curtains went back to Lewes last week, so now I am staring at the flats across the Pump Room Gardens, feeling exposed and naked.



So, what was it about Leamington Spa? Why have I rued it with a vengeance?

And what - in anything - have I loved about it?

Let's start with the good things:

Seven Things I Love About Leamington Spa

1. The Reckless Moment comedy club

This Monday night comedy club - run by post-graduate University of Warwick film students Tom Hughes and Pete Falconer - is beautiful.

It is one of the most joyous comedy clubs I have ever been to, and has, on occasions, made me incredibly happy.



Tom Hughes is a great, upbeat compere and Pete 'The Meat' Falconer makes a perfect comedic partner.

Tom and Pete book great acts and only charge two quid on the door. A remarkable treat!






2. PureAndGoodAndRight performance poetry club.

Promoter and performance poet Sean Kelly has done an extraordinary job in invigorating the Leamington poetry scene with this monthly club.

I have performed on great nights there on the same bills as some fabulous headliners.

PureAndGoodAndRight is two years' old now - and back at the Fox pub, in Clarendon Avenue - on the third Wednesday of every month.

Check it out!

3. The Architecture, the Gardens and the River Leam

I love the Regency buildings of Leamington.

It is, in so many ways, a lovely looking town.



Jephson Gardens are beautiful and, despite its many faults the council strives to renew the flower beds throughout the Spring and Summer.

Combined with the turbulent beauty of the Leam, it is a great place to live.






It is a shame that the people of Leamington so often do not seem comfortable with what they have.

4. The Millennium Balti Indian Restaurant, Bath Street, Leamington

An incredibly inexpensive (particularly for booze) curryhouse. My favourite place to go when feeling lonely and low in Leamington.




My visits there have often preceded visits to the Apollo cinema, just round the corner from the Garret, where I have kept up to speed with the worst Hollywood can offer!

5. The Jam at Kelley's bar.

This took over from the Jam at the Jug, which was scrapped when the Jug & Jester was taken over and went to the dogs.

It is nowhere as good as that fine event, but, when it happens, it is nice to see the likes of Shanade in full flow.

6. Rhubarb.



My favourite restaurant in Leamington Spa. I had some great times there, and, when my boss generously offered to take me out for a valedictory lunch, I chose it again.

I love the elegance of it, the photos on the walls, the laid-back music and the sexiness of the waitresses!

And the food's good, too.

It's a cool place.

7. The Pure.

My health club for one month recently. Not cheap - it was £52.50 for the month - but worth it! I went there 19 times in total (therefore, only £2.76 a visit!), and loved the pool, jacuzzi, sauna and steam room.



Often at 6.30am, I would have it all to myself and fantasise it was the Garret's own private swimming pool (only one minute's walk from my front door).

I was not as keen on the gym facilities, but, hey, you can't have everything.

While on the subject of health centres, I should also mention the much cheaper council gym and swimming pool at Newbold Comyn where I have spent many happy hours, especially in the enormous pools.

Well, those are the good things.

Now take a deep breath, Leamington - here are the bad ones:

Seven Things I Hate About Leamington Spa:



1. The Unfriendliness of its People.

During my adult life, I have lived in Poole, Hull, Cardiff, Gloucester, Coventry, London, Cotesbach in Leicestershire, and Lewes.

Yet none of these places are a fraction as unfriendly as Leamington.

If you end up washed up here, your chances of making friends with the locals are minimal.

They are an insular bunch who like to hang out with each other, talking rollocks and occasionally fighting like wolves.

On the other hand, maybe it is just me (as Tom Hughes suggested).

2. The Loneliness.

Much of my life in Leamington has been a lonely existence.

I have lost count of the nights I have aimlessly wandered its streets or drunk on my own in dreary bars.

But, again, maybe this was my fault.

3. The Pubs.

Most of the pubs of Leamington are rubbish!

I can’t think of a city where the public houses are quite as uninteresting.

The Jug & Jester was for a time an exception but it blew it with an appalling revamp – and the demise of the brilliant Jam at the Jug.

Now it is as bad as most of the rest.

The Sausage is OK, but the last time I went there, a couple was having noisy sex in the only cubicle in the gents lavatory! (at about 9pm on a Tuesday night).

I like the White Horse and love the Robbins Well, home of the Reckless Moment and for a while PureAndGoodAndRight, but the other pubs are hugely soulless.

4. The Local Authorities.

Warwick District Council and Warwickshire County Council get away with daylight robbery.

At the Leamington Garret, for instance, the Council Tax is extortionate for a property of its diminutive size.

The bins are not even collected and you cannot even buy a parking permit to park on the street outside (because it is classed as a non-residential street despite all the residents).

When you complain, Warwick District Council shamelessly blames Warwickshire County Council which then ignores your complaint, not even bothering to reply.

The latest outrage is that when I tried to cash in the rest of my parking permit (for a 6pm to 9am pass for a car park nowhere near my home), I was told by Warwick District Council that there would be a fiver surcharge, meaning I would receive a quid back.

The council lackey told me that this fee was excellent value!

I told him that Warwick District Council could stuff their car park pass up their fundament!

5. The Nutters.

Of course all British towns have mad people on their streets. It is Government policy.

The so-called 'mentalists' of Leamington, however, are pretty thick on the ground at my end of town.

Sometimes I am dodging them to the way to the shops, crossing the road where two of them are shouting obscenities at each other, only to hassled by another on the other side.

The younger Asboes hang around the band stand in Pump Room Gardens, beneath the Garret.

When they come of age, they graduate to basking around the railway bridge, cider in hand.

6. The (Fighting) Women.

Quite a few of the females of Leamington are particularly adept at punching each other.

I was genuinely shocked when a huge brawl erupted outside Pizza Hut in the early evening, or a woman was bleeding from the face outside Voodoo, police sirens wailing in the background.

Even in Coventry in the 1980s, the women generally left it up to their lunatic fellas to fight for them, rather than get their hands dirty.

7. The Drugs.

Like some other little British towns, Leamington has a serious drugs problem.

The E generation stumble around in a daze, their grey matter blown.

I found heroin addicts living in the bushes of the Pump Room Gardens in the summer, their mingy rottweiler chasing me when I used to jog in the mornings.

Coke abounds. Stoners are everywhere. None of this is helping to make Leamington a better place.

Indeed a certain section of the under-25s are like a lost generation, with narrow horizons and even slighter prospects, drugs dealer on speed dial.

But maybe this is true of every small town in Mr Bean's Britain, and it has just come to my attention in Leamington.

Well, those are my loves and hates about Leamington Spa.

It is now 10.20pm on my penultimate day in the Leamington Garret. Joni Mitchell's Blue is on the mono; my remaining three candles are lit in the living room window, and I am sipping a can of Stella, my first drink of the evening.

The last week or so has been a whirlwind of activity.

Last Tuesday I went out for a drink with Tom Hughes and Pete Falconer.

Pete came up to the garret afterwards to help me cane Attila's bottle of Hungarian spirit.



It had a most bad effect on us. We were soon dancing like crazy men to Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True, with the garret windows open wide, the volume pumped up to the maximum.

Pete then suffered an inclement turn of health, and I awoke the next day with the worst hangover I have ever had (worse even than my last attempt at drinking Hungarian spirits).

I threw out the remaining bottle of Budapest firewater. Hungarians must have stomachs of steel (or die young)!

The following night I went to see my dear, dear friends at the Cotesbach estate.

It was a great evening in the Sickle & Stick, of real ale (I quaffed about a gallon) and Staghorn, at which, amazingly, I won.



It was so lovely to see all my friends there.

I was also very interested to hear that my old pad, the Pi House, now has a new dweller.

I was home for the weekend and had a tremendous second night of my poetry club, A Pint of Poetry, at the Lewes Arms, Lewes, East Sussex.

The headliner Attila the Stockbroker was superb and the venue was packed.

A good friend from London also performed and we had a visitation from my dear cousin.

I will blog more about this gig later - when I get the pictures back.

This week so far has been wonderful but utterly exhausting. I swear I dropped off for a few minutes in a meeting at work this morning and I was so jaded in the early evening that I slept for an hour.

The end of my time at the day-job has been blighted by trying to save my images before I have to hand back my laptop.

I have had a terrible time with faulty memory sticks.

It has reinforced my dislike of digital photography.

Most digital images will die with their computers. Unlike 35mm film which is immortal.

I have a sense of the clock ticking and not being able to keep up with it.

This evening I have read the electric meter with Mr Rigby the Landlord, given a thank you card from myself and Attila, packed my case, walked to the supermarket to buy 16 quid of cakes to give to my colleagues at the day-job tomorrow (a tradition there for leavers), and tried to clean the flat.

It is, I realise, a hopeless task.

I have vacuumed throughout and spent an hour spraying and scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen, but realise it would take a day to free these spaces from a generation of grime.

I can only hope to make it vaguely respectable!

Returning to the theme of Leamington loves and hates, I suppose the biggest in both categories is this place.

At times I have been scared witless here; it has been like my prison.

Yet at other times – especially in the past few months – I have been tremendously happy in the Garret.

It so many ways it is an awesome place with a wondrous view.

Other people make all the difference to it.



When there is pleasant company, it is great in this flat. When there isn't, it is scary or simply lonely.

It is ten to eleven now and I Dylan's Blood On The Tracks is on the mono.

I was told today that my ex-boss Graham Jones (ex-Daily Star and CNN) had died, in his late fifties, I believe. I was saddened by this news.

He was certainly not a popular character but I always got on with him quite well, while occasionally suffering his other side.

Surprisingly, for a hard-nosed Fleet Street news editor, he took to coming to my comedy club, Joe's Comedy Madhouse, and thoroughly enjoyed its sheer awfulness.

R.I.P. Jonesy.

It is late and I have not done my ironing, washed the kitchen floor, taken out the washing – or, most important of all, written my leaving speech.

God knows what I am going to say.




It is the day of my leaving - 19 March 2008 - and I have just had my leaving presentation, which was extremely nice.

My speech went down well and people laughed in the right places.

And my colleagues gave me a bottle of Taittinger champagne, two lovely Sheaffer pens and, best of all, a new edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse.

It opened at Byron's She Walks In Beauty, which I read out to my colleagues...



Well, I have 10 minutes to go now.

I will soon be leaving my day-job building, going to my leaving do in Leamington, then the Leamington Garret and the end.

Leamington Spa, I have loved and hated you these past two years, but I will sure as hell miss you.

Exeunt Omnes : Jason Tilley's India

Hallelujah! A miracle has happened. I have found a great new day-job! I am leaving Leamington Spa! I'm returning to the big, bad city of London!

I can hardly believe my luck. Although I have been happier here over the last few months than before, quitting Leamington for gainful employment is an opportunity I have to - and will - seize with both hands.




It has been a long time in coming. I have lost count of the number of jobs I have applied for over the past two years.

I became so desperate at one point last year that I foolishly enrolled with almost every headhunter and employment agency in London. All to no avail. Until now.

It could not have come at a better time. When I came back after Christmas, my dear flatmate Attila Szalo expressed a burning desire to jack in his job in Leamington to travel in India.

So I invited my old friend Jason Tilley, who has spent the past five years travelling and photographing on the sub-continent, round to talk about India with Attila.

(Incidentally, I selected 18 of Jason Tilley's brilliant images to display with this blog.



Jason's tales of travelling India were extraordinary and, in some cases, rather disturbing. For instance, a sleazy bloke spiked his drink in a bar and then followed him back to his room, resulting in a narrow escape.

I would absolutely love to travel in India, but, as when I went to Ecuador, I suspect I would spend a lot of time avoiding other Westerners.



Attila has put in his notice at work and leaves on 18 February and I hope to arrange a good send-off for him.

Then I shall leave about a month later. (My best efforts to tie up loose ends and negotiate a reduced notice period ended up meaning I was leaving in eight weeks rather than three months).

It is all a bit weird - rather unreal. I cannot get my head around it.



In order to help make better use of the next month, I have joined the nearby and expensive gym - Pure - right round the corner from the Leamington Garret.

It is 52.50 pounds sterling for a calendar month and I reckon I will have to use it at least a dozen times to get my money's worth out of it.

Easirt said than done as I am often only here three full evenings a week.

Today was my first day at the gym, so I got up at 6.20am and went for a swim before work; then went in and told everyone I was leaving; went down to London for a meeting; came back and returned to the gym.

Pure is a lovely gym, even if the human scenery is not quite as spectacular as on the streets of Belgravia (where I was this afternoon).

I like the swimming pool. It is as if the Leamington Garret has its own beautiful, private pool - just a minute's walk from the penthouse!




On the poetry front I have not made much progress. At the weekend I printed out 10 of last year's crop and have started editing them, but anything and everything distracted me.

Today, on the train back from London, it dawned on me that my valedictory appearance on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire is next week, and I had promised the station's poet laureate, the highly affable Jo Roberts, that I would write a poem about Coventry Precinct!

I started it but, having penned only two lines, started chatting to a friendly girl from Birmingham called Lydia who tried to convince me that Brum was an extremely welcoming place.

It occurred to me that she might be right. Perhaps, I should have lodged in Birmingham rather than Leamington Spa. (Too late now).



But I digress... I did not fancy having to find a new flatmate. Having had one good one (and one very bad one), I was not keen on playing Russian flat-lette once again. (The scar has not fully healed).

The Landlord - Mr Rigsby out of Rising Damp - has kindly agreed for me to stay on after Attila goes at no extra rent (after a wee verbal tussle).

Attila's charming sister and brother - Zsofi and Peter - are staying in the Leamington Garret at the moment which has greatly improved the quality of the food we are eating, and also caused the Garret to be cleaned in the nick of time for Mr Rigsby's visit.




It is late on Sunday night now and I have just returned to Leamington Garret to find that the bureaucrats on the local council have taken down the 9am to 6pm parking restriction signs and replaced them with 8am to 8pm ones. They have also removed the disabled parking.


The former means I will have to set off for work by 8am every day and then park the best part of a mile away from the Garret between 5.15pm and 8pm every night to prevent some Nazi contracted by the council giving me a parking ticket for parking outside my own home.

I am not even able to buy a residents' parking permit because this street, despite its many residents, has been classed as 'non-residential' by local authority morons!

As usual there was absolutely no warning of the impending change in regulation and no consultation. I really hate the local penpushers. And yet still I pay the council tax to bolster their fat wage packets.








Now it is quiet and cold in the Leamington Garret; almost ten-fifteen with only a few lights still in the block of flats. I can see no one walking around, or doing anything.

Attila is away, presumably in London, and his brother and sister have gone back to Hungary, after a successful stay.

I feel like I am in a numbed state of limbo at the moment. Yesterday I made a list of the things I needed to do before leaving Leamington on the morning of Thursday, 20 March.

It came to 52 items! After working away at it most of today, I have ticked off only four of them!

The worst of it is that I wonder how much of my leaving plans are related to what I feel I ought to be doing - 'to do the right thing'.

When in reality, the vast majority of one's work colleagues, for instance, most probably don't give a fig whether you, or anyone, goes or stays.

I am organising an evening leaving do, but, if previous experience of day-job leaving events up here is anything to go by, it will be a quiet affair.



Regular readers of this journal may recall my efforts to gain a rounded knowledge of English poetry by reading - from cover to cover - the New Oxford Book of English Verse.


The last time I mentioned this I had reached Andrew Marvell, who was marvellous (don't excuse the pun!)

Now at last I am on my progenitor and hero George Gordon Byron. But, boy oh boy, have I suffered on this poetic journey!

I have read some great poetry but also some of the dreariest verse. There certainly seems to have been a slow patch in poetry in the half-century before William Blake came along.



Between Marvell and Blake, I read (some good, some dull): Henry Vaughan, Thomas Stanley, John Bunyan, Thomas Traherne, John Dryden, Charles Sackville, Aphra Behn, John Wilmot, Matthew Prior, Jonathan Swift, Isaac Watts, Alexander Pope, Henry Carey, James Thomson, Samuel Johnson...

And: Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, John Scott, William Cowper, Thomas Chatterton and George Crabbe.

I enjoyed parts of a lot of these dead poets, but it was like a breath of fresh air when I reached Blake and went into a purple patch of him, followed the great Robert Burns, the brilliant William Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Caleridge.

Before Byron, Walter Savage Landor, Charles Lamb, Thomas Campbell, Thomas Moore, James Leigh Hunt and Thomas Love Peacock slipped in.

And I still have hundreds of pages still to read!



I have a couple of days of no-drinking to go.

This year I have decided that rather than being on the wagon for just January, I would extend it to 10 percent of the year, which means not drinking for 36.6 days (it is a leap year). Or this Wednesday night.

I have not really missed the booze, apart from in certain situations, like getting back to the Lewes Garret on Thursday night after a hell of a journey on the M40, M25 and M23, and really, really fancying a glass of red wine.



I went to The Stage's New Year at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London, for the first time in about five years.

It was strange being the only sober person on that huge room awash with people and champagne.

One of the many things I like about showbiz folk is their tremendous optimism in the face of adversity - at least publicly.

I met one of the girls who didn't become Maria on the hit BBC show. She was delightful and told me enthusiastically about her pantomime and her singing lessons.

Later, I got chatting to a very pretty girl who told me about her forthcoming engagement at the Kings Head pub theatre in Islington, north London.

Only after she had left did a mate tell me, 'That was Abi Titmuss - John Leslie's ex.'

I remembered her name from the popular press. I have never been very good at recognising famous faces!



 More than ever I left the party thinking that we are all getting older; none of my generation can truthfully describe themselves as young any more.


Perhaps surprisingly, I felt quite sad to hear of Jeremy Beadle's death.

When I wrote about television for a national newspaper, I often used to attack his cruel prankster shows.

However, when I met him, he was most pleasant, despite his avowed hatred of journalists.

And Jeremy Beadle took it in good part when I successfully played a prank on him live on radio, and later wrote about it.

If nothing else, he was a good sport, although his true personality will always be a mystery to me.



It is late now and I need to turn in soon in order to make it to the Pure health club before work tomorrow.

I went five times in the first three days I have been a member, but I am not sure I can keep that up.

And I am very worried about my fast-approaching appearance on Coventry and Warwickshire Radio on Tuesday.



I have written about the council's plans to demolish the precinct after decades of redevelopment.

It made me almost nostalgic for my days as the local pop writer on the Evening Telegraph in Coventry (1987-8) - with Jason Tilley taking brilliant photographs for me - but I spend far too much time with my head flush with yesteryear.



Now it is Wednesday February 6 and I have achieved my goal of not drinking for 10 percent of the year.


I have also pointlessly driven 407 miles today and am exceptionally cream-crackered (much more of which in a forthcoming blog).

I am trying to write this on Attila's tiny Hungarian laptop and finding it near impossible (my fingers are too fat) so for now I shall publish (without checking it) and be damned!

Goodnight!

Merry Christmas and a Poetic New Year from Lewes and Leamington!

This may be my shortest blog ever:

Merry Christmas and a Poetic New Year to all my friends!

The run-up to Christmas is an incredibly fraught time for me, so I feel I am writing this entry on stolen time.

Please enjoy this gallery of Christmas images, taken in the last week in Lewes and Leamington.

Tomorrow is my 23rd (times two) birthday, and I shall toast you all with a birthday drink.

See you all in the New Year!

Love, Oliver xxx