Breaking Point / New Job

This will be my last night in the Leamington Garret for almost four weeks.

I am exhausted, running on empty, having not had a break since February. I cannot wait to take a break from the endless routine of slogging up and down the superslab between here in Leamington and Lewes, East Sussex.

I am so, so sick of those motorways, the endless delays, the lousy weather, the whole shooting match.

That said, I have not been especially unhappy this past month. I am almost resigned to my plight. I like Leamington in the summer, although what a summer! The bloody British weather had better improve for the next three weeks or so!

It is 11.22pm and Dylan is on the music centre. I was going to stay in tonight to pack and write this valedictory missive. Instead I went out with my flatmate Attila for a couple of pints of Guinness at the St Patrick's Club, beside the Leam. A fine evening!

So, I shall be keeping this blog (and flashback) short. I need to be in the land of nod by midnight for a 6.45am start tomorrow.

Poetrywise I have been fairly quiet this month. I did a gig at PureAndGoodAndRight in Leamington. Elvis McGonagall was headlining. He was excellent and a decent bloke to boot. Laura King, supporting, was equally good. There were a million other poets on - another fascinating poetry marathon. The variety of styles at Sean Kelly's club is remarkable.

The other great event of the month was the 7/7/7 Cotesbach 400 celebration at Cotesbach, Leicestershire, mainly on the country estate attached to Cotesbach Hall.

It was a hectic day for me because I also had to drive to Oxford and back for my dear mater's 70th birthday lunch (and got stuck in enormous traffic jams). Both events went well.

In Cotesbach, where I have lived twice, it was really strange to see more than 1,000 people wondering about the estate - for an event to mark the land riots in Cotesbach four centuries previously. The live music went on late into the night.

Sophy and Tom Newton and all the others involved in getting together this event did an incredible job. And the weather, for once, smiled, as you can see from the very grainy sunset photograph above.

Not so for most of the rest of the month. Over the weekend the park beneath the front of the Leamington Garret was a lake. I was in Lewes but, fortunately, Attila took these photographs.



Looking at these images of Jephson Gardens and the Pump Room Gardens, I wish I'd been here. Apparently, the Leam bursting its bank proved a hit with the tourists.

The chap at the Irish club, however, said it was nothing compared with an occasion in the 1990s when the bandstand in the Pump Room Gardens (which I am looking at as I write this) almost completely vanished under water in the biggest flood in living memory.

All the same, I cannot wait to get away. From Friday, I am free for more than three weeks.

I am planning to go to the Edinburgh Fringe for a week and hope to get on some minor bills reciting my doggerel.

Otherwise, I just want to chill and do nothing. Nothing at all.


New Job (Flashback to Tuesday, 4 January 2005)

First day of my new job. This is the weirdest feeling. I am working in a field in Warwickshire after being in jobs or work in London since 1988.

Everyone is making an effort to be friendly, but it is cold here and I can feel the change of culture hitting me like an iceberg.

Last month I was working for bishops. Can my life get any odder?



* I have decided that this is going to be my last "flashback". I have enjoyed doing them, but, going back into 2004, the events that happened to me were too painful for me to wish to recall.

It is best to look forward...

Changes / Cut Throat

Changes

It is hard to describe the abject misery of returning to Leamington after my fortnight's Christmas break. I did not want to go back at all.

The New Year was blissful. Tongue and Groove put on another magnificent show in Lewes. We saw 2007 in with champagne while the band belted out a fine rendition of David Bowie's Changes, with one of their sons, a boy of 10 or 11, on the lead vocals. He was brilliant!

'Changes' seemed a particularly apposite choice for the New Year. My life needs to change; this split existence between Lewes and Leamington is tough. It is too exhausting and expensive, and the things that have happened to me in Leamington town over the past eight months have stripped it any allure it might once have had for me.











I am not drinking alcohol for the first 39 days of the year; this gives me time to think. I also want to get my weight back down to twelve and a half stone. 
When I think of all the things I need to sort out, it feels like there's a mountain to climb. And even without booze, there are temptations: the book I am currently reading, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and the poem I am revising, January Blue.

I must persevere.

Cut Throat (Flashback to Wednesday, 12 April 2006)

7.39pm, according to the Leamington Clock Tower with its funny little turret. Emotionally I have been all over the place today. My head has been playing nasty tricks on me.

Someone has had his throat cut in the park (Pump Room Gardens) which our living room overlooks. I first heard about it on the radio while purchasing cheap lager and cleaning fluid at Costcutter (I only drink the lager).

The police had cordoned off the area where the attack happened. After they left, I inspected the scene of the crime. There was plenty of evidence of drug-taking - abandoned, dirty syringes - as well as as broken biscuits and crisps. I could not find any traces of blood. I guess forensics had already removed them. With a throat being cut, there must have been blood.

I wonder what happened. I wonder if anyone will ever be charged; if it will even make the papers.

At lunchtime, I had another go at Blogger.com. I published a note explaining that the blog was in development and would be launched at the beginning of June 2006, at the same time as the new poetry website Oliver's Poetry. I also had a go at writing my profile.

I did not put up my age as that's a secret (44), but I did reveal my birthday (22 December) which got turned into Capricorn on the blog. Actually, December 22 is on the cusp between Capricorn and Sagittarius (and astrology is a load of bull).

The interests section was easy: poetry and photography. I could have added comedy, having run stand-up comedy clubs in London for more than eight years, and drinking (a disastrous pastime for as many years as I can remember), and salsa dancing. But it is best to keep it simple. At least at first.

On music, I did not do well at all. I left out many of my favourite groups, such as The Beatles. Films, I managed to think of a few. Books, I also failed. Along with Music I shall have to redo it later.

When I get some pictures up on the blog, I don't think it will look too bad, although it would be nice to have extra features such Poem of the Week.

My dear sister-in-law, Catriona Clutterbuck, is a poet and a charming lady. At Christmas she gave me a 2006 Calendar containing one of her poems. She is Miss October (or rather her poem is). I am currently looking at the April folio which bears a poem called Blackbird by Kusi Okamura. Rather good, albeit morbid.

I am restive. Also cold. I have my one window open to try to air this sloping room (the floor is concave meaning this computer is on a gradient, as is the king size bed, although it slopes the other way!)

Too tired and freezing to carry on writing. I might go down to the music open mic night at our local hostelry, the Jug and Jester, but, first, I must round off that poem.

11.25pm. The Jam at the Jester was once again an excellent evening. Very much the same cast as last week - some brilliant, some mediocre, one or two who conceivably took too much LSD in the 1970s.

I drank while thoroughly enjoying the vibe: people from teens to dotage making great music together. The superb, grey goatee-bearded guitarist from last week was back. A cut above the rest. There was a dodgy folky moment in the middle; some groovy boogey woogey, and a surprisingly thrilling finale of Motorhead and AC/DC covers. (I hated those headbanging bands when I was DJ-ing in the 1980s but can now see the value of at least a couple of their tunes).

Otherwise, I am striving to warm up this cold little garret for the nocturnal battle ahead. I nearly always get duffed up in my dreams and wake up in a bad state.

And that poem? Almost complete.