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.

The Seedy Side of Royal Leamington Spa

For a change I thought I'd show you the real Royal Leamington Spa - the side of this quaint, Regency town in quaint old middle England that visitors don't know exists.

All the decay, tumbleweed and dereliction. The many bits of this tourist town that the council's vast income from tax, parking charges and other sources does not reach.

The flaking paint, crumbling buildings, faded glory.



My good mood continues unabated (I thoroughly enjoyed taking these pictures, although I am deliberately not publishing images of the countless mentalists, vagrants, druggies and alkies who comprise the denizens of the badlands of downtown Leamington).

I am getting into the Christmas spirit and trying to enjoy myself in moderation. Never easy for me!

The Festive Season is always wondrously fun but also hugely dangerous. This point was more than adequately illustrated at a Christmas party in a hotel near Leamington the other Friday when I got trolleyed and, for reasons unknown, started swinging from a thick, wooden beam high above the dance floor.



I was achieving tremendous height with my swings when the inevitable happened - I lost my grip and took off like an Exocet missile some eight foot above the dance floor. When I finally hit ground, it was onto my back with a sickening thud. By God, I felt that. Instant agony.

The people around thought I had broken my back and, indeed, it seemed absolutely miraculous that I got up. The next morning, I found myself wrapped in bruises: back, arms, ribs, wrist, you name it. I was a mess.

Later when I heard accounts of my trajectory and the enormous crack that my bonehouse took as it smashed into the none-too-pliable dance floor, it seemed incredible that I had not ended up in hospital (I like to put it down to the John Paul II rosary beads in my pocket bringing divine intercession, as occurred with him and the swerving bullet).



Why was I so totally out of my head? I had been all right at the same event on two previous years.

Well, I suppose my old mate Mike Knapp's funeral that day had upset me far more than I had expected or would have admitted.

Michael Geoffrey Knapp (10 May 1961 - 29 November 2007) - as writ on the service sheet - was cremated at South West Middlesex Crematorium. The chapel was packed with family, friends and old colleagues from Express Newspapers.

It was an emotional and memorable service, although I'd say not because of the 'humanist celebrant' who was, I felt, as dry as a bone. (Think, ticket collector).

Mike's old friend Dave Paul spoke very movingly, as did Mike's dad and brother. It was very hard not to be tearful.

Like me, Mike was a 1961 baby and, afterwards, at the wake overlooking The Thames at The Bell Inn in Hampton, I pondered how and why he had been taken so young.

When I first knew him in 1988, I would never have imagined he would have died before me.














I liked Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep, the poem read at the funeral (although the humanist did not, in my view, do it justice):

In those quiet moments in the still of the night
Remember to rejoice and celebrate life
Do not think of me gone and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on the grain
I am the gentle autumn's rain
When you awaken in the morning hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in flight
I am the soft stars that shine
You will hear my gentle voice
and remember to rejoice
Never give up your fight
and remember always
to Celebrate Life....



Seemed so apposite. I guess Mike Knapp enjoyed his life and checked out with few regrets.




I have been finding it very hard to make the time to write this journal. In the week since Mike's funeral, life has been a little bit of a social whirl.

With my flatmate Attila, I went to a surprisingly entertaining (and hilarious) gathering of video game makers at the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington. It was nice to him to get me in and the booze was only a quid a beer.



Also in Leamington, I led a seasonal booze-up of colleagues which turned out great, as more and more youngsters arrived to party. It ran from 5.30pm in the White Horse to past 3am in Kelseys. Wisely, I knocked off at around 1.15am in the Robbins Wells (and for once gave the Big K a miss).

A great craic, and I caught up with my photographer friend Jason Tilley (see Images of India) who dropped by for a chat and ended up crashing on my sofa.



On the Friday night, I met my dear friend Brian in London, which was looking particularly Christmassy and beautiful.

We met at the Coach and Horses in Soho (now rebranded as 'Norman's Coach and Horses' with four to five quid-a-piece sandwiches - what would Jeffrey Barnard have made of it?) Otherwise, it was mercifully similar to its former state.



That night it was the annual party at my club, the Colony Room, which was celebrating its 59th birthday, so we adjourned there.

It seemed even more wild than usual. One member had brought in his hound; another was staggering around, hopelessly drunk (like me in years past).



It was very great to see the gaffer, Michael, who is the life and soul of the Col. I am looking forward to next year's bash, the 60th. I remember the 50th and it was an amazing night.



Brian and I had a nightcap at The French House which is a timeless public house, virtually unchanged since it was home from home to the exiled French in the Second World War.

Knocking back numerous half-pints of Guinness (the French House does not sell pints), the atmosphere of that place was tangible.

I almost could picture the wartime French haunting their old haunt.













I did my last poetry gig of the year, at PureAndGoodAndRight, now in the vaults of the Robbins Well, Leamington.

As often happens with pre-Christmas gigs, there was a poor turn-out, so I took the opportunity to workshop a couple of new poems hot off the press (I'd written one on the train from Lewes to the gig).



They were very much work in progress but listening to the reaction of the small crowd was useful.

The atmosphere was good and the headliner, Ash Dickinson, was excellent. He certainly didn't let the dearth of punters put him off, enthusiastically performing two sets. Another great night!



Now I am gearing up for Christmas. I have two more days in Leamington Spa before heading south for the season.

I am still trying to plough through the New Oxford Book of English Verse, and have just read Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678), a poet I know and particularly like. So it is definitely looking up.

And I am very pleased that my long article about the poetry scene plus my review of a CD of William Blake poems set to music has been published on the centre pages of The Stage, the ever-interesting actors' and performers' newspaper.



Somehow I don't feel ready for Christmas. This year is not quite complete.

Indeed I do not even like to reflect on the year because I have failed in so much of what I resolved to do in 2007.

Nevertheless, my spirits are high. Even though I still ache all over - nine whole days after my spectacular Christmas party crash!

It is 11.30pm and I am checking this blog before emailing you all about it and an update of Oliver's Poetry.

A crescent, almost UFO-esque moon is to my right. A bit of magic in the night. But bitterly cold on the street.

Leamington Snow / Lucky Bunny

Leamington Snow
Leamington Garret. This morning I crawled out of bed to see the park beneath my garret bedroom carpeted with snow. It looked wonderful but I felt terrible.

This year, for some reason, I am not coping with January at all well. It cannot be purely because I am on the wagon. I have done that a number of times before and not suffered as badly. These past three weeks I have felt terrible - physically and mentally. I have missed Lewes like mad whilst in Leamington Spa; found the Day-Job stressful; and really struggled to get my head round anything, including poetry.

This week has been typical. On Monday I rolled up at the Reckless Moment comedy club in Leamington to perform my comedic poems, only to find I had come on the wrong date (a week early). I have also been sleeping terribly and feel drained at work during the day.

But I mustn't grumble. I came up from Lewes on Sunday to perform at Sean Kelly's excellent poetry night, PureAndGoodAndRight at the Fox in Leamington. What a fine evening it was!

I performed Probably Not which went down well and Loving You - likewise. Our Neighbours went all right, and my new poem Cook and Drive was well received. I Fought The Law and Women also went well.

The gig was packed with a very pleasant crowd. Jane Holland was very good indeed and I bought her volume The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman from her for a fiver. Emma Purshouse was also very good, taking a thematic approach to comedic poetry. And there was a superb poet from Oxford called Laura King who has kindly contributed a brilliant poem to Oliver's Poetry called From London to Oxford. She was really eloquent in her diction and performance.

There were 17 poets in total, a remarkably varied and talented bunch.
That was the highlight of the week. That and the tremendous warmth in the Leamington Garret living room. Last year I could never have dreamed that this place be so snug in the depths of winter.

It is 11.11pm now. I am dog tired but know I shan't sleep.

The other thing I did this week was have a go at generating a MySpace site. In fact I had started it months ago in a spare half-hour and have not looked at it since. In a sad moment, it occurred to me that having no friends on MySpace was incredibly pathetic, so I should devote some time to it.

Last night I went into a friends frenzy and this morning I had more than 20 so-called 'friends'. I deleted the ones I have never met and am left with 18, mainly comedian acquaintances, as my MySpace gang.

It seems to me that this is not at all shameful for MySpace. For instance, the comedian and musician Earl Okin has hundreds of scantily clad young women as friends, most of whom I would wager he has never met.

And Paul Foot, who I liked very much when I met him regularly (despite his disastrous performances at my former club Joe's Comedy Madhouse) has almost 1,800 so-called connoisseurs on his fab MySpace site. God knows where they all come from. He is a shy man.

If I have a spare couple of hours next week I am going to try to put a version of the Oliver's Poetry home page up on my MySpace site, and make some bally sense of this MySpace malarkey.

Lucky Bunny (Flashback to Thursday, 30 March 2006)

Leamington Garret. Great day at the Day-Job!

We came to the end of a three-day conference for volunteers which went really well. I chaired a couple of sessions, the second of which was for the volunteer webmasters. It went brilliantly. I'd hired a website expert to give them some training. He was followed by the Daily Mirror's webmaster who was most entertaining (especially with his shirt hanging out).

I must say I learnt a great deal which will help me in the design of the Oliver's Poetry website which I currently working on. And the question and answer session was great fun - I felt like a stand-up comedian again with all the banter flying around.

Afterwards I had a can of beer in the marquee with the Mirror chap and colleagues from the day-job. Then I went home in the Last Word in Luxury - my trusty steed. It was dusk.

As I was driving along the fast road to Leamington at around 40mph, a little bunny ran out from a hedgerow and under the nearside front wheel. I was shocked but it happened so quickly I hardly had time to touch the brake pedal and just managed to swerve slightly. I feared I had killed the bunny. I hate that. Roadkill is everywhere round here.

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the bunny running away completely unharmed. Thankfully, the wheels had missed him and the car had travelled over without touching a hair on his little body.

Lucky bunny!

My First Poetry Gigs / Loo Love

My First Poetry Gigs

Lewes Garret. My poetry friend Sean Kelly (pictured left) offered me my first poetry gig, at his excellent club, PureAndGoodAndRight, at the TOYK bar in Leamington. I had just started to prepare for it, deciding which of my far-from-perfect repertoire of poems I should try out on a live audience.

Meanwhile Sean suggested we go to watch a big poetry show in Birmingham. I met him at Birmingham New Street station for a beer, and we walked on to the Library Theatre where the last of a series of poetry gigs called 'Six of the Best' was to be staged.

Even though the performance was just about to start, he introduced me to the compere, Birmingham's Poet Laureate Richard Grant, aka Dreadlockalien. I was amazed when Richard asked me if I wanted to do a poem or two. I heard myself saying, 'Yes, great' and watched him typing my name onto his laptop.

I regretted my rashness. I like to plan and prepare. This is not the way I do things. The following minutes were frantic. I knew none of my poems by heart, so while the gig was kicking off I desperately rifled through my rucksack in a hunt for rhyme. Thankfully, I found a tatty, dog-eared old notebook - I possess many - with scribbled poems in it. They were early versions, and I could hardly read my own handwriting. I had certainly never read them aloud.

So I rapidly rewrote, attempting to make them scan and changing words and entire lines. All the while I was aware of being in a 300-seater venue in front of an intimidatingly large stage onto which I could at any moment be called to read my poetry.

I had just finished redrafting the second poem when the time came. While a live musical jingle was being played by resident band Fat Controller, Richard Grant - who had been making up rhyming intros for all acts - rushed over to me and, in a stage whisper, said: 'I can't think of a rhyme for Oliver. What's your surname?' I don't use my second name, so I said, 'Try rhyming with Ollie.' He concocted an intro with a brilliant rhyme and a quip about my distinctly Shakespearean shirt.

I was on - and as nervous as hell. I felt the stage would swallow me up. I read, as calmly and slowly as I could, Probably Not, which won a laugh, and Ed Cases, which was rewarded with some applause. I was pleasantly surprised. I left the stage with a vast sense of relief, feeling I had been flying by the seat of my pants.

The rest of the gig was absolutely tremendous. Sean Kelly did a funny poem timed to last precisely one minute, and Richard Grant is clearly very talented. Although a performance poet, his written poetry on his upbringing with numerous foster parents was outstanding and moving.

I also really enjoyed the piece of hip-hop theatre, and the brilliant headliner, Elvis McGonagall, a very funny poet and impressionist and the current 'World Slam Poetry Champion'. It was a great gig. More than anything, I was struck by the high level of moral support that the poets gave each other. Six of the Best has clearly been a brilliant concept, superbly executed.

My other 'first poetry gig' was at Sean's club PureAndGoodandRight, at TOYK, in Leamington. I was far more nervous for this one, although it was in a much more intimate venue (packed to the gills). I have always suffered from stage nerves, which drove me into the jaws of the demon drink when I chanced my arm as a stand-up comedian between 1995 and 2000. I was determined not to make the same mistake again.

I had turned up early in my poet's shirt and chatted to a very pleasant Birmingham poet called Spoz whom I had met at the other gig. I collared Sean Kelly and asked to go on first. I was really nervous as I read my first poem, The Liger - a whimsical number.

I knew it by heart, having recited it all week while cycling to work, but glanced down at my notes all the same. I made more eye contact with the audience than in Birmingham, but still did not feel entirely at home. I was conscious of gripping the mic stand like a fiend!

The next one I did was my tribute to Pope John Paul II, which I guess rather surprised the audience. A serious poem, about a Pontiff. However when, afterwards, I mentioned his successor's recent global PR gaffe, I was rewarded with a hearty laugh from the audience.

Next I performed the First Canto of my long, narrative poem Jack Dove. This I did not do well. Suddenly flushed with nerves I blew loads of lines of the 12 eight-line verses, and felt awful for it. I was shaking but I did not completely lose my nerve.

After that, it was a wonderful night. I enjoyed Sean Kelly's compering. He is a natural MC. Spoz also had great stage presence and some tremendously funny poems, particularly the ones about meeting Jesus. The headliner was Rachel Pantechnicon about whom I had heard much while, apparently, learning little. After a couple of lines of her set, I whispered to Dani Carbery: 'She's a bloke!' We fell about laughing at my admission of ignorance. It had not occurred to me for one second that Rachel Pantechnicon would be a poetic cross-dresser.

Rachel Pantechnicon (pictured left) was excellent; I could make imagine her making a great living on the stand-up comedy circuit I used to inhabit, rather than limiting herself to the 'Warwickshire spoken word cabaret circuit' as she described it afterwards. I particularly liked the ridiculous children's storybooks that she produced between poems. It was a fitting end to a very fine evening indeed!

Loo Love (Flashback to Thursday, 4 May 2006)

London Victoria – Brighton train. 7.49pm. I am sitting opposite the in-lurve couple from hell. They sat down, moved my case, and immediately starting virtually making love, French-kissing until their tonsils were sore. Then they had a loud conversation about his toilet habits. Now they are both watching an episode of The Simpsons on their laptop on guffawing like the buffoons they truly are.

How would you describe these morons? Well, she has black hair, gappy teeth, and small, exposed breasts; and is in her late twenties, with nice eyes, but far too much make-up. He is in his late thirties or early forties, with a receding hairline, curly, or, God forbid, permed hair, and a pretentious T-shirt. His teeth are bad, although not as bad as hers.

Now she has started to chew gum, and he is telling her about the difference between what he describes as boys' and girls' toilets. They are truly scatalogical in their relationship. Rarely has a couple irritated me as much. Now they have started pet-hitting each other; now they are French-kissing again; now she is jacking up her crop-top to reveal her tubby tub and nasty navel. Chunder! Vom! Chuck! Puke!

All the other bloody seats are taken, or I would move to escape this. Could it get any worse? Yes, he has just farted, a loud and smelly one. She has responded by getting out her lippy, and redoing her tarty face. Excuse me while I throw up!