First Birthday of Oliver's Poetry / The Pi House

Tomorrow is the first birthday of Oliver's Poetry Garret - and what a strange 12 months it has been!

Looking back, it is hard for me to get my head around some of the things that have happened. Also, at times, I have to confess it's not easy for me to see why I created this blog.

My interest in poetry started back in December 2004 when, under not entirely happy circumstances, I was leaving a job in London.

I won't go into the details of what happened then, apart from to say that for the first time in my life I turned to poetry.

During my last week in that job, I attended a poetry night in a bar in Brighton. The following day I wrote a poem about my situation at work and my feeling about the previous two-and-half-years working there. From that point I have not stopped writing poetry.

In the meantime, I had moved to a new day-job out in the countryside, and was initially living during the week in a converted woodshed in Cotesbach, Leicestershire (see flashback below). Eventually, I moved to Warwick and then Leamington.

The blog I instantly found addictive. Long before it was even launched, I was 'blogging' every day on a computer I had installed in my bedroom in Leamington.

The idea dawned on me of the blog moving forward and backward in time simultaneously. With regular blogs and flashbacks to my past (called backblogs). It all coincided with strange things happening in my personal life in Leamington, making the blogging all the more compulsive.

And, of course, there was the poetry. I had to write enough poems to put on the site and also to encourage other poets to submit their best work.

It was all most exciting for me. The problem was I soon found myself spending more time blogging, taking images for the site and doing technical stuff, like HTML, than actually writing poetry! This is an issue I have never truly resolved.

However, an anniversary is always a good opportunity to reflect. And for this first one, I decided to return my  focus to poetry - and have re-read and revised all of my poems.

I was amazed to find that I had written 110 poems, although in a way this alarmed me. A poet needs only write a few great poems in a lifetime, and this high production of mediocrity in the first 30 months - while working full-time and doing numerous other tasks - struck me as excessive.

I have also written 48 blogs and, therefore, 48 flashbacks or backblogs and taken many of the images on Oliver's Poetry Garret. (I have picked out some of my favourite photographs from the first year to illustrate this anniversary blog.)

The blogs and flashbacks started out on the same day, of course - 2 June 2006 - but are now some 20 months apart. Writing the backblogs or flashbacks has become more difficult because now I am relying on memory or what few notes I have of my mis-spent history.

The past year has been an interesting ride for Oliver's Poetry Garret which to a large degree reflects my personal journey.







What happens to me in life is my main inspiration for all the poetic writing I have done for this site and elsewhere.



And it has been through promoting the site that I have come to realise the link between the live comedy world, in which I was active for more than a decade performing and running a comedy club, and the burgeoning performance poetry scene.

Indeed I even ended up reading some of my poems at Leamington's uniquely brilliant comedy club, The Reckless Moment, in one of the gigs I have enjoyed most this year.







Sitting here in the Leamington Garret, overlooking the Pump Room Gardens, as the sun sets, I can see what a strange year it has been. In Leamington and Lewes, so many memorable things have happened.

The remarkable boycott of one of my favourite pubs, the Lewes Arms, in Lewes, by its customers - because the brewery removed their favourite ale - was subject of one of my blogs.

After running the famous public house virtually without a clientele for several months, Greene King realised they were never going to win and caved in.

Also in Lewes, being approached at random by a woman who asked me to be Father Christmas at a school fair was another strange occurrence.

Up in the Midlands, the death of my old friend Sam Towers, in Cotesbach, Leicestershire, was profoundly sad.

After the funeral I wrote a poem and blog and thought nothing more of it.

I was surprised to find Sam's relatives from around the world visiting the site to read them, and, touchingly, emailing to thank me.

I even received a missive from a youngster also called Sam Towers who said he was unrelated to the Sam Towers I had written about but 'was proud to share this gentleman's name'.

Also in Cotesbach, the estate dog Bruno died. He had been a great friend during the years I lived there (from 1999-2002 and 2005). Whenever I visit, it seems sadly strange not to have his great hairy, loving bulk jumping up at me, trying to lick my face!

All in all, the past 12 months have been rich in events and experience. I have greatly enjoyed my poetry slots at the tremendous PureandGoodandRight club in Leamington, and my other performances at Six of the Best in Birmingham, Word in Leicester and on the Warwick Words pub tour.


Yet what I am struggling to get my head around is what I really want to do with poetry. Reviewing comedy shows up at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer, I gave it a lot of thought. I saw the buzz around the Pleasance Courtyard of an evening and thought that I wanted to be part of it, but as a poet.

When I see my friends and mates branching out creatively - as comedians, musicians, poets, artists or whatever - I wonder what I am doing artistically.


Even when I get hooked into an art form, I feel myself hopelessly waylayed into a geeky backwater such as web design, digital photography or blogging!





I often wonder why it is I have written 110 poems in 30 poems but only committed three or four of them to memory.

Or why I am currently terrified of standing in front of an audience without a piece of paper in my hand.









The Pi House (Flashback to Saturday, 15 October 2005)

This is my last night in the Pi House - so-called because one of its windows is hewn in the shape of a Greek letter Pi - after almost 10 months. I am sad to be leaving but, with winter round the corner, it is definitely the right time to go.

I have loved living in this converted woodshed from Spring onwards (despite its lack of bathing or showering amenities).

It is a remarkable, ingenious building, with the shelter afforded by the indoors but the feel of the Great Outdoors.

In the winter, however, it is too tough for me. I have never known such cold as I experienced in this sweet little abode in January, February and March this year!

I recall awaking one morning thinking I had been frost-bitten, the ice forming on the inside of the windows.

Tonight I am going to the Sickle & Stick for a valedictory drink and traditional game of Staghorn. I know I shall miss my friends here as I prepare to move to Warwick and who knows what.

I am rather proud to have lived in the Pi House.

Photo Reflections

September and early October proved hard going – and not just for the banks (why does Robert Peston speak in that odd way?)

The Summer, by contrast, was idyllic for me - with wonderful stays in Edinburgh, Greece and Italy.

Once back in Blighty, everything seemed to start going pear-shaped!

Sometimes I feel my life is like 100 plates spinning on tall poles.

When I – most unusually – take three weeks off in a month, they first lose rotational speed, then wobble, and start to crash to the ground.

I shan’t bore you with the details, but in September and early October, problem followed problem.


I struggled to keep my life on an even keel.

Then, just when I thought I was getting on top of it, a scrote plundered my bank account, making me thousands of pounds overdrawn (and I couldn't even blame Peston).

My best guess is that while paying for meals in Greece or Italy my debit card was cloned, and then – a month on – a villain started spending my cash on the Continent like there was no tomorrow.

Now the account is frozen and the bank – which, typically, did not notice a thing – is investigating.

I have been in reflective mood following this. . . but also, strangely, because of photography.

Let me explain.

In 1970, aged 10, I started taking photographs – and have never stopped.


I have tens of thousands of them from the past 37 years, but until recently I have never attempted to catalogue them.

So early this year, I decided to see what I had in terms of images!

I thoroughly enjoyed cataloguing the black-and-white photographs I had taken in the 1970s and those I had inherited from the 1950s and 1960s.

However, with new images coming in all the time, I was never likely to finish the task unless I put a lid on new arrivals.

Rashly, I decided to catalogue the photographs in the collection taken this year.

I should not have bothered.

Rarely have I endured such a tedious exercise.

What I always considered to be a hobby is really an addiction.

So far this year there are 73 sets of images in my collection – most 36s, some 24s, and about two-thirds film and one third digital.



Going through them was one of the most boring things I have ever done.

I could not believe how repetitive my photography has become.

Even though I am taking pictures largely on film, I suffer from photographic diarrhoea, producing 20 images of an object or person where one or two would suffice.

When the penny dropped, I stopped taking photos for the first time in more than 35 years.

It has been a revelation.

For the first time in a long time I have been looking at sights of beauty and truly appreciating them.

For instance, the other day I arrived early on a Saturday morning at my allotment at Earwig Corner and found it shrouded in mist.



As the sun rose behind me, the dew on my shed evaporated like steam in a sauna, and before me the blanket of mist over the landscape gradually lifted during a period of at least half an hour until the distant chalk cliff came into view like a giant sticking its head through a cloud.

It was a really beautiful sight and one I would not have appreciated through the viewfinder of a camera.

It makes me think that photographers are often so obsessed with capturing images that they do not truly look and appreciate.

On holiday in Greece and Italy, I noticed it all over the place.

People were so mad about filming that they snapped away and videoed constantly, hardly glancing at what they were recording, probably never to be viewed.

Now I have started to look for myself again, I realise that photographs cannot compare with the sheer depth and stunning beauty of the original.



The best lens is the eye, the best camera is the brain, the best images are held in the mind’s eye.

By comparison, many of the images in my enormous collection pale into insignificance.

Sure, there are some interesting pictures of subjects I would probably have otherwise forgotten.

However, there are also some atrocious shots, and the overall impression is of a maniac behind the shutter release.

This and my woes set me thinking more deeply about a whole range of areas.

Why do I attend my local church in Lewes?

I was appalled by the pronouncements of the vicar – or 'Rector' as he likes to be called – at the recent Harvest Festival service.



He preached that it was “un-Christian” to buys eggs or chickens that were not free range.

As it happens, I buy free range produce.

However, if I were struggling to feed a family on the breadline, I would not appreciate being called 'un-Christian' for buying a bargain battery bird from Tesco.

Readers of this blog may recall my previously mentioning this Anglican priest as the man who produced his stinking socks for his homily at a Christmas morning service.

(What do you make of that, Mad Priest Blogger?)

Moreover, you can attend his church for weeks on end and hardly hear a mention of Christ, such is the obsession with the Old Testament.

The Rector a nice chap, but the problem with the C of E, as with the Roman Catholic Church, is that parish priests have an enormous amount of freedom and are hardly controlled by their bishops.

The best of the clergy are marvellous, but the others either embark on their own kooky journey of faith – or do something really bad.





The other day I was thinking of the Rector’s pleas for his congregation to tithe – give one tenth of their income – to the church.

Then I walked past the great big comfortable rectory and looked at the two newish vehicles parked outside, and thought: ‘No, I will make my own choices, thank you very much indeed.’

I think I shall find another church in Lewes to attend – and keep my donations indexed-linked to the cost of a pint of Harvey’s Best Bitter.

Then I started to think about the internet and my presence on it.

Why have a spent some much time creating Oliver’s Poetry Garret and what part does it play in my life?



Firstly, I guess I write for the same reasons I photograph.

It is a compulsion and an obsession.

When I was a child, I was always making notes, just as I was always thinking of taking photographs, pocket money allowing.

So I write for someone.

When I was national newspaper columnist, my words would have been read by hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers.

Now they might be read by just a handful, but I don’t mind.

I derive pleasure simply from the process of writing.

MySpace is really the home of self-publicists (though aren’t all websites?) and the people who use it most enthusiastically are plugging their music or comedy gigs.


It is interesting to follow what of my former Joe’s Comedy Madhouse acts are up to.

But, despite its initial phenomenal success, MySpace strikes me as a poorly designed and ultimately flawed platform.

It is ugly to look at and few users I know run successful blogs off it or reply to email on it.



But what’s good in my life?

The Poetry Café has been kind to me and my experiences out have inspired me to start a long narrative poem based very loosely based on the life of Byron.

Thusfar I have written 85 verses (of eight lines each).

It is a bit of fun and I am quietly pleased with progress.

Also on a positive note, I was lucky enough to witness The Mighty Rooks (Lewes Football Club) chalk up their first win of the season (after a mere 12 matches) - against The Mighty Yellows (Oxford) - on the hallowed turf of The Dripping Match (down my street).

Chris and Chris have signed me up to write a column for the Rooks' unofficial fanzine, of which they are editors.

I am calling it High On Spring Water (Lewes have closed their ground's bar during matches), and I am told the first edition will appear in the next issue of this marvellous organ, which is entitled Ten Worthing Bombers (and a bargain at less than two guineas).

Returning to my reflections on photography, I have taken one photographs from each of the recent films I have had processed and used them to illustrate this blog entry.

Now I am up to speed with my 2008 cataloguing, I have taken a vow to stop taking photos like a lunatic.




On a recent visitation to York, I stayed in a hotel which had marvellous Victorian photographs adorning its walls. Each a beautiful one-off.

From now on I shall be a Victorian photographer, taking a frame here, a frame there. Thinking and planning my images, not wasting film.

At least it will give me a chance to get on and catalogue my photographic output for the 1980s, 1990s and the rest of the 2000s.

By the way, don't miss A F Harrold's performance at Lewes Pint of Poetry, Lewes Arms, on 24 October 2008.

And I have used some of my archive pictures to liven up some of my old blog entries (see below).

Enjoy!

Opening Night at Eight Pints of Poetry!

The first night of my poetry club – Eight Pints of Poetry! – went well!


Ash Dickinson, the Edinburgh Fringe’s current slam poetry champion, performed two good half-hour sets; I compered, reading more than 15 poems, and a very good open spot, Iona Jette, did about seven minutes.

After a tremendous family effort flyering during the previous week, the room was half full (rather than half empty!) which I thought a respectable result for the opening night.

And the crazy talk downstairs in the bar afterwards reminded me of the sozzled excesses of the Joe’s Comedy Madhouse years (not necessarily a good thing!)



The next gig is on Friday, 14 March (Doors: 8pm, Show: 8.30pm), again at the Lewes Arms, Mount Place, Lewes, East Sussex.

The headliner is the legendary Attila the Stockbroker. With a packed room and a few more open mic-ers, it could be the perfect poetry night!

I have been in the Lewes Garret for 12 days now.

It is nice to be home, having a rest, but I have found it hard slipping into the vibe here in Lewes. Strange! It makes me wonder how I will get on soon when I am back fulltime.

Before I left, I did my last performance on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio. It was the best of the three.

I was on with a guest presenter, John Butler (not my Oxford friend of the same name but a Cov Kid and former stand-up comedian), and the resident guest for the slot, the station’s poet laureate Jo Roberts.

I felt more relaxed than before; we had a good chat about the council’s plans to invest a billion quid (yes, a thousand million pounds) in another re-development of its precinct.

When I had lived in Coventry 20 years before, I pointed out, the council had been planning to re-develop the precinct. Now they are starting again!

Before the show, I had looked at images of Coventry before the blitz of 1940.

Although I had worked as a reporter at the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1986-88, I had never seen these pictures before.

I was struck by how beautiful Coventry had been, and how much damage Gibson had done with his master plan for concrete re-development.

Moreover, I walked past the shanty town bit of the city centre, the Parson’s Nose et cetera, and saw it condoned off by the police because a murdered man’s body had been found.

I thought: Coventry has not changed. More than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, it still hasn’t been rebuilt.

And 20 years after I left, its people are still slaughtering each other!



On BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio, I recited a poem I had written on this theme, Coventry Precinct.

Then I read Give Me A Haircut Like Byron!, and Women. They seemed to go well.

It was one of my better performances; I felt great afterwards. I shall miss BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio – a fine institution, worth the licence fee on its own!



The following day I was due to interview a 1970s sex symbol who now runs a stud in England’s West Country.

I set off from the Leamington Garret bright and early and was almost there when I got a call on my mobile from her scatty personal assistant.



To my astonishment, I was told that the ex-siren was in London that day!

It turned out that her assistant could have told me this days before but had simply forgotten – until I had driven hundreds of miles at high speed and was almost there!

She offered to re-arrange the interview but, in my disgust, I told them to shove it, and went to Weymouth for the day.



I should explain that Weymouth is one of my favourite places in the world – and a mere 200 miles from Leamington.

Admittedly, it took a little time to drive to Weymouth, but I was there for lunch – fish and chips in the baking hot sun. For a day in February, the weather was quite extraordinary.



I loved the quintessential blueness of the skies, the wide open beaches, the bustling harbour.

Some of my happiness memories are in Weymouth.

My father would drive the family Morris Oxford from Oxford to Weymouth.



The journey would seem to take an eternity (it is almost as far as from Oxford as from Leamington), but it was worth it to splash around in the acres of paddling waters, row my beloved inflatable canoe, and play the amusements.

I found the Weymouth shop where I think I bought the canoe, and went into the amusement arcade that me and my brothers liked the most.

Remarkably, inside it seemed hardly changed. I swear one of the attractions was even exactly the same - more than 35 years on!



Sundown found me at Portland Bill – a spectacular spot on the Isle of Portland, attached to Weymouth by the slightest spit of land.

I chatted to the twitchers (and they showed me some birds), and I met an old gentleman who was there with his granddaughter.



By the time I’d returned to the Leamington Garret that night, I’d driven 409 miles that day, and was absolutely drained. But happy...

On the way back to Lewes, my faithful motor, the Astra Martin, went through 180 (‘One Hunnnnnnnnnnndrrrrrrrrrrrrred and Ehhhhhhhhhhty!’ as they used to say when my Uncle Jocky was winning at darts) thousand miles on the clock.









* I also went to London for the day, taking in a very misty Hampstead Heath, Keats’ Garden, and a spectacularly beautiful Richmond at sunset.

Friends, I shall leave you with that image as I set off from Leamington with a heavy heart.

Headhunters

Headhunters must be one of the biggest cons going.








Of all the futile, worthless so-called profession, this one must rank right at the top. My experiences of headhunters and other recruitment agencies this year have been so bad, I wonder how they even turn a penny.

For instance, over the Summer, I noticed one big recruitment agency had placed a full-page advertisement in a trade magazine - costing it more than five grand, according to the rate card - to promote a seminar in central London for people who wanted to relocate to the North of England.

I duly booked time off my day-job and caught the train to London, had a glass of tepid white wine and listened to various characters that the agency had presumably hired for the evening, yakking on about how fabulous their Northern companies were, how many great jobs there in the North, how hugely people were paid, how superb the restuarants were et cetera, ad nauseum.

At the end, I introduced myself to the young woman who was heading up the northern office for the recruitment agency, and followed up with emails and phone calls.

It rapidly became apparent that far from there being a flourishing jobs scene up t'north, the agency had very few jobs on its books, and hardly any good ones. I did not particularly mind this. Although clearly the presentation had been misleading, it was not the agency's fault the market was dead.

However, I did object when the Northern Office's manager phoned to suggest I apply through her for two jobs the descriptions of which sounded terribly familiar. I checked that week's Media Guardian and found both posts advertised with lines saying, 'No agencies, please'. I phoned the companies' HR Departments who were furious that the agency girl was falsely giving the impression that they were her clients.

Meanwhile, the agency woman emailed me the job specs, which she had clearly cut and pasted from Guardian Jobs website. I emailed back thanking her and adding: 'Please just confirm that these companies are your clients.'

I have never heard from her since, and could never trust her or that agency again.



Another dirty trick that these so-called selection people do is place huge advertisements in the industry trade magazines, giving the impression they are looking for candidates. Surprisingly, nothing could be further from the case.

Most of the time the jobs are already filled or about to be - if indeed they exist at all - and the recruitment agency could not give two shites about job-seekers.

What is really happening - and this has been confirmed to me by one careless headhunter - is that their dodgy little firms are indulging in what I call reverse marketing. By advertising for job seekers using grand and expensive advertisements, they are trying to create the perception that they are doing well and, through that, attract new clients.

You have to remember they only makes money from employers.



The few clients that really exist tend to be hire-and-fire agencies who can't be arsed to do their own recruiting and actually may not take on anybody anyway most of the time.

Amazingly, there are still large numbers of headhunters and recruitment agencies chasing a small number of briefs and treating job-seekers atrociously.

I had an inkling of this some time ago when I got chatting to a young headhunter on the train and was stunned by how utterly indiscreet she was about clients and candidates alike.

But what has really angered me about headhunters was what happened last Friday, when I was invited into a Westminster headhunter's offices, after being referred to them by an old friend.



I was shown into a large and very grand room with a small glass table in the centre and an antique grandfather clock ticking away, indicating, strangely, the state of the tides in Bristol.

Presently, a very large, youngish woman entered and sat down next to me and placed my CV in front of her.

She said I had been referred to them by my old friend and asked how I knew him. I told her. Then she proceeded to ask if I had experience as a political lobbyist or political journalist.

It was obvious from my CV that I had not, but I duly explained the limited experience I had had of these fields (such as interviewing Gordon Brown, Iain Duncan Smith, The Speaker etc.) while saying that most of experience was in other areas of journalism.

To my dismay, the headhunter started to have a go at me, saying I was completely unsuited to what they did and she was only seeing me because I was a friend of a client.

'Well, this has been a complete waste of my time and yours,' I said presently, but she continued to pour scorn on my career thusfar, until I just upped and left, walking into chill Westminster evening feeling abused and crushed.

What is wrong with these people? Having read my CV, why did she even invite me in? And how can she hold down a job in a people-business while displaying such a total lack of tack and diplomacy?

That night I was so upset and furious about what had happened, I could not sleep. I ended up sitting in the kitchen of the Lewes Garret and writing a poem called The Headhunter.

The next day I decided to stop dealing with recruitment agencies. The whole industry seems morally bankrupt to me and desperately needs regulation.

My friend The Poet Laura-eate had some apposite thoughts on the headhunting industry.

She described them as a 'parasitical lifeform of the lowest order' and adds: 'It is a scientifically established fact that cannibalism addles the brains, so . . . our British missionaries might also need to be alerted to these soulless heathens who lurk in our midst ready to asset-strip the unwary.'

The Laura-eate also suggests headhunters only behave in this way because they are jealous of people more creative and interesting that they are.

What would Byron have made of headhunters? He would have been shocked they even exist.

For thing is for sure, the headhunters won't be getting my scalp.