Page 9

God bless The Courier.

After snatching a copy hot of the press this morning (and then running back into the shop and paying the snarling shop assistant for it) I eagerly leafed through its hallowed pages to the quivering postbag section... and found utterly no sign of my letter at all.

Cue 10 minutes of swearing until I realized that they’d actually written a feature on the whole night club debacle on page 9 and there, smack (pun intended) bang in the midst of other offended letters was mine. Emblazoned if you will upon the very centre and nexus of the article.

My ego was pumped to bursting point.

Or at least it was until I realised how SAD I was being.

I mean, it’s ONLY the Courier. It’s not like it’s The Sun or anything. Get a grip!

Anyway, for those of you who wish to read the letter but missed its posting here last week, just follow this link: Smack letter.

Jumped The Gun

It seems I was a mite premature in my peevishness towards the Leamington Courier. I had an email this morning from their contribution’s editor thanking me for my letter about the Smack nightclub and advising me to see this Friday’s edition… a sure sign that my letter is primed for publication.

Another teeny-weeny serving of fame beckons.

Who knows I may end up as a guest on Loose Women after all…

Or should I be setting my sights a lot higher?

Sprint For The Weekend And The Smack Letter

Friday, as we all know, is the best day of the week. The whole day is imbibed with a sense of uplifting optimism that can lift even the direst spirit. I realize this pro-plus quality has everything to do with the approaching weekend and the glorious potential that accompanies it. Even if that potential is never realized it doesn’t matter – the weekend is great because it’s “our” time. Time to do our own thing, spend time with our families, time to follow our own pursuits without the boss or the taxman clocking your every tea break and loo stop. Time to do absolutely eff all if that’s what you feel like.

This Friday is especially good for me because (a) I’m taking Karen out for a meal at a fab new Thai restaurant in Leamo tomorrow night to celebrate both Valentine’s day (belatedly) and her birthday (prematurely) and (b) I’ve booked Monday and Tuesday off as holiday so I get a whoppingly huge 4 day weekend followed by a short week at work. Top!

With it being Karen’s birthday on the Tuesday we’re planning a day out somewhere together – possibly shopping in Birmingham, possibly a day mooching around Moreton-in-the-Marsh – wherever we end up it’ll all be good and I’m sure another nice meal will feature as part of the day’s entertainments. I can’t wait. Hedonism – it’s my favourite hobby.

On another matter I was very disappointed to find that a letter I’d written to the local Courier newspaper wasn’t printed in this week’s edition. I feel personally insulted. How dare they decline a missive from yours truly! I spent at least 10 minutes composing the damn thing!

Anyway, just because I’m able and not because you’re at all interested I shall paste a copy of the letter below so that it is saved for all posterity. The background story is this: a local night club has decided to change its name from Sugar (dubious in itself) to Smack and has even set up a web site called trysmack.co.uk to publicise itself. I feel that given Leamington’s history of heroin addiction amongst some of its residents such marketing techniques are deeply offensive, stupid and crass...

For information: Andi Conway-Horbury was the local resident who originally complained about the new name of the club to the Courier.


"Re: Sugar night club renamed Smack

I share Andi Conway-Horbury’s disgust regarding the recent renaming of the Sugar night club. Aside from sounding cheap and nasty, the new name is plainly a cynical manoeuvre on the part of the club owners to cash in on the drug scene. Given the crass name of their web site – www.trysmack.co.uk – they evidently think heroin abuse is not only cool and fashionable but also an ideal sales pitch with which to encourage young customers through their door. This is surely deeply insulting to their potential clientele – as well as incredibly insulting to all individuals and families who have had their lives ruined by heroin addiction.

I’m sure the club owners will want to impose responsible house-rules on drug use and possession within the confines of their club, particularly with reference to all banned and illegal substances – I mean Heaven forbid that the club is constantly raided by the police and earns itself a bad reputation which jeopardizes its license – but I fail to see how cashing in on the heroin scene in such a tactless manner will in any way aid them in their efforts to keep their premises drug free.

Given the nature of most night club entertainments maybe a more suitable, less contentious, drug related name could have been chosen? Alka Seltzer or Imodium perhaps?"

Another 15 Minutes Of Fame

Gosh. I’m doing well in terms of getting my name into The Courier this year.

Poring through today’s edition I see I managed to achieve a “highly commended” runner-up position in their recent haiku competition – the subject being “fireworks”.

Here for your edification (and my self-aggrandizement) is the poem:

As a month’s wages
rocket skywards in blue smoke
all the kids explode...

Sunny Side Down

I have to admit, tail drooping between my handsomely formed legs, that since Friday’s Courier article on the web based adventures of yours truly my web sites have not exactly been overrun with frothing visitors or vibrant fanatics.

It isn’t so much a case of my stone making only infinitesimal ripples in the diamond pool of fame as the fact my stone appears to have fallen short, hit the bank, ricocheted backwards and buried itself in the anus of a passing stoat - unlikely to be seen again and unlikely to be welcomed gladly if it is.

I have to face the fact that the best efforts of myself and the kindly journo at The Courier haven’t been enough to propel me into the heady stratosphere of tabloid centrespread stardom and broadsheet column inches. It seems they’d rather wax lyrical about Charlotte Church’s botty and the unending pantomime that is Iraq. The poor blind fools.

Maybe I should have gone for the vice shame exposé angle (as a mate of mine initially suggested)? Photographed Craig Charles stylee in the back of a taxi cab snorting badly cut drugs from a homemade bong cobbled together out of an old biro and a carton of Sunny D?

No.

Who am I kidding?

I wouldn’t be seen dead with a carton of Sunny D.

Fame At Last

What a day. I’ve had Jonathon Ross on the bleedin’ phone all morning, Fern Britton on email trying to line me up to do an interview on This Morning and I’ve had to fight my way through a huge scrum of flash happy hacks and journos salivating on my doorstep just to get to work this morning!

And why?

All because of some article about me in The Courier!

I mean really!

Is it really that big a thing?

I’m certainly not going to let it change me or let it go to my head…

Visitors to this blog please note the following:

Signed photographs are available upon request.
I’m available for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs and barbecues – I do the lot, me.
I only do supermarket openings on Saturdays.
I don’t work with children or animals.
Or Pete Burns.

Jeeves, start the car. I wish to see the flowers at the bottom of the garden…

You can read my world shattering Courier shenanigans by following the links below:

Blogging Article
25 Questions

The Death Of Pocketropolis.com

Cheesed off isn't the phrase.

Due to an incompetent and infuriatingly incommunicative web host - Web Warehouse - www.pocketropolis.com has effectively been disabled. For the time being it is suffering the internet version of a coma. It's there to look at but I can do eff all with it.

I won't bore you with the details but needless to say I'm about to commence what will probably be a very protracted process (given that the support team at Web Warehouse seem incapable of answering emails or publishing a telephone number that actually works) of transferring www.pocketropolis.com to a brand new web host... most likely the one you are utilizing now to read this blog. Once I've achieved that - and frankly I'm not confident given the contempt Web Warehouse show for their customers - www.pocketropolis.com will rise again.

In the meantime I have had to hastily set up a new domain name from which the legend that is Pocketropolis can operate: www.pocketropolis.co.uk

Welcome to the new world order, folks.

P.S. You'll see from the reply to the "Curse You Courier!" entry below that the blogging article isn't now due to appear in The Courier until Friday 20th. Just as well, really. It's given me time to set up this alternative domain name. I've emailed the journalist and hopefully he will be kind enough to update my web address in his article...

Curse You Courier!

It appears I baited my breath for nothing!

After hotfooting it down to my nearest newsagent there to grab a copy of The Courier hot off the steaming press I was grief struck to discover that the article on Leamington Bloggers has not graced this week's pages!

How can they do this to us, my sweet salivating public?

Don't they care?

Harrumph. To be honest the hack I spoke to did say that it might be an article that they hold over until next week or the week after. I guess the news this week was just full of more interesting and entertaining morsels than me. Hard to believe I know. Oh well. Better cancel the press launch and the TV interview with Philip Schofield and Fern Britton. It seems I won't be appearing in Extras just yet...

But on other matters, my poetry reading at Warwick Castle went well and I met some lovely people. Karen, Ben and myself were made to feel very welcome and it was a fantastic venue in which to find ourselves. I'm glad to say I didn't make too big a fool of myself and got some very positive feedback.

Here as promised is the poem:

The Trolley

We found you in tussock, wheels up
like a shot donkey.

Spiders had grown the metal ribs
of your belly shut. Chrome

gleamed beneath the matted poultice
of gnats and bindweed.

Beautiful.

Brushed off we knew the hill and you
were made for one moment.

Down as birds, eye-cornering, swing
across a fast sky.

Quickly you were not made for two.
I barely made it

passed the brink

and met the fierce angles of this world
headlong in tall grasses.

My mate tobogganed on and drove
your jolting government

hard against the sod, laughs flailing
into a cross wind,

inseparable,

your weights ox-ploughing twin grass-tracks
fast through muck and turf -

a railroad of whoops and curses
billowing clock seed

and thistle leaf - until the rough
jerk of wheel pivot

met hidden stone.

In my mind now he doesn’t stop
but rattles on, flag

in a long wind getting smaller,
his shouts like copper

on the tongue or an empty basket
dropped

over an edge of years

Magoo

Last Friday afternoon witnessed the photo shoot of the century. Yours truly, the photographer from The Courier and my freshly dusted PC (gleaming under a glass-like patina of Mr Sheen - my one and only glamour prop) were all crammed into my office at home in an attempt to recreate on digital media that classic iconic image of a fast tracking media mogul about to hit the big time.

Picture leopard skin rugs draped seductively over the chaise longue. Picture black silk sheets draped like Bedouin tent flaps from every wall and rafter. Picture exotic cocktails in the hands of fawning dolly birds pawing at my quivering flesh as I fling yet another verbal masterpiece onto the internet with the lightest of touches... and you’ll have an exact idea of what the whole experience wasn’t like.

To be fair the photographer was a really decent bloke and if he fulfils his promise to me of not making me look like a nerd or a pratt I may even buy him a drink should I ever run into him the next time I frequent my usual drinking establishment of choice.

The problem was, given the tiny proportions of my (steady! steady!) office I spent the entire duration with my ugly mug practically crushed up into the guy’s zoom lens. Not exactly the close-up that either of us wanted. I lost count of how many photos he took but by the fifteenth attempt to get the perfect shot my carefree, natural smile had become a rictus of spasming muscles and I looked like I was trying to pass a gold plated Boeing 747 out of my nether regions. By the twenty-seventh shot I’d become so blinded by the flash that I was blinking entirely out of trauma reflex and probably resembled a photo-phobic Tourettes sufferer. Great. Say effing cheese for the camera.

The end result will no doubt be that should I be lucky enough to actually have my ugly mug feature in The Courier I will simply look like Mr Magoo with a terminal coke habit...

Marvellous.

Point me to my limousine, Waldo.

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve Got It In For Me!

Blimey but yesterday was eventful.

It appears I am to be permitted two bites at that overly ripened, rough skinned tavern wench: the tart cherry of fame. And these double barrelled opportunities for distinction come replete with the obligatory attendance of professional flash photography and newspaper column inches focusing on the derring-dos of yours truly.

Star Moment Number One was the revelation that I have come third in the Warwick Words Poetry Competition and will have the chance to strut my poetic stuff in The Great Hall of Warwick Castle (one of Christendom’s finest tourist attractions of immense historic value and Royal patronage, blah blah blah) next Thursday evening at a spectacular prize giving event that will outdo anything that Matthew Kelly could summon up on Stars In Your Eyes.

Star Moment Number Two was a communiqué from the Leamington Spa Courier announcing that they wished to interview me (backed up with the gritty realism of fly-on-the-wall photographs) about my long running “blog” on Pocketropolis. Shock horror. Knock me down with a feather. Come in boat 37 your 15 minutes is about to start.

I feel like a blind fisherman with a snapped line. I’m still reeling.

The Poetry comp news was lovely. Having been plugging away at the old poetry game for years it’s nice to finally receive a bit of recognition at long last and I only hope that my wobbly knees and nervously fluty voice will be up to doing my prize winning poem justice when I come to deliver it to my esteemed peers next week.

The Courier article, I must admit, I feel a little more ambivalent about. A hefty dose of natural paranoia has kicked in and I’ve found myself reviewing all my despotic and curmudgeonly outpourings on Pocketropolis – of which there are loads - though without changing a single word of any of it, it has to said. I guess it’s time to stand by my writing. I’m entitled to my opinions as much as anybody else is and I can only write from my own personal viewpoint.

My one and only hope is that when my work is flinching beneath the unremitting glare of a wider audience it is considered entertaining, humorous and thought provoking – even if nobody else agrees with what I’m saying.

That thought will really warm the cockles of my heart when the lynch mobs come with flaming brands and newly edged pitchforks to drag me from my Slumberland bed and garrotte me over the nearest lamppost...

Pull away, boys, pull away.