Meme-ories Are Made Of This

I haven’t responded to a meme for a long time but today I’m making an exception by answering one sent to me by lovely Lucy Fishwife.

Basically I have to list 6 random things about myself – preferably things that you don’t already know – and then pass the meme on to 6 other lucky-lucky bloggers. While I think about who to infect with the meme disease here are 6 interesting (I hope) but little known facts about yours truly.

1) I’m a “published” poet. Kind of. I’ve had about 30 poems published over the years in various poetry journals and anthologies. Sadly I’ve never had a collection published or won any major poetry competitions which would have blasted my name before the addled sight of the UK literati. Out of the 30 published I was only ever properly paid for one: £10 for a poem called “Love” that was published in top-notch poetry mag The Rialto. I briefly considered framing the cheque but the law of economics took over and I cashed it.

2) I was at school for much of my younger life with fellow blogger Tris and we still maintain regular contact. He is quite simply and quite honestly my oldest friend. An initial acquaintance and then a friendship which dates back approximately 30 years. I’m very proud of this.

3) I had a childhood crush on Charlie’s Angels. All of them. But primarily it was Cheryl Ladd who floated my boyhood prepubescent boat. This is odd as she is blonde and with very few exceptions I go for brunettes. I have a wonderful wife (brunette) who thankfully feels unthreatened by this early blonde obsession and bought me the boxed set of Charlie’s Angels for my birthday last year. It’s crass, it’s dated, it’s so unbelievably 1970’s (even though it was filmed in the 80’s) but Cheryl Ladd has still got “it”. Though she has now been usurped in my affections by Keeley Hawes. Gotta move with the times, right? (Yes my search to find something previously unknown and interesting to say about myself is becoming desperate.)

4) One of my most vivid school memories is of the school playing field being covered in daddy-long-legs at the end of September / beginning of October (back when the seasons worked properly). One kid in a year below me made the mistake of charging towards the seething mass screaming out loud. One disoriented daddy-long-legs – evidently its bearings lost or fancying a kamikaze-style last act – promptly flew into the boy’s open mouth. Folks, it really is possible for a human being to turn bright green.

5) I have never in my entire life eaten steak. I don’t know why. I don’t have anything against red meat (though I’d hate to see my own going underneath Gordon Ramsay’s knife). I’ve just never ordered or desired a steak. Does this mean I am not a real man?

6) I used to write stories as a young boy where I was a superhero called Donny Osmond (look, I saw an Osmond cartoon once and it made an impression, OK?) and I had a gang of superhero friends who ranged (unsurprisingly) from the lovely ladies of Charlie’s Angels, the good guys from Star Wars, Logan and Jessica from Logan’s Run and for some weird reason Abba. I still have the stories – all hand written in little exercise books – beneath the bed. One memorable scene features my grandparents flying X-Wing fighters to blow up a humungous enemy star ship piloted by the evil Witchy Woo Hoo. It is my life’s ambition to make it available in all good books shops.


OK. Now for the tagging part. With apologies I’m tagging Tris, Inchy, Kaz, Brother Tobias, Kate and Amanda though please don’t feel you have to.

And lastly – the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Good luck and God speed.

Tag Team

Good day fellow bloggers; yours truly has been tagged good and proper by blogging buddy Old Cheeser and so I must most humbly submit myself to the task at hand.

The rules are simple (they could have been written for me):

First: post the following rules and a link to the person who tagged you.

Second: share seven interesting facts about yourself. The more amazingly interesting the better.

Third: tag seven people at the end of your post linking their names to their blogs and advising them of their tagged status via the comments facility on their own blogs.

Couldn't be easier. Except finding seven interesting facts about myself is going to be an absolute labour of Hercules...

1) One of my aunts is a distant relation of Audrey Hepburn. But sadly so distant that there is utterly no mileage in me trying to capitalize on the connection.

2) I have met Mel and Sue, Roger McGough and two members of Killing Joke. Mel and Sue I met at Weston-super-Mare train station: Mel was lovely and friendly, Sue was much cooler but still very polite. They made a point of not getting into the same carriage as me. Was it something I said? Roger McGough I met at a book signing - top bloke but he gave me a very weird look. Was it something I said? The KJ band members - Jaz Coleman and Paul Raven - I met during an amazing gig at the Birmingham Institute. Jaz shook my hand (his was very sweaty) and Paul Raven was wandering around brushing his teeth. He just gave me a weird look. Was it something I said...?!?

3) I am a secret Lego geek. I absolutely adore the stuff and am an avid collector. Sad eh? However, the way I look at it, there are worse addictions. I could be into crack, booze or gambling. Or, as Karen has just pointed out: I could be into football. I'm also keen to big up the fact that Lego is a lucrative investment as the models tend to increase in value as they get older.

4) When I was a toddler my mother tells me I used to regularly throw myself down the stairs (was it something she said?) without incurring a single injury. And then one day I fell down the bottom two steps and fractured my leg resulting in a few weeks in hospital. Why my family hadn't invested in a stairgate is still a mystery to me.

5) I started my as yet unrewarded writing career when I was about 7 years old after seeing Star Wars at the local cinema. Since then I have tinkered with stories and poetry with only the occasional year off here and there for bad behaviour. A veritable monster was created. Blame George Lucas.

6) A friend and I once snuck into the grounds of Guy's Cliffe - a local heritage site owned by the Masons and reputedly haunted by the ghost of lady Felice of Warwick who threw herself from one of the windows into the river below - and part-way round were confronted by a very spooky presence. I'm not joking for once either. We didn't actually see a manifestation but something unwelcoming was definitely there. I'm happy to report that we both turned tail and ran, wise poltroons that we were...

7) I have a phobia of moths. I can't stand them anywhere near me and I cannot relax if one gets into the house. Urgh. Horrible flaky, powdery things.

There you go - seven not so fab facts to ponder about yours truly.

And now I'm tagging Ally, Eve, Rol, Laura, Tris, Emily and Per.pri to do the same!

Think Of A Number

Quite why Johnny Ball is leaping about my subconscious this morning I don’t know – but he is and he’s waving his arms about manically and spouting lots of amazing stuff about numbers, equations and surface areas and doing his damnedest to make it all sound jolly and fun.

And it works.

I hated Maths at school. Absolutely loathed it. And I hated Physics even more. Our Physics teacher, Mr Prior, resembled a leather jumpsuit wearing troglodyte with a beard bushy enough to lose Ray Mears in and who demonstrably had a pathological hatred of all secondary school pupils. Especially wimpy secondary school pupils who had utterly no grasp of the manly science of Physics. What can I say? Mr Prior rode a huge eff-off motorbike to school everyday and regularly flirted with the svelte, cool-eyed French teacher (whose name escapes me but who looked like a female version of the keyboard player from Duran Duran) while I was a weedy bespectacled nerd who found numbers and pulleys and electrons all rather boring.

And yet I was totally addicted to Johnny Ball’s Maths/Physics based educational programmes.

The man was mesmeric. A little bit insane yes but he managed to make Maths exciting and even appealing. His enthusiasm was infectious. Even a numberphobe like me found himself swept along by Johnny’s unbounded zeal for number patterns and intricate gear systems. I think Johnny’s trick was not his intelligence in his chosen subject – formidable though it was – but his ability to communicate and transfer his own passion for the subject into the hearts and minds of his viewers.

If Johnny Ball had been my teacher at school I’d be an award winning physicist by now or even better I’d have had my cherry taken by the unnamed French teacher above. Instead I’m a disgruntled civil servant who writes novels and poetry in his spare time and whose cherry wasn’t offloaded until he was nearly 30.

I kid you not.

Hmm. But maybe that’s sharing a little bit too much information?

I’m sure Johnny Ball would be able to plot an entertaining graph mapping out my divergence from manly science stuff and my headlong dive into the world of literature and not pulling anything but a cracker for three whole decades... but as he isn’t here you’ll have to make do with this 'ere blog.

In the meantime my unanswered question is this: whatever happened to Johnny Ball?

A Poetic Interlude

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted any poetry on this blog but blog buddy Janete has reminded me that actually, getting poetry “out there” into the big wide world is a good thing and to be encouraged.

So, to change the pace somewhat, here is a small offering from my extensive back catalogue of angst and metaphor.


Sheffield, December 2003

In hoar wind trees lag dirty:
white filings pinch northward as iron
but grow grey and blunt
in the furnace slump of the factories.

The air sounds detonated –
the lung aftershock pressing down, pursed
and cursive, a spent
cartridge. The streets are baptized in it and

limed with the sign of the cross.
Trams belch black looking shoppers like grapeshot
but none hit their mark.
Fag ends blow red grit across department store windows,

the displays lost behind
a welding shower of tracer bullets.
The pavements bolt beneath
the rapid cannon fire of pork shops and pound shops

and job shops.

Christmas growls and sprints once from the rubble
to be dourly gunned down by the masses.

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...

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

Poetry Corner

Ah luvies, tis time for a bit of culture don’t you know. As my poetry reading debut at Warwick Castle nears (27 hours and counting) I thought it incumbent upon me to offer up to you, the delirious reader, a short poetic aperitif with which to whet your appetites.

Providing I don’t massacre my prize winning poem at the Warwick Words ceremony tomorrow I may well bung it on this ‘ere blog at the end of the week. In the mean time you’ll have to make do with the haiku below. TTFN.


Toothbrush Haiku

Ninety-five. No teeth.
Toothpaste dead. On windowsill
dry toothbrush bristles.

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.