Is It So Wrong Of Me To Want To Grab These People By The Throat And Shake Them 'Till They See Sense???

You can't move for sheep along the South Bank.
Just because you're a tourist,
it doesn't mean you have to be easily impressed
by people who paint themselves a metallic colour
and then stand still
on a box
for a prolonged amount of time.
They're not indigenous.
I've been to Spain and Italy and The Czech Rebublic,
so I know you have them there too.
Please don't encourage them.

False Beard Syndrome

Sporting that look
much favoured by geography teachers,
serial-killers
and Nottingham Forest centre-forwards
of a certain vintage.

It's Only An Empty Drawer

On the face of it,
it's only an empty drawer.
Except it's not. It’s more than that.
It's her empty drawer, see?
It's remained vacant and unclaimed for over a year.
Until 30 seconds ago,
I'd clean forgotten about it's existence.
It's been hiding out in the corner of the bedroom.
Biding its time. Just waiting to pounce.
Before I know it, it's too late;
The weight of negative space
contained within
catches me an upper-cut to the glass-jaw.

Is that blood I can taste on my top-lip?

Nowt As Twisted As Folk In Finchley

It's got a lot to do with the way
her orange "access-all-areas" wristband
clashes sharply with her peppermint green nurse's dress.
She plays melodian
and star-shaped tambourine
and thunderbox
and electronic butterfly.
She also sings here and there for good measure.
Like a kind of Kings Of Convenience
meets Lemon Jelly
meets Ozric Tentacles,
to my knowledge
Tunng are the only band who've ever managed
to namecheck the Little Chef franchise
in a ballad sung
from the persepective of a murdered ex-lover.
Nothing exciting ever happens in Finchley.
So states the famous old adage.
And I should know;
I've lived on the wrong side of the North Circular
for getting on 9 years now.
Tonight, however, has proven itself to be the exception to the rule.
For tonight, the cream
of the British "neu-folk" scene have lugged their
auto-harps
and harmoniums
and dulcimers
and zithers
and acoustic pick-ups
across the Rubicon to warm our Northern cockles.
I bump into a couple of fellow college alumni by chance,
watch a friend from my distant schooldays play through a fever,
and make sure that Barbarossa catches himself the right bus home.
Now whereabouts in these godforsaken parts
can a man hope to find himself a half-decent lamb shish
and a bottle of Australian root beer at this time of night?
Stick close to me my friend, you're in safe hands.

www.twistedfolk.com

My Not My Girlfriend

I don't have any photos
of the two of us together.
She was notoriously camera-shy.
Like Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala warrior,
she had a fear that the white man's Kodak
might somehow steal away her soul.
She would make hot pots of leaf tea
whilst I played Nintendo with her son.
It was her who first turned me on to Carver.
She had the complete back catalogue;
hung out to dry on various radiators around her flat.
A consequence of a penchant for
falling asleep whilst reading in the bath of an evening.
She had a truly great laugh.
An honest laugh that came from deep within.
A deep within and honest laugh that used to make me smile.
Sometimes she would laugh so hard
that she'd kind of blackout for a nano-second or two.
This was later diagnosed as symptomatic
of a chronic neurological disorder
caused by the brain's inability
to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally.
She had to give up driving as a result.
She was considered a potential danger to herself and others.
One of my fondest memories
of our time together
is the time we sat naked in bed one morning
on a mattress on the floor
instead of going to a lecture
and watched a John Ford Western on an old portable TV.
I remember she wrote a poem about me,
which talked of the connection between
oral sex and grey matter.
I vowed to one day write something for her in return.
I guess that's what this is.
Sorry it's taken me so long.

Octogenarian

My grandmother was born in 1926.
The same year as the General Strike.
The same year as Agatha Christie's famous disappearance.
The same year as Houdini's fatally ruptured appendix.
She's the same age as The Queen and Chuck Berry.
My grandmother was born with a medical disorder called anosmia,
which is the lack of olfaction, or a loss of the sense of smell.
She's never let it bother her though.
Today, surrounded by her extended family,
she's celebrating her 80th birthday
in a village institute on the edge of the Cotswolds.
The building was donated to the village
by the owner of the 1898 Epsom Derby winner.
The horse, Jeddah, had romped home at odds of 100-1.
I arrive at the party fresh from the Humanist wedding
I was attending
on the South Downs.
It was a camping wedding.
I was up until 3am, singing songs around the campfire.
I slept in my suit.
A shower this morning had unfortunately not been an option.
I arrrive smelling like
a recently-opened packet of smokey bacon crisps.
My grandmother, for one, doesn't seem to mind.
That's one of the advantages of anosmia I suppose.

Builder Avoidance Techniques

1) Take a trainee "hearing-ear" labrador for a long walk.
2) Visit the local Civic Amenity dump.
3) Go for a dip in a freshwater pond fed by the River Fleet.
4) Take a hatchet to the over-grown bush in the front garden.
5) Sit through 150 minutes of
Johnny Depp's latest shiver-me-timbers shtick.
6) Have a shower at a neighbour's house.
7) Read some Murakami short stories.
8) Listen to a new Sufjan Stevens album.
9) Contemplate starting work on that Great American novel.
10) Watch all the pretty girls go by.


and what it looks like now

A Brief History Of Findlay Brown

On stage,
in his flower-flecked cowboy shirt and hat,
it's difficult to detect the East Yorkshire accent
beneath the delicate songs straight from the heart.
Afterwards, when he collars you at the bar,
and talks passionately of imploding black-holes,
egg-shaped time, heavy gravity, anti-matter
and Danish polsevognen,
you're left wondering whether or not
this reborn former football hooligan
is actually a visitor from a parallel earth
- situated below
and ever-so-slightly to the left
of our own.

www.myspace.com/findlaybrown

L'Italia Prevede

So, where were you
when the mercurial monk lost his head
and left a football field for the final time of asking?
I was upstairs in the French House
when the Italians claimed themselves the ultimate prize.
The irony of that was not lost on me.

Remember, Remember The 7th Of July

I'm in Queen Mary's Gardens
with a freshly cut pink carnation in my hand.
They're about to close this area off to the public.
A visible police presence is in operation.
It looks like it might rain.
I was in Glasgow 365 days ago today.
It had started out as such a glorious summer's morning.
But, then again, don't they always?
It was aroundabout 10am when
the first assistant director had taken me to one side
and informed me that there had been
a multi-headed terrorist attack on the city I call home
(though she didn't use those exact words).
Myself and the other adults on set
were given strict instructions not to say anything
until all of the children's families had been contacted.
Inbetween takes, I was able to duck out
seruptitiously
to catch sketchy reports on the fuzzy TV in the gallery space.
It did little to quell the feelings of
anger, impotence
and (yes) fear tugging me this way and that.
At lunchtime, the number of casualties was stll unconfirmed.
Myself and Jack (the younger of the two boys in the cast),
distracted ourselves
from the 24-hour news channels by mixing together
Dr. Pepper and Irn Bru,
to create a new fizzy drink taste sensation
which we decided to name Dr. Bru. Or, if you prefer, Irn Pepper.
I miss those kids.
Nothing seemed to faze them.