Interactive version of Oliver's Poetry Garret
Meeting The Neighbour
Thursday, 6 July 2006, Blog 20
Leamington - London Marylebone train
I am feeling very happy today. Really! Relations with my flatmate are excellent again, and Mr Rigby is pleased we are staying another six months. I even managed to get us out of the £25 renewal fee. The Day-Job has been busy and productive, and my comedy pieces for The Stage are almost finished.
I just need to talk to Peter Buckley Hill about his amazing raft of free shows (the veteran comedian Brian Damage telephoned me to give me Peter's number).
I must also catch up with Justin Edward (a.k.a. drunken children's entertainer Jeremy Lion) who forgot to call me last night 'because he was writing some comic songs'. Sounds like an excuse out of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.
True, I have not had much sleep and got drenched to the skin bicycling to the Day-Job this morning but nonetheless I have a sense that a corner has been turned, after a most difficult few weeks. Life is getting better.
For the religious, lighting that votive candle at St Peter the Apostle church, Leamington Spa, may have made the difference. If so, a match, a quid and a quick prayer before Our Lady has worked a minor intercessionary miracle. This is what I wrote in the early hours of Wednesday:
Leamington Garret. 12.15am, by Big Ken in the misty moonlight. It has been an amazing couple of days. Extraordinarily hot and beautiful. Last night I was exhausted, after getting up incredibly early to get up to go Leamington, after my weekend away in Paris.
Still, I was committed to interviewing the brainy comedian Natalie Haynes for my Edinburgh Fringe preview pieces for The Stage newspaper. I was not particularly looking forward to it.
As a Catholic, I was shocked by her show last year with its apparent support for abortion up to the point of birth and beyond.
In the event the interview was not as bad as I thought it would be. Natalie essentially sounded off her views on manifold subjects, with me very subtly challenging her, something the argumentative always hard to handle. Then she started talking about her relationships.
She claimed she had dumped a bloke because 'he did not have a favourite square root number'. So I said: 'Did you ask him if he had a favourite cube root?' 'No,' she said.
'Did you ask him if he had a favourite prime number?' I added. 'No,' she said. 'Then,' I said, 'you didn't give him a fair crack of the whip!'
Natalie Haynes said that after the failure to identify a favourite square root, she just had to walk. I was jaded by this point in the conversation, but had not hesitation in answering the predictable question of what was my favourite square root number.
'1.4,' I said, 'an f-number and the square root of two. The f-numbers go: 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 et cetera.'
That threw her! She started talking about Latin but I was too tired. I had the quotes I needed, so I said 'Floreat' [Latin for 'Let it prosper!'] and called it a night on Natalie Haynes. After we had said goodbye, the feeling lingered that she had been flirting with me.
Tonight has been equally strange. I met a neighbour an amazing fact considering we are four floors up in an office block with no other inhabitants.
I was in the Garret preparing to talk a call on my mobile telephone to a very good (and extremely pleasant) Irish comedian called Jason Byrne who is on holiday with his family in the Canaries.
I looked out of the window and was amazed to see someone out on the almost always deserted roof terrace some yards across from our building. She waved at me and I waved back and found myself leaning out of the window in the rain to say hello.
She was most affable. She wanted to know if we had just moved in, about the flat, what our view was like from the front and so on.
Then it started to rain heavily and she said she had to go in (her cigarette was going out). Before she left said, 'My name's Avni' and smiled again. I thought, 'What a pleasant person.' (See: Smoke in the Night).
I had just finished my interview with Jason Byrne and was beginning to write it up when my flatmate appeared, having been caught in the rain.
We had a good chat while watching the Germany-Italy match, with me nipping up to the garret from time to time to write up the Stage article.
We ended up on the roof drinking cans of Stella, looking at the leaves of the giant trees, bleached yellow in the clipped moon's light, and admiring the stars.
Suddenly John asked: 'Would you mind if I stayed after August 24 for another six months?' I was really surprised. He had been pressing to leave early. I immediately said yes. I would miss him.
And this is what I wrote in the small hours of Thursday: Leamington Garret. 1.08am. by Big Ken agin a beautiful reddish sky in misty rain. This morning I felt absolutely exhausted when I awoke.
Very early, I tried to so some work on my Stage comedy pieces, and then my colleague picked me up and we raced off to Rotherham to see an awesome printing works.
Blimey! Printing has moved on a bit since I last took a close look at a press (at the Hull Daily Mail in 1984).
The £7million machine that the director of the company showed us was absolutely incredible. It did everything at a tremendous lick. What a beautiful piece of kit.
Got back to the Leamington Garret at around 5.30pm, with terrible back and neck ache. I felt so out of it, I had to lie down and slept for 90 minutes, awakening bathed in sweat.
My Beloved telephoned with distressing news, and then my flatmate turned up. We discussed his staying and the precise arrangements which was great.
He was in brilliant form, having just triumphed in a football tournament in Solihull, scoring the winning goal.
He went out to celebrate with his mates, and I went back to work on the Stage pieces. I started to watch the France-Portugal game and was delighted to see France get an early goal against Portugal (and go on to beat the cheats).
The comedienne Lucy Porter (Hi, Lucy!) telephoned me. What an absolutely delightful person she is! If I had known she was that pleasant, I would have chatted to in the Assembly Rooms performers' bar years ago.
I am afraid I tend to presume that really good-looking women will think I am trying to pick them up if I talk to them. So, I keep my distance. I really enjoyed talking to her. Lucy Porter displayed a level of kindness that one does not detect in many stand-ups.
Afterwards, I should have got straight down to the writing, but I suddenly felt full of beans and desirous of celebrating the Portuguese defeat at the hands of the glorious French. God bless the French!
The Jug & Jester Jam Night beckoned. It was particularly good tonight. Sinead was on great vocal form, a blonde woman did a great Sheryl Crowe cover, and the finale, a version of Knocking On Heaven's Door was outstanding. I love that gig. Brilliant week in, week out.
At the weekend we went to Disneyland, Paris, which I enjoyed but put me under a lot of pressure. We missed the ferry going out, enjoyed the champagne in Club Class, and then had a tremendously long drive to Paris, with the sun large and red in the rearview mirror.
Upon reaching Paris, naturally we got horribly lost and, exhausted, drove around for hours trying failing to make head nor tail of the Parisien signposting, possibly the worst in the world.
We were crawling through unsavoury districts with mini-shirted prozzies on street corners, and little gangs of youths.
It was around 2.30am when we finally chanced upon the campsite by which time our youngest daughter, the birthday girl, was fast asleep in the back.
There was no one at the campsite except the nightwatchman and his ferocious dog, but he turned out to be an admirable chap and allowed my wife to wander around the site to find a chalet that could be opened.
This she eventually managed to do and we were crashed out and asleep by about 3.30am! Rarely have I felt so totally drained.
In the morning, life did not seem so bad. It was scorching hot and I bought some baguettes and tasty ham from the campsite shop. We went to see our Irish rep, which said that ejits at Thomas Cook had given her the wrong day for our arrival.
She was unfazed that we had virtually broken into a chalet owned by a rival tour operator, and quickly showed us to an even nicer one, overlooking the River Seine.
After breakfast we went off on the train to Disneyland Paris. It was a lovely day. The girls really enjoyed it, particularly the rides. I sat them out, because of my back injury, and topped up my tan, and took a lot of photographs.
I have to say I thought it was a lot better than Disneyland Florida which I visited thrice on press trips in the 1990s.
Coming out of Disneyland I saw a lot of singing England fans and assumed we had beaten Portugal. It was only later, back at the campsite, that the terrible news was broken to me that Portugal had won after Christino Ronaldo, a Manchester United player, had cheated.
On Sunday morning I thought of getting up early to visit Rue Albert Camus. Albert Camus, you may remember, is the great French writer who used to own my brown case.
Studying the Paris A-Z, it seemed that the street name inscribed in the lid of my case had been renamed Rue Albert Camus in his honour.
In the event, I focused on studying the maps and asking directions from the campsite information office to ensure we did not get hopelessly lost trying to leave Paris. Guess what? We got hopelessly lost trying to leave Paris!
It one hour and 20 minutes for us to find the motorway, during which time, with numerous U-turns and attempts to get directions from bemused locals including a down and out, we travelled only 15 miles.
In the next one hour and 20 minutes, I drove 100 miles - at an average speed of around 84 mph. We reached Le Touquet in less than one hour and 45 minutes. An amazing drive. A lot of the time I was cruising at a ton in perfect driving conditions.
Just to finish off Paris, it was glorious in Le Touquet - a salsa party occurring on the baking beach. I paddled and soaked up the sun again. We missed two ferries and were surcharged on the way back.
I got drunk on the booze I had stashed in my camera bag, and took some black and white pictures of returning, good-natured England football fans, relaxing in the sunshine on the deck.
7.44pm (6 July). London Victoria - Lewes train. God, it is hot in London. The Thames looks sublime tonight.
I had to stop typing before because a cut finger was bleeding so profusely. At Marylebone, I bought a plaster to stem the bleeding and then went on the Circle Line to Kings Cross where I took a photograph of the two bunches of flowers already placed in front of station, guarded by two Royal Legion officers.
By tomorrow I am sure there will be many more flowers to mark the first anniversary of the 7/7 atrocities.
I need the photo to illustrate my poem, 7/7. I did think of downloading an image from the internet, but I do not want the Press Association on my back, so I have taken by own. When I was there, I wished I had thought of bringing some flowers myself as a tribute to the victims of 7/7.
As I took the tube away, a busker was pluckimg the initial notes of Stairway to Heaven. Eerie!
Heavy Lids
Flashback to Saturday, 13 May, 2006
Lewes Garret, writing on my iBook. Beautiful, hot day.
Twenty days to go before the launch of Oliver's Poetry and its blog. I don't feel ready. Help!
Have been trying to help my eldest daughter with poetry preparation for her English GCSE. We were looking at the Simon Armitage poem that starts 'Mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands. . .' A good poem.
The day has gone quite well so far. We went to the Open Day at Plumpton Agriculturnal College, joining a two-mile jam to get in. It was worth it, though. Lovely and hot, with plenty to see. We bumped into our ex-neightbours.
I bought a Byron book (for £4) and my Beloved purchased a piece of wood which is allegedly a sculpture of a crocodile, for £10. Each to their own. It is currently blocking up our tiny living room.
I think she bought it out of the kindness of her heart because the 'artists' had not sold anything.
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