Interactive version of Oliver's Poetry Garret
Freebird
Thursday, 13 July 2006, Blog 21
Leamington - Lewes train, just out of Leamington
4.59pm. It has been a beautiful day. Wonderful weather, pleasant work, good company. I even enjoyed the cycle rides to and from work today. I am writing this with the green acres and wheat fields of Warwickshire passing by like 360 degree movies on each side of the train. Here's how the week has gone:
Monday, 10 July. Lewes - London Bridge train, Plumpton. 6.12am. Beautiful morning, a warm early light bathing the racecourse, blue sky peeping through puffy white cloud above.
The train is packed, comprising only three or four carriages. So, I am sat in First Class and could soon be arguing my case with the ticket fascist.
Feeling good today. I was lying awake in bed last night beside my Beloved, tired but happy, thinking life was all right. The weekend was pleasant.
A chance to catch up on all the things I have not been able to do. I managed to get the Stage pieces finished by bedtime on Friday, having worked most of the evening (indeed all the evenings of that week). It was a relief.
I am absolutely skint. This weekend I did not spend a penny in a pub or going out (apart from three quid for swimming to help my backache yesterday). Admittedly I bought a little stash of booze on Friday night which saw us through the weekend.
My Beloved and I watched the World Cup Final last night. An enthralling match! What was wrong with Zidane? Frankly I found his headbutt on the Italian quite inexplicable. Are great players like Zidane all bonkers?
Zid Vicious won France the World Cup last time and lost it for them this time round. All over being called a terrorist (or so it says in The Guardian). I wonder what his fellow French Algerian Albert Camus would make of it all.
I had been sort of supporting France until that moment of mindless violence, at which point, I suspect like the neutral members of the crowd, I switched to Italy. As a good Catholic, I should look to Rome!
In the final analysis, though, it seemed to me like one bunch of cheats against another. Sportsmanship has so deserted professional football that (England excepted), why should I care who wins? I find myself backing the team who - at that tiny moment in time - is cheating least.
Leamington Garret. 8.27pm. by Big Ken, the Leamington Clock Tower. This is probably the last time I will be telling the time by this glorious clocktower, my faithful friend.
Tomorrow my flatmate and I are due to swap rooms, so he gets the view of the rooftops, old Kenny boy and our neighbour (if she ever appears again), and I overlook the park and the river. I like this room and love the view, but it is time for a change. I am looking forward to it, but I will miss Big Ken.
Today has been a typical, grim Monday. Felt dog tired and bicycling to and from work almost killed me. I feel so utterly exhausted, I can hardly describe how bad it is.
I could barely drag my booty down to Costcutter's to buy some cheap food and cider. Christ, I am brassic. The Rolling Stones' Wild Horses is on the stereo downstairs - the only good thing I can see about today at this precise second.
Leamington Garret. 12.15am, Wednesday, 12 July, although I guess Big Ken would say 12.13am. It has been an extraordinary night in the Garret.
My flatmate and I have swapped rooms, which took a couple of hours, and then we decided to celebrate by lying on the roof, outside my new room, drinking beers and chatting and inspecting the people far, far below.
The manner in which we swapped rooms was an absolute delight. I know John will love my room. I did. He will enjoy the brilliant views over the rooftops of Leamington, the constantly changing landscape, the chats with our attractive balcony neighbour.
For my part, I will enjoy the views of the park and the river, a bit more space, and the change (as good as a rest). I feel really happy.
The evening ended with the fifth Freebird. The first three were during the long, dry winter in the Warwick Garret - crazy dancing to the full-volume sound of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. The most memorable was when we quaffed a bottle of good Champagne during that one song.
The fourth - in our early days in Leamington Garret - was also remarkable. We turned up the volume so high that people outside, four floors below, stopped and started digging the sound, dancing in the street. One guy even juggled with some balls in had about his person!
Tonight was as good. I had thought we would never do another Freebird. But after eight cans of Stella, there we were: windows wide open, volume pumped up to the max, free as a bird again. I did a bit of bouncing off the settees and some of the curtain rail cover came off!
P.S. I take it all back. Zidane is a hero for headbutting that Italian scumbag for calling him a 'son of a terrorist whore' (when ZZ's mother had just been taken seriously ill).
Italy's World Cup victory is sullied with shame and morally invalid. In God's eyes they are not world champions.
Leamington Garret. 11.47pm.; Kenneth the Great would say 11.45pm. I shall type out a new poem I have drafted tonight and then return to this script. It is just before midnight, a train trundling in the distance, and I have typed out my new poem Smoke in the Night.
I was determined to write about seeing our neighbour smoking in the drizzle the other night. Just as I was looking around to a piece of scrap paper on which to compose this poem, there she was, directly across from me in the kitchen, on the balcony, her raven hair glistening in the sunset.
I took a call from the outrageous comedienne Natalie Haynes' PR guy. It seems that she is getting her g-string in a twist over the idea that I might mention in my article about her that she shagged one of her pupils (a sixth-former) while she was a classics teacher at Harrow.
This despite the fact that she partially built her comedic reputation in the early days on this material. I said that it was hilarious that she was worried about it but I would happily drop the line as it was well documented and definitely not news.
The PR chap was delighted. I said to him: 'I was only teasing her, joshing that the boy must have been 17 or 16, but we don't want to see her on the Sex Offenders' Register.'
Just goes to show that topping a Mensa test does not amount to a whole hill of beans if I can freak her out. I wonder if the penny has dropped yet that I was the one comedy critic who panned her show last year.
Music is floating into my new bedroom at the Garret from a party across the park. In my younger days I would have put my shirt back on, grabbed some booze and tracked it down to boogle the night away and God knows what else. Now it is 12.22am and I am too tired.
At 9.30pm, I went down the Jug and Jester. Another good night. I particularly like it when Sinead sings and plays the guitar. As Bowie might have said, she screwed up her face like some cat from Japan. The grey goatee bearded guitarist Chris was brilliant as usual.
A really nice thing happened today. I was trying to change my Orange phone from account to pay-as-you-go, and got talking to an Orange lady on the telephone at lunchtime.
For technical reasons, I said I would call back to her department after work and, unusually, I got her again. I immediately recognised her by her accent and said that I had spoken to her earlier.
She remembered me and said she was German. I asked where she was from and she said Bremen, my mother's home town. She wanted to know where I knew in Bremen and I told her my grandmother had lived in Rembrandtstrasse. Suzanna (the Orange lady told me her name) knew the street.
We then had an amazingly open conversation about pre-war and post-war Germany, the Holocaust, the modern German mindset et cetera. It was thrilling. And she sorted out my mobile phone. A great woman in a call centre I know not where. I felt I was glad to be with Orange. They hire the smile.
Thursday, 13 July. 7.16pm. Victoria Station. A couple of chav girls have sat down near me and are finding it very hard to keep their breasts under wraps. God, I love watching chavs! I am sorry but I cannot help it.
They are supping alcopops and loudly talking about how they cheated on their boyfriends while on holiday in Spain! When I got up to put up my luggage to allow a couple of crones to sit down I caught them checking out my booty. Girls will be girls!
It is a gorgeous evening it the capital. Battersea Power Station (up-ended fags that have become magically whiter over the years) looks glorious, clouds above like plumes of smoke, the Thames which I am currently traversing, is heavenly and placid. Like a mill pond.
There is a bizarre moment last night, which occurred just after I had logged off the computer. A heard this tremendous sound of shouting, swearing and struggling from the street below. I clambered out on to the roof to have a look down to see what was going on.
Six skinheads were fighting for fun, although really battering each other, sometimes three on one, the victim then turning into the bully. Everyone seemed to be getting hurt to some degree. It goes without saying that they were off their heads, dangerously so. I was glad I had not encountered them.
They were all topless and well muscled (and tattooed, of course). Suddenly, in the throes of the fight, one of them shed his jeans and started streaking around next to the gardens, stark bollock naked. The other headcases fell about laughing.
Lewes Garret, 10.16pm. The Israelis and Palestinians are blasting the shite out of each other again. How stupid! Having spent some time in the Holy Land, I was left with very little sympathy for an Israeli state with a population armed to the teeth, and a Palestinian / Arab community unwilling to make peace.
The innocents suffer while the mad people slaughter in the name of God. How desperately depressing, especially as we know someone stranded in the Lebanon. I pray he will be all right.
Paradise Lost
Flashback to Friday, 12 May 2006
A beautful sunny day in Lewes.
Hoped to be have a head as clear as a bell today, but, alas, I am still feeling groggy. It was a bender and a half - real damage was done. I suspect I will have to be on the wagon for weeks to fully recover and fix my back, which is as stiff as a board again.
I have made an appointment to see Dr Jet, my part-time GP, at 11.30am, and, then, at 4.45pm I am going to see Dr Nicole, my friendly chiropractor. The toughest task so far today was finding a respectable, unladdered pair of boxer shorts to wear for that particular appointment.
Thinking of doctors reminds me of the Bishop of Nottingham, Malcolm McMahon, who used to dish out medical advice, booming: 'Trust me, Ollie, I am medically trained!' (In fact his degree was in engineering).
Strangely, I would take his advice sooner than that of a newly qualified medic.
My appointment is for 11.30 but doctors never run on time. It would not be surprised if I were still sitting here in the sunshine beside the window in half an hour's time.
That's just what the NHS is like. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Hospitals are even worse. They are like giant mini-cabs with the doctors' clocks constantly ticking, racking up the dosh.
When I talk to Dr Jet, I must ask her to check my blood pressure. Dr Nicole told me it is sky high. Not a great surprise considering how much I had been drinking; but I need to keep an eye on it, especially now I am off the loopy juice.
It should go down pretty quickly, one would hope. I am hoping Dr Jet will fill in my insurance form without charging me - as many avaricious doctors would.
11.28pm. Bed, Lewes Garret. Tonight, my elder daughter and I went to see John Milton's Paradise Lost performed by the Oxford Stage Company at the Theatre Royal, Brighton. A very good production.
I found myself feeling very sleepy during it though. The pills, I think. Or, maybe, that wonderful old theatre did it to me.
The last time I went to the Theatre Royal I slept through almost the entire production. All I can remember of it was some dancing dwarves. I think it must have been a pantomime.
Quite a few people walked out of tonight's show, we were surprised to see. A lot went in the first half - I guess they found the old-fashioned, otiose language hard to understand. There was much full frontal nudity in the second half; naturally, because it involved Adam and Eve.
A few punters walked out on that, too. And there was I thinking Brighton was a liberal town. All the same, it was a large audience for a production as heavy as Paradise Lost.
And not a dancing dwarf in sight!
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