Interactive version of Oliver's Poetry Garret
Lord Byron's Year
Thursday, 20 July 2006, Blog 22
Lewes Garret
Rather than bore the socks off you all with more details of my mundane life, I am going to take a leaf out of my talented fellow blogger Olivia's book and do something different and educational this week.
A Byronic Year
Here are some key dates in Lord Byron's life that I have put together:
2 January (1815) Byron weds Annabella Milbanke, but the marriage soon runs into trouble. It is claimed Byron upset his wife on their honeymoon by expressing regret that they had married and buggering her.
4 January (1824) Lord Byron reaches Missolonghi to be greeted enthusiastically by Prince Mavrocordatus and 5,000 soldiers including 600 Suliotes who were placed under his command.
12 January (1817) Byron's second known daughter Clara Augusta Byron is born (as a result of his brief affair with his admirer Mary Jane Clairmont). Byron believed he had had more than 200 casual affairs with women.
13 January (1816) Byron's wife leaves him never to return.
22 January (1788) Byron born at 16 Holles Street, London.
29 February (1788) Byron is baptised George Gordon.
10 March (1812) Childe Harold is published.
13 March (1807) Byron takes his place in the House of Lords.
9 April (1824) Byron catches a chill while riding in heavy rain.
19 April (1824) Byron dies after being incompetently treated by his medical team. His last words are said to have been: 'The doctors have assassinated me!'
22 April (1811) Byron sets sail from Athens for England.
24 April (1816) Byron leaves England for the last time.
29 April (1817) Byron visits Rome.
26 May (1816) Byron meets Shelley for the first time, on the banks of Lake Geneva.
16 June (1817) Byron publishes Manfred.
2 July (1809) Byron sets sails from Falmouth for Lisbon and Seville, Gibraltar, Patras and Athens.
14 July (1811) Returning from Greece, Byron comes ashore at Sheerness.
15 July (1819) Two cantos of Don Juan are published anonymously.
16 July (1823) Byron sails from Genoa to Greece.
(1824) Byron is buried at Hucknall Torkard, near Nottingham.
2 August (1798) Byron's disreputable father, Captain Byron, dies penniless in France.
9 September (1814) Byron's proposal of marriage to Annabella Milbanke is finally accepted.
15 October (1822) Byron's Vision of Judgement is published in the first edition of the The Liberal.
1 November (1806) Byron publishes his first collection of verse, Fugitive Pieces.
10 December (1815) Birth of Byron's first daughter Augusta Ada Byron (the mother was Bryon's wife Annabella Milbanke).
This is a far from comprehensive chronology of Byron's life but I hope it may be of some help to students of the great man.
For good measure, here's a poem about Byron.
OK, that's enough education for one week! I cannot resist giving you a quick resume of the days since I last blogged!
Friday (14 July): Took a call from Sergeant Adrian Davies, of Warwickshire Police, who said he has just been tasked with investigating my complaint. He said no effort had been made to trace the person who smashed into my car, the Last Word.
I explained my viewpoint and arranged for him to come round to the Leamington Garret at 7pm next Tuesday.
Saturday (15 July): A lot of drinking. We went to the school fete in Lewes where I talked to the doctors at whose barbecue my youngest daughter broke her arm last year. We had a laugh and a joke I think it cleared the air a bit.
Also chatted to the lead singer of Tongue and Groove and his wife (or partner) and family who all seemed most pleasant, and bought a wonderful camera with no exposure settings (for 50p). It is turquoise and transparent and called Klutz! What sort of mad mind would design such a useless item?
Drank a lot: three beautiful cold bottles of Grolsch (as it used to be served with the interesting top) from the fete bar, a couple of cans of lager, and then, at our former neighbours Ed and Helen's housewarming party on the Neddy Chamberlain Estate, a load of pints of Harvey's, cans of lager and some white wine.
At bedtime, I went out like a satellite!
Sunday (16 July): Another blisteringly hot day. In the afternoon, my Beloved and I and my younger daughter went to Eastbourne for a swim. I have never known the sea as warm and lovely. We were wave jumping and having an amazing and I got a lot of pictures with my 50p camera.
I was rather distracted by two young and attractive sunbathing women, in a nearby group of Italians, who kept stroking each other. I had a feeling there were not lesbian but just doing it to draw attention to themselves (which worked a treat).
In the evening, I went to SalsaMagic which was great in the heat. Because I did not have to get up early in the morning, I went at 9pm and danced with almost every woman in the room, including an extraordinary dancer called Sonya. Great fun!
Monday (17 July): Incredibly hot - my Virgin train was crawling along at 10 percent of its maximum speed. The evening was wonderful.
I lay on the roof of the Leamington Garret drinking two-thirds of a bottle of French white wine, soaking up the rays, taking the occasional photograph with the 50p camera, and reading Byron and his World by Derek Parker, a well written and illustrated simply guide to the great man.
Funniest thing this day was a conversation I overheard between two young women law undergraduates who were waiting for a train at Coventry station.
One of them loudly told the other that she had forgotten to put on her bra that morning and had spent the entire day hoping no one would notice. The second girl said that the previous weeks she had done exactly the same!
And there I was for all these past 20 years thinking that young women go without a bra to titillate (excuse the pun) men or because they are too hot and uncomfortable to wear in the summer heat. Now it turns out women just forget to put on their bras! You could have knocked me down with a lipstick.
Tuesday (18 July): It just gets hotter and better. Sergeant Adrian Davies, of Warwickshire Police, came round tonight. Adrian Davies seemed a commendable police officer the sort any force would be proud of.
He said: 'I apologise.' We discussed the circumstances and Sgt. Davies said that Malens Rescue had been heavy handed with me. He said he would speak with the officer who had ordered the lifting of The Last Word when she returned from her leave, and try to arrange for me to get my 200 quid back.
I was pleased by the outcome. I will not receive the squillions that a lawyer friend suggested I might, but an apology is worth a lot to me, and I reckon Warwickshire Police will give me back my 200 groats.
To celebrate, I opened a bottle of wine (somehow breaking the corkscrew) and went walking on the roof as the sun set. With a glass of wine in one hand and a camera, it is a bit hairy up there, but I took some superb images (left and below). What a night it was looking down the Parade and drinking Sgt. Davies' health.
Later, I had a good time at salsa in the top room at Kelsey's, with the trains rumbling past a handful of yards from the window. Nice bunch of women up for a good dance.
The lesson with the lovely and very funny Cuban teacher, Karel, was good (although, having come late, I found it hard to catch up), and as I danced with the girls at the party afterwards it was hotter than Havana. Returned to the Garret at 11.30pm and read my Byron till midnight before sleeping like a baby.
Wednesday (19 July): Mega-hot. What an amazing, incredible summer! On the way home from work I saw a male cyclist coming the other who had a girl in a bikini sitting on his handlebars (I am not making this up). I can remember only one such glorious summer in my lifetime back in the mid-1970s in Dorset. I love it. I love it! I love it!
Work was amazing today. I have finally managed to get a group of organisations to agree something I have been trying to do for almost a year and a half. A great feeling!
In the early evening I wrote to my dear cousin Laura. Now I have had a couple of glasses of wine, chatted to my flatmate who has gone off to play football, listened to some Dylan and finished my Byron book. Will pack, shower and hit the Jug jam night. My Beloved called from London with generally good news.
The dad of my younger daughter's best friend has made his own way out of wartorn Lebanon and back to Lewes. Apparently he simply asked a cabbie to drive him to Syria from where he got a British Airways flight home. A Royal Navy warship has been sent to pick up the rest of the Brits in The Lebanon!'
Thursday (20 July): So tired I could hardly get out of bed this morning. Cycling to work in this tremendous heat is really taxing me. It must have been 100 degrees Fahrenheit when I cycled home on Wednesday night.
Went to the Jug & Jester last night. I was going to take the digital camera but changed my mind at the last minute and used my 50p camera instead about 1/1,400th the cost of the other one! The strange thing is I am just as likely to do a great shot with the 10 shillings camera as the 700 pounds sterling one.
The best musicians last night were a couple of lads, called I was told Freddie and George, who were brilliant, really feisty and powerful on vocals and drums. The organiser told me they were aged 14 and 15. They got the loudest applause I have ever heard on Jam night. I have seen the future.
Bad Night Out
Flashback to Thursday, 11 May 2006
Warwick - London train
Last night was fairly disastrous. I should not have gone out. I notice looking at yesterday's blog that I wrote an entry at 3am. I cannot even recall doing it I was so drunk. I have decided to give up alcohol until my back is completely better. It is doing me no good at all, particularly in conjunction with the tablets.
So what happened last night? Well, where do I start? I met my flatmate at the Jug and Jester and we were soon knocking back the pints and watching a singer. Someone who knew my flatmate said that she now had his former kitten Scat (who had lived at the Warwick Garret).
We got talking, but, on the combination of painkillers and booze, I was soon as high as a kite. Everything went pear-shaped. I got talking to her mum and grandmother, both there to watch her sing.
After the bar closed, we went on to a bar called Kelly's (or something like that). Inside it was a bit like Cheers from the American sitcom inside, and then another place called Kelsey's, near the railway station. Horrible things happened.
8.36pm.Brighton. Lewes train.
Weird things keep happening to me. I popped into Kenilworth for a sandwich at lunchtime and a survey woman called Penelope asked me if I had a mistress!
I said I did not and did not want one, thank you very much indeed. Strange!
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