On Reading Tony Harrison...

Tony Harrison is a Leeds poet and translator-cum-playwright who's now one of the older generation of scribes.

He hit the tabloid headlines in the late 1980s when his poem V, which begins when he visits the graveyard where his parents are buried and finds it has been vandalised by a gang of racist skinheads, was broadcast on C4 – and it brought a storm of protests because it featured many of the four-letter words and terms of racial abuse that were daubed on the tombstones. The fact it’s a truly moving and raw and vibrant piece of work seemed to be neither here or there to those who complained.

At college I remember reading V and thinking it was a fantastically relevant piece of work and subsequently getting quite annoyed with poets whose work was more dated and less contemporary. I also liked his other work because much of it deals with ideas of cultural displacement and it addresses his own guilt about leaving his Yorkshire home to find a new life and success far away both in terms of geography and in terms of culture. It made sense then on a personal level and it and it still does now.

I've been rereading Harrison’s poetry recently because I've got a new play brewing and I wanted to remind myself of that initial excitement on reading V and some 20 years after first coming across it still doesn't disappoint. It’s one of those visceral works that gets the gut before it gets the brain and just carries you along.

It’s good research, a bit like finding an old friend again and realising there are still connections there despite the passage of time.

The new play is called Stock, as in London stock bricks or stock as in breeding stock. It’s about heritage and culture and I’ll have a fuller rundown of it later this week but I got the idea after seeing our local cemetery wall collapsed earlier this year.

Ideas come from the oddest places…

The Simpsons Movie...

I was on a press beano about six years ago and I interviewed Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

And I was blown away. He was utterly unassuming, thoroughly charming and incredibly polite – and he didn’t seem at all bored that I was probably asking him the same questions he’d been answering for the previous several hours.

Even better when I ran into him a corridor later on he quite happily drew me a picture of Bart Simpson and signed it to the Boy without a second’s hesitation. To this day he remains No.1 on my list of people-I-have-interviewed-who-impressed-the-hell-out-of-me-by-actually-being-really-great-in-a-not-at-all-arrogant-way.

So as a major fan of him and the series I had high hopes of the Simpsons Movie and I’m pleased to report that in an age of over-promoted shite it’s good to see this big-screen version is still smart, still funny and still delivers the goods.

The plot concerns a prophesy, an ecological catastrophe and a plan to destroy Springfield and I could go on for ages about my favourite bits.

But that would be dull. It just works. Go see it. You’ll laugh. A lot. And you’ll probably leave the cinema singing ‘Spider-pig, Spider-pig…’

PS. Die Hard 4.0 is pretty good fun too.

Goth News…

My latest Goth spot occurred earlier this week when I was cycling through Hyde Park and coming towards me were two Goths. But they weren’t normal Goths. Oh, no…

For a start they were very chubby Goths. Now I have nothing against the corpulent (usually because I can’t physically get near enough to the fat fuckers), but to me the whole Goth vibe suggests something of the brooding, the melancholic, even the slightly acetic…

Nowhere in the Goth manual does it recommend rosey-cheeked chubbiness or suggest stuffing your face with cake – because this smacks of enjoyment, happiness, health and even downright pleasure. But this was not their worst sin. Oh, no… much worse was to follow… because they were roller-blading!

Fat, roller-blading, rosey-cheeked, well-fed Goths. It was all I could do to stay upright on my bike and not fall off, reduced to a gibbering wreck as the Yummy Mummies I have to negotiate in Hyde Park dragged their kids away from the strange cycling man who was swearing and crying.

So I’ve decided I am going to take the plunge and buy a camera-phone so I can document and shame these scum – and any others – who are quite frankly letting the side down.

This means war. You have been warned…

Health Tips…

Quack-fraud-TV-diet 'doctor' Gillian McKeith says dried fruit is good news for a healthy bowel.

But the empirical evidence of my stomach would suggest that this is clearly not the case, especially if you eat half a bag of dried apricots then expect to enjoy normal motions.

It's one to watch out for – although not literally as it's not a pleasant sight.

Not that I looked...

Baghdad Wedding…

Life is full of surprises – and not all of them good.

Take one of my ex-girlfriends who, when we were still together, I spotted reading a book called Women Who Love Too Much. I thought she was reading this book because she was worried she’d fallen headlong into the emotional maelstrom that was our passionate relationship and she wanted advice on how to pull back. But it turned out she was shagging someone else so the book must obviously been a ‘how-to’ guide rather than a self-help book. My mistake. Bitch…

Also take my mate Shaggy who, when I was two chapters from the end of reading The Sacred Art Of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre, took the book and stole it. Git…

But good surprises can happen, too, and Baghdad Wedding was one of those.

Myself and the Missus had journeyed to see this three weeks ago when it opened at Soho Theatre, but one of the cast pulled out so that night’s show was cancelled. So this weekend we ventured out to see its final Soho performance and it was stunning, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

The play focuses on a Iraqi writer whose wedding becomes a bloodbath when a US chopper bombs the wedding party. The bride dies and the writer is assumed dead so his friends carry on with their lives without him, until the writer returns (after a spell as the kidnap victim of a bunch of Iraqi terrorists then as the prisoner of the US Army as a suspected terrorist).

It’s an overtly political play but rather than get bogged down in the quagmire that is wartorn Iraq, the play sticks to a simple story of the writer and his relationship with his close friend and the women that both of them at various times are involved with. And because the personal relationships are so strongly written and well acted, it makes the political elements much more poignant.

It’s a beautifully crafted play and Hassan Abdulrazzak has a wonderful and poetic grasp of language and can switch from snappy comedy dialogue to truly brutal descriptive monologues at will. Lisa Goldman’s direction allows the play to move at pace without losing any of its emotion and the three lead cast members, Matt Rawle as writer Salim, Nitzan Sharron as his friend Marwan and Sirine Saba as Luma, the woman they both love, are excellent. Silas Carson as their friend Kathum was also good but there isn't a weak performance in the entire show.

An important and timely piece of work by a very gifted writer.

Number Of The Week…

It’s 137 as this is the amount of days I’ve gone without a response to my initial letter to my local MP Dawn Butler about the cancellation of the Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah Military Contract.

I also emailed her a month ago and have again emailed her today. So hopefully this will generate a response.

Personally I think it’s disgraceful that my local MP can’t be arsed to write back. I bet if it was an invitation to get her mug on the front page of the local rag she’d be putting pen to paper like a bloody shot.

The text of the original letter, which she has now had three times, is below:

**********************************

Dear Dawn

I’m one of your constituents and I’m just dropping you a line to ask about your position on EDM 595 (Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah Military Contract).

As you probably know, this EDM was tabled by a cross-party group of MPs who thought the Government’s decision to halt the due legal process of an SFO investigation into large-scale corruption involving BAE Systems was pretty deplorable. 


So I’m just writing to ask if this EDM is something you’ll be supporting or whether you won’t be supporting it because you genuinely think the Government’s decision was morally and legally justifiable?

Many thanks for your time.

Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields…

It’s quiz time and today’s question is: Military historians – are they…
i) A respected and vital academic profession?
ii) Strange men who enjoy fiddling with little die-cast soldiers and recreating battles in their library-cum-play-room?
iii) A bunch of would-be gun-toting lunatics who are only separated from crimes of mass carnage by the thin veneer of social constraint they had beaten into them at some minor public school or other?

It’s a tricky question. I’ve always lumped them in the second and third categories rather than the first and viewed them as a sort of upper-class version of Dungeons And Dragons freaks. But with money. And decadent sex lives. In fact sex lives so decadent that they are now bored with any manner of carnal enjoyment and only find solace and understanding in the little tin men they so lovingly paint. Well that and felching…

But after watching a couple of episodes of Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields I am starting to revise my opinion on military historians. Because it’s actually quite an interesting area when it’s packaged as slickly as this…

The basic premise is that Peter and Dan take a battle or a smallish war or conflict and dissect it in chronological order, briefly examining the background stories then looking in more depth at how the key battles were won and lost.

This week’s programme concentrated on the Falklands War and gave a potted summary of how the hostilities began and how the British Army eventually overcame larger numbers with better equipment, clever planning and a large slice of luck.

It’s well researched, well scripted and not massively reliant on hi-tech CGI nonsense. The father-and-son team presenting it are obviously having a whale of a time, too, journeying all over the shop to try the battle terrain themselves and also getting to grips with some of the hardware used.

But the factor that really drives this show is the utter passion of the Snows. I’ve always loved Peter and him and his swingometer have single-handedly kept me entertained through coverage of General Elections past when the Tories were winning and I was very depressed.

But son Dan is new to me and he’s a bit of a revelation. He has all the academic background after getting a first-class honours degree in history at Balliol College, but he also has that utterly mad enthusiasm that fuels his father. He’s not an unpleasant bloke to look at either so I reckon he could soon be getting more TV work now the Beeb’s realised history can be sexy if you dress it up a bit.

It’s a smart, informative and entertaining series and I like it so much I may even dig out their previous series called Battlefield Britain. In short it’s the sort of show that probably only the BBC would ever make.

And if it keep potential nutjobs with an unhealthy fascination with warfare and guns occupied and stops them roaming the streets then all the better…

The Curse Of Shaggy…

One of my pool-playing chums is nicknamed Shaggy and in days of yore we had many drunken and thoroughly enjoyable evenings that turned into nights that turned into early mornings out on the lash.

We’ve recently had a discussion of sorts and he happened to mention that his karaoke tune of choice would be Wham Rap by Wham! And now I can’t get the bloody tune out of my head.

I even sat down to write a scene on my new play this morning and all I had going through my head was:

‘Hey everybody take a look at me
I’ve got street credibility
I don’t have a job
But I have a god time
With the boys I meet “down the line…”’

This, of course, is quite ironic as I have never had 'street credibility' and I do have a job but it’s still bloody torture. It is better than having Last Christmas or anything by Take That on mental loop, though. Well, apart from I Want You Back.

That's great, that is…

Garden Of Delights...

Our garden is finished and it's pretty bloody fabulous.

Consquently I am currently in a plant-buying frenzy and have recently added two black bamboos to the three bamboo plants already in there. I love bamboo. It makes a great swishing sound in the breeze. It's a damn shame I'm allergic to it. But I now also have a banana plant which is rather brilliant too and I'm not allergic to that.

I can see how people really get into this gardening lark and as I have now discovered www.crocus.com I can spend shedloads of cash just sitting at my desk. See. There goes another £30...

I may have to monitor my latest fascination or it may well bankrupt us. Victorian pornography was probably a safer interest...

Charity Case…

I can be many things: an egotistical fruitcake with no fashion sense, a foul-mouthed drunk with no decorum or tact and, very occasionally, a depressed and bad-tempered grump.

I am not, however, a bad man. Honestly. But I feel like one at the moment. Let me explain…

The Missus’ father does a yearly bike ride, the rather craply named London Bikeathon no less, for Leukaemia Research because he had a good friend who died from the disease. And as I’m now a fully fledged cyclist he invited me along to keep him company this year.

I told him I wouldn’t do the whole fundraising bit but I’d pay whatever it cost to sign up and just do the ride. So I paid my £20 and registered and the Bikeathon pack came through the post – then my father-in-law had a little accident (a broken wrist rather than not making it to the toilet) so he’s now no longer doing it. And as I was only going to keep him company I’m not doing it either.

But among the sponsorship forms and other stuff was a Bikeathon t-shirt and a discount voucher for Evans Cycles. Now I quite like the t-shirt as it’s a bright green colour and is highly visible to wear on the roads and I’m certainly going to use the Evans voucher. With my father-in-law also no longer taking part I’m now going over to his for a big feed – so the way I see it I’m up on the deal as I’ve got a new cycling t-shirt, a discount voucher and the prospect of free food and wine for an afternoon.

Even funnier I wore the t-shirt to cycle into hapkido this morning and somebody in the gym started telling me how it was a great charity to support. So I lied and pretended I was still doing the ride. The bloke even patted me on the back.

I am a charity fraud. I may have to donate some money to ease my conscience…

Thought For The Day...

I am preparing tea. The Boy is in the kitchen and I suddenly realise he is talking to me...

'Sorry, love, I wasn't listening.'
'Why?'
'I lost myself. My mind was on other things...'
'What were you thinking?'

I could lie. No. Better tell the truth.

'I was actually wondering if the ghosts of fish only haunt the sea...'

The Boy looks at me. Contempt is not a strong enough word.

'You really are...'
'I know. I'm an idiot...'

We'll Meat Again...

My play, Meat, is finished and entered for the Verity Bargate Award, the biggest prize for new playwrights in the UK.

I cycled to Soho Theatre on Friday to drop it off after tightening it up over the past week and a half, and I’m pleased with how it’s turned out. There are bits that could have been tightened up even more but overall it works so I have few complaints.

The story is set in 1885 London and follows a male dwarf prostitute and a servant girl. Both become involved with ‘respectable’ people and pay a heavy price for trusting the wrong folk. It’s really about how people lose their humanity when sex becomes a commodity, but it also hints at how the mechanisms that allow this trade to happen are signs of a much bigger problem. The spread of venereal disease in the play is a metaphor for a wider canker permeating society.

It’s got sex, disease, rape, mutilation and murder and it stemmed from a simple idea of a love story between a dwarf whore and a respectable woman, the Norfolk prostitute killings and a love of Jacobean revenge tragedy.

Here’s a speech from the script. It comes from a politician infected with syphilis:

‘Our wealth and our position in the world is built on horrible atrocities, Nathaniel. We decimate large swathes of humanity every day so don’t expect the architects of that atrocity to be overly concerned by a few women who sell their arses for gin. Leave it to the reform workers or the Salvation Army… They care and they’re better at it… It is a stark reality of the modern world.’

It’s either going to bomb big-style and not get past the first round or grab somebody’s attention and have a fighting chance of really getting noticed.

Financial Planning…

Myself and the Missus are in the kitchen waiting for the Boy to descend from his bedroom so we can eat tea. We are chatting and she asks me about my play, which has to be finished this Friday.

‘How’s the play coming along?’
‘Great. Today I got into my research and found original Victorian pornography.’
‘And that’s research?’
‘Yes.’
‘In what world is that research?’
‘There was huge trade in erotic prints and pictures as well as prostitution so I wanted to see if I could find any to see what it was like. It’s background research…’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘On the internet. There was quite an arty website and the pictures were divided into two categories. In the artistic category were prints of nude women and young men…’
‘And in the other?’
‘That was called the vulgar category and some of it was quite graphic. But there was one great shot of a half-naked Victorian gent being pleasured by two women and the look on his face was one of such wonderful ennui, just like he was utterly bored with all this decadent sex. And he had a wonderful droopy moustache and he kept his top hat on too…’
‘Who kept his top hat on?’

The Boy has sneaked into the kitchen without us noticing. Has he heard all our discussion? I change the subject and we sit down to eat and get onto the subject of money. I am convinced he owes me £20 and tell him so.

‘I gave you £20 to go out on Wednesday then I’m sure I gave you another £20 for train fares on Friday.’
The Boy sighs.
‘You did give me £20 on Wednesday and Friday but I gave you £20 back on Friday because mum also left me the money for the train fares.’
‘Are you sure because I can’t find it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I’ve lost £20 then. I don’t know where it’s gone.’

The Boy smiles.
‘You’ve maybe spent it looking at Victorian porn.’