a bridge too far

Thursday 31st January 2008 12:03 AM

Just a quick word to all the stone-hearted tyrants out there, who trade in death and lies. Just because I'm writing about football again, it doesn't mean that I haven't got my eye on you, OK?

A couple of years ago, when Huddersfield Town got drawn away to Chelsea in the third round of the FA cup, I wrote a poem reflecting on the contrasting wealth of the two clubs. Nothing much has changed in the meantime, and bearing in mind that most of my poems deal with eternal verities, I thought I'd wheel it out again, in anticipation of the same fixture in this years FA cup fifth round.

I would have preferred Town to have been drawn at home, in a winnable tie against a championship team, or one of the flakier premiership sides, but as any away draw, at this stage of the competition, is bound to be a difficult one, it might as well be a lucrative one.

Two years ago, Town earned £300,000 from the tie, and a similar sum this time would maybe enable us to strengthen the squad. At today's prices, we could probably buy the small piece of gristle from Michael Owen's last knee operation.

John Terry, the Chelsea captain, is renowned for his work-rate. He earns in one week, what I earn in one decade. That's some work-rate.

When it's Chelsea versus Huddersfield,
It's not just wealthy versus down at heel,
It's a fantasy against the oh so real.

It's dinner at the Ritz versus a fish supper,
It's Lord Snooty and his pals versus Alf Tupper,
It's a Starbucks triple latte versus a nice cuppa.

It's Sainsbury's versus the corner shop,
It's Stringfellows versus the high school bop,
It's pink champagne versus a bottle of pop.

It's world-wide removals versus man and a van,
It's the internet versus a string and two cans,
It's America versus Afghanistan.

It's world war three versus a bit of a barney,
It's the global arms machine versus Dad's Army,
It's pain au jambon versus a ham sarnie.

It's the bright lights versus love in the dark,
It's a raging inferno versus a bit of a spark,
It's a Wembley cup final versus a kick in the park,
It's Ricardo Carvalho versus Tom Clark.

So it's not just wealthy versus down at heel,
It's a fantasy against the oh so real,
It's Chelsea versus Huddersfield, nil.

Posted 12:03 AM | 181 Comments | Permalink

no success like failure

Sunday 27th January 2008 10:57 PM

This morning the Corinthians lost 2-0 to Leeds Independents, on an all-weather pitch at Oaklands sports centre. I think it was the plastic pitch that was the problem. Most of the Corinthians are descendants of warrior gods, whose super-human powers rely on direct contact with the vital terrestrial energies of the earth, so when we play on plastic we tend to be a bit crap.

I'm descended from Odin, on my Mums side, and have inherited his ability to inspire frenzy amongst my fellow warriors, by the use of poetry. In recent times, and especially against Pocklington, I've seen one of my well-placed, stirring stanzas send Bob and Derek into an orgy of robbie savagery, but this morning I just wasn't on it. Even though I was substituted for twenty minutes in order to compose it, my half-time sonnet was hackneyed and listless, and rather than winding Bob and Derek up into coiled springs of fearless aggression, it just seemed to leave them in a state of torpid angst.

The etheric love-milk that nourishes this sort of poetry is suckled from the million green nipples of grass that grace a proper football pitch's velvet bosom, and this morning was like trying to breast-feed through a polyester blouse. Hopefully, our soggy tit of a home pitch will have dried out by next week. Brian, who's related to the ancient Persian warrior god Verethragna, on his Dad's side, reckons there's a goods chance.

Posted 10:57 PM | 168 Comments | Permalink

well soft

Wednesday 23rd January 2008 10:57 PM

Today I bought a machine, from the machine, to fight the machine. It was made in China, and I ordered it over the internet from a German company. It arrived in three separate boxes, delivered on three different days, not because I was trying to shake the government off my tail, but because of some refreshing German inefficiency.

Some readers will imagine, that with all this talk of fighting, that this machine must be something akin to a light-sabre, as used
very effectively for the forces of Good, by Des Skywalker, in a film that was advertised at my local cinema as 'arS Warts'.

The fact is, I don't need a light-sabre, because my brother Matthew's got one that he doesn't play with any more, that he says I can have. No, the hours getting late, and it's time to put away such childish things.

When you confront the powers of darkness with weaponry, and threats of violence, they laugh and lick their lips, and lap it up. They love it! They absolutely love it! What they don't like, is being subjected to non-Tarantinoesque, extreme non-violence. Go on, smack 'em between the ears with fierce truth!

Mahatma Ghandi was well soft, and no stranger to dishing out extreme non-violence when it suited him. Disciplined as a soldier, lion-hearted as a saint, this Ben Kingsley-in-a-dish-cloth look-a-like could, at one moment, be hurling mighty words of white light and wisdom against the demon-controlled structures of the planet, and the next, calmly eating a bowl of porridge.

Over the last few years I've amassed quite a collection of mighty words, and this spring I've decided I'm going to start hurling them in village halls in the York area, and because I want my voice to be heard above the anguished cries of the dispossessed, I've bought a 150 watt amplifier and two big speakers on stands. It's black and chrome and carpeted, and looks like a night-club.It's a public address system, from the system, to address the system.

Posted 10:57 PM | 177 Comments | Permalink

and the wind cries trevor

Thursday 17th January 2008 10:52 PM

I've just come back from the printers, having made the definitive copy of a freshly-minted poster for my up-coming gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside. The gig will feature myself, RORY MOTION, and two chanteuse, Em and B, who go out under the name of 'The Chanterelles'. I'm a bit worried that with my name being in an erect, no-nonsense, bold, firm, manly font and theirs being in a squealing, cissy, fussy, girly one, I'm going to be accused of gender stereotyping. In my heart of hearts, which is somewhere near my liver, I suspect this is true, but if I'm accused of it, I'll deny it.

The last time I played a gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside, was in the short, cold summer of '75, as lead ocarina player in 'The Trevor Smailsnaith Experience'. It was the year before punk tilted the music world on its axis, and rock dinosaurs like Trevor still roamed the earth. We had a lead guitarist called Eric, who used to play solos that were so long, that sometimes we had to leave him at the gig, and come back and pick him up the next morning .

Trevor, whose real name was Jet Cougar, was born in Wombleton, just down the road, so we used to play the gig at least once a month. Afterwards, we'd always stay at Mr and Mrs Cougar's house, which was a real treat after the endless nights of lonely hotel rooms. In those days, when a band went back to a hotel room, they'd usually drink and take drugs and smash it up, whereas with Trevor, we'd go back with a small tin of magnolia paint, some polyfilla and sandpaper, then drink and take drugs, and redecorate it. I believe to this day that Eric could have really made it as a plasterer.

In 1968, after the success of Trevor's first release, a psychedelic, sci-fi concept album called 'Aliens played with my willie', Trevor Smailsnaith's name became synonymous with the outpouring of hippy love-energy that was flooding North Yorkshire at the time. Despite trying to seal the doors of perception with the sand-bags of ignorance, this flood of love-energy was so deep and widespread, that many people's carpets were completely ruined.

I joined the band in 1973, by which time, unfortunately, the floodwaters of love-energy had long since receded, and been replaced with occasional damp patches of affection, mere fungal memories of love, causing unsightly stains on the dry cellar walls of indifference. In 1970, the creative harmony of the Experience had begun to suffer, following Trevor's increasing involvement with a Japanese conceptual artist from Oswaldkirk, called Betty. The following year, much against the wishes of the rest of the band, Betty took up the ocarina and became the fifth member of the Trevor Smailsnaith Experience.

During the pitiably brief, damp summer of '72, and after the dismal flop of Trevor's third album, 'Electric Dung', tensions within the band, and between Trevor and Betty, had reached breaking point. In August of that year, after Betty had discovered Trevor blocking up the holes in her ocarina, with pieces of recently invented blue-tack, she walked out on both Trevor and the band, and moved to Harrogate, where, rumour has it, she opened a tea-shop.

Despite the prevailing negative atmosphere of the times, my memories of that last Kirkbymoorside gig are good ones. I like to think that when the daffodils of Farndale are nodding their heads, it's not the wind that moves them, but it's rather that they're in the gentle mosh-pit of a spring gig, quietly digging the insistent rhythms of love-energy that still reverberate from that long, cold, hot August night in Kirkbymoorside, way back in '75.

Soon afterwards, tired of being a fading love-avatar for a generation, Trevor changed his name back to Jet, moved back in with Mr and Mrs Cougar, and got a job at the Malton bacon factory. I'm hoping he might come to the gig, if he's not working shifts.

Posted 10:52 PM | 146 Comments | Permalink

not guilty

Saturday 12th January 2008 1:12 AM

Steve wants to know if this blog is called 'my life as A artist' or 'my life as AN artist'. It's the former Steve, rather in the spirit of Ernie Wise's 'the play what I wrote'. Unfortunately, on the page, it loses something, and I agree that it looks more like a typographical error than drollery. I'm probably much better live.

Jonno e-mailed me to wonder at the lack of comments on the pope blogs. Was it that nobody was reading it, or were people scared of the pope and God, or was the comment box not working?

I now know that Steve, Hooth and Jonno himself have read them, so it's not that. As regards people being scared of the pope and God, that's a trickier question. Personally, I'm not scared of either of them. God is an unspeakable mystery, who for poetic and practical reasons of spiritual nourishment, I have come to regard as a loving father/mother/sister/brother/second cousin/nice lady that you meet in the co-op figure, and towards whom feelings of fear would be completely inappropriate. As regards the pope, I'm not scared of him either, because I'm six foot two and go to the gym regularly, whereas he's five foot six and, as someone who's held on grimly for decades to a rigid, life-denying orthodoxy, almost certainly arthritic.

If however, life should be a bizarre cosmic joke, and existence nothing more than Noel Edmonds, and it turns out that the catholic church is telling the truth, and Ratty really is God's sole representative on earth, then not only would I be scared of Ratty, I'd be really, really scared of God as well.

I don't know if Tony Blair ever reads this blog, but seeing as he joined the catholic church a few weeks ago, he's clearly not scared of the pope, and, seeing as he then subsequently joins the board of an investment bank two weeks later, he's obviously not scared of God either.

On reflection Jonno, (and lets face it, we need some of that in this topsy-turvey, helter-skelter, bibbidi-bobbedy-boo, 'I'm completely bonkers', world of ours) I'd say there were no comments because the comment box wasn't working. The fact that Steve and Hooth have both commented today means that Kate and Sidney Pi must have fixed it, as indeed they said they would. Kate reckoned it probably just needed its nipples greasing.

Posted 1:12 AM | 172 Comments | Permalink