MY POEM OF LAST FRIDAY

Here is a twitter poem I wrote on the train last Friday whilst faced with a man who I thought was about to die. I hoped Art would save him. Twitter doesn't do a reversed timeline so read it from the bottom.

If you read this with Roger McGough's voice it is almost good.

LET'S HAVE A STREET PARTY - FOR ME

We are having a street party. This, for me, is the most extraordinary thing. My wife is organising it. Basically the whole road thinks she is doing this to mark the Royal Wedding, but in actual fact she is doing it to silence my incessant griping about the fact I missed the street party that happened in New Eltham at the last Royal Wedding, aged 8. I have carried this bitterness around with me, like Richard III’s throne envy, ever since. At parties and social gatherings whenever the conversation turns to, ‘do you remember when we were kids, and we all had those street parties for the Royal Wedding, wasn’t it great?!’ my wife has become increasingly adept at either shutting the conversation down Alastair Campbell style, or physically ejecting me at least to ten yards from the centre of debate before I launch into the, ‘O woe is me response.’

Let’s cover off two facts:

1. I am not overly fussed by the ‘Royalness’ of the wedding. I am not particularly anti, and I probably wouldn’t go on a march to uphold them. It is the excuse to have one fabulous Chas ‘n’ Dave style knees up with all my neighbours, the ones I know and the ones I will hopefully be firm chums with post event.

2. Yes I have been at one other street party. I was four, it was the Silver Jubilee. This party happened in Torrance, East Dunbartonshire or as I understand it, soon to be sucked fully into Glasgow. We lived on a new-build estate, it was the epitome of 70s community life, fathers in jeans a little too tight round the groin and far too loose at the ankle all sporting the most impressive moustaches and mothers wearing lurid floral patterns woven into the most flammable mixes of viscose and polyester known to man. This should be a happy memory. I was dressed as a thief for the fancy dress competition, this, no-doubt, was a witty comment by my parents on the strength of ill-feeling towards them for arriving and ‘stealing’ jobs from the Scottish, my father from Belfast and my mother from London. I didn’t win the fancy dress competition. My enduring memory of this occasion was the ginger kid who lived opposite taking my Evel Knievel and burying it in the undeveloped land over the back of our house. This alone has ruined my early experience of Street Parties.

We were on the wrong side of the resonance of this play

Look at how we all looked - aren't we funny (this is not us, it is random people)

I will never see him again *wipes tear*

With this already starting to eat away at my tender psyche, the news that on the 29th July 1982 we would be having a street party was, to quote Tina Turner, Simply the Best. The next thing I am about to say, shows me up for the belligerent little ingrate I was as a child.

My parents had booked a holiday in France. I wouldn’t be at the Street Party. My soul was rent from my body. The holiday was booked before the day was announced and certainly before the Street Party was announced. But I was 8. I could not conceive the practicalities of losing hard earned money so that the brattish member of the family could eat jam sandwiches off a Union Jack plate.

It is a plate - but it is also a flag. Genius

Just imagine this on a plate that you could also use on a flag. Double genius

I was sullen, lying on the back seat of the car under the duvet that all parents at that time used as a seat belt to protect their children on a long journey. Occasionally kicking my sister whose legs had strayed into my seat allocation. Sucking miserably on my quarter of cola cubes I had bought for the journey. We didn’t have the luxury of a Walkman at this time so I was forced to listen to my parents’ radio choices or morosely read comics. We dragged our caravan through the South of England, across half of France and onto a (really rather nice) campsite in Saint-Jean-de-Monts.

Now this is a beach. It goes for ages that way - and if you turned around ages the other way too

And our two week holiday began, far away from the Street Party I knew I was missing. If you take away the fact that I was missing the Street Party, it was one of the best ruddy holidays I had as a child. Moules, frites, les glaces, croissants, le baguette, les fromages, Orangina – all in endless supply. I had adventures too! My mum had to dig a tick out of my forehead, a couple got burned in a tent explosion (umm look this was nearly 30 years ago – it was exciting, I hope they are OK now obviously). The beach was vast and sandy, they had these Bugsy Malone style racing cars you could ride all over the place. It was just intense fun from beginning to end. Except for the 29th July. This day, of all days, was washing day. My mother and I watched the Royal Wedding on a black and white TV in a campsite launderette. The news feed kept cutting to scenes of the British public all over the UK sitting at tables in their roads! This still excites me, actually putting a table in the middle of a road and eating at it, this is so anarchic and on a day that celebrates Royalism.

Imagine watching your friends having fun on one of these. Yes, now you are with me aren't you.

In short – I was sad this day. When we returned (once again, thank you Mum and Dad for one of the best holidays ever) I was greeted, not only by that depression that the rest of the summer holiday now is just treading water because the best bit has happened, but also by all my frigging mates telling me what a ruddy good time they had had without me. This has haunted me ever since.

I am neither American or a girl - but this is what a 'haunting' looks like

My wife is taking my memories by the ankles, holding them up like a newborn and spanking them until they cry, for this April, we shall have a Street Party. And I will be the man with the biggest grin because I will know it is all for me.

FIRST NIGHT PINCHY MOMENTS OR BE KIND TO CELEBRITIES THEY ARE HUMAN TOO

There are some moments in life that, in our house, are referred to a ‘pinchy moments’. These are those tangible little highs that you get when you meet somebody, see something or get upgraded to First on your flight to Newquay (the last one was a lie). The younger generation probably call these OMG moments, but we kids of the 70s are sticking to the physical violence of a pinch. I have been fortunate to have experienced many of these, and hopefully will continue to do so. But this isn’t about the ‘pinchy moments’; this is about the daft ‘almost pinchy moments’ of first nights.

In my view, the under part of the arm is the most painful place to be pinched. There and the testicles.

As the husband of a commercial theatre wife who worked for a well known West End Producer for many years, it has been my pleasure to attend more first nights than Biggins (I know this to be fact because he wasn’t at all of the ones I was at, ergo I have put the time in where he has quite frankly slacked off).



There are 6 basic rules about being the spouse at your partner’s first night:
1. You are always on time (I try to be this – however it is quite tricky when your wife’s idea of on time is actually arriving in a different time zone. Remember Singapore @FiMagill? Six hours early at an airport will never be acceptable in my book, and this was before 9/11)

2. You are on best behaviour. (I can do this, but there is a cut off time when you can start to drink too much and steal Dawn French’s bottle of champagne. I didn’t do this)

3. You must sit with all the other spouses of the show down at the front of the stalls. (These seats are invariably the most cramped, as a 6’ 2” man this always means that my knees are troubling my ears. There would be considerably more smoothly executed births if maternity wards bought the front four rows of any auditorium)

4. You must give a standing ovation. (I hate this – I am not a stander. Also, I don’t wish hurt the feelings of any producer, writer, director or actor, but a standing ovation on a first night has as much value as trying to spend Lira in Italy. We stand to keep our partners in an occupation. I have stood at some of the worst theatrical guano I have ever seen. It is not a sincere act)

5. You must learn a whole raft of platitudes to get you out of the dreaded, ‘Well?’ question. (Some of the best ones are, ‘The staging was, well, you know.’ And ‘I was just saying to [insert name] the production values were, well you know.’ And ‘the characterisation, I said to [insert name] was, well you know.’)

6. LEARN THE NAMES AND THE FACES OF THE CAST AND CREATIVES. (I cannot stress this one enough. To be asked by the composer, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ and to respond, ‘I liked it, but I still think I prefer his earlier stuff’ is not acceptable, there is not enough egg in the world to cover your face after making that mistake)



I digress, back to the daft ‘almost pinchy moments’. These are the times when you see a celebrity at a first night, and they just seem so normal, or lovely, huggable and not in the least grand, due to one little humanising gesture or aspect of their appearance. Here are three of them.


My first and most enduring of these was to turn around at a first night party to see legendary song writer, guitarist and rock establishment foundation stone, Brian May, towering over me in his clogs sucking on a Kia-Ora through a straw. The drink was not available at the party so he must have brought his own. I like that he was considerate enough to bring his own drink to a free-bar. I like his clogs less so, but Kia-Ora trumps clogs so he is OK.

Brian May - note he is not wearing clogs in this picture

Too orangy for crows - but not Queen[s] it would appear

The original name for Queen's greatest hit was Clog Rhapsody

Secondly, Emily Maitlis, siren of Newsnight, looking as glamorously erudite as she possibly could, was chatting earnestly with her fellow social and media commentators about the intrinsic value of whatever we had just seen, only for us to notice that the hem had fallen slightly on her dress and it was being held up by a safety pin so large that it would have taken Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren and a small army of punks to lift it. I like Emily, I have never spoken to her, but in the spirit of trying to save her blushes a few of us gathered behind her to prevent the safety pin being quite so obvious. I have sort of blown this now, so sorry about that.

OK so it wasn't as big as this one.

Newsround wasn't the same after John Craven's sex change

Thirdly, the lost and solitary celebrity. You never ever imagine the species called ‘celebrity’ to ever find itself in a corner of a party with nobody to talk to, looking slightly forlorn, isolated by their own aura. This did happen briefly to a Hollywood A (possibly B as I haven’t seen a film starring him for a while) lister at his own first night do. I stress this wasn’t one of my wife’s, she is far too professional to ever let this happen, we were ‘rented’ for a friends night. I won’t name him, but you will have seen him in something. I went over to chat to him:

Me: Well done tonight, excellent performance, oh I am Simon by the way.
Him: Hey dude, yeah I’m on a bit of high.
Me (having run out of conversation already) the staging was, well, you know.
Him: Yeah, I do, incredible.
Me: (still nowhere to hide and regretting my bold conversational move) I was just saying to Chris the production values were, well you know.
Him: Well it’s what you expect of London’s West End. (I love the American way they talk about London’s West End – it is so…. villagy. It makes me think every city in the UK should have its own West End. Just imagine being able to say, ‘Yes, actually we have a transfer to Canterbury’s West End.’ The pride)
Me: Ah yes. And the characterisation, I said to Chris, was, well you know.
Him: Yeah, sure, thanks. We worked really hard on making it different from the movie. And the guys down the front seem to love it, they were on their feet at the end.
Me: A standing ovation on the first night, what more can you want?
Him: Hey, do you know how I can get a drink, I’d love a Kia-Ora.

OK the drink bit, a little stretch of the truth. But he was thoroughly lovely. Next time I might tell you what happened when I was locked in a Box Office with Grace Jones, the West End’s four gayest Box Office staff members and six bottles Piper-Heidsieck. Till then, go easy on any celebrity you might meet at a first night, their vanity is in your hands.

HOW DO YOU KNOW ME? OR WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO A STRANGER?

There are many inexplicable moments in my life. Things that make me wonder if I am some part of a giant Truman Show project, albeit a British one. This version would be smaller in scale, there would be no Ed Harris playing God from a window in the moon, there would instead be Noel Edmonds perving from my neighbours box room, the whole sorry programme would be quite apologetic, with rubbish sponsors, really poor product placement from Primark and most of the time the producers would be trying to set me free because my life is too dull to pull in any viewers.


This morning I was cycling along on my fold-up, I pulled up at the lights next to a normal looking guy on his fold-up. We had a brief exchange:

Him: Morning (nods at me with that ‘we are smug eco warriors on our bikes’ kinda way)
Me: Morning (same nod back)
Him: How’s your car doing?
Me: (looks over shoulder thinking he is talking to someone else) Err..
Him: You said it was running badly and the exhaust was playing up?
Me: Did I? (now I am pretty convinced we have only been there for a couple of seconds and I haven’t covered this much conversational ground)
Him: Yeah, your exhaust.
Me: (this is true, WTF?!) We’ve sorted it thanks (going with the flow)
Him: Cool. Did you get the cheap one?
Me: (really scared) Yeah, turned out to be the bracket (why am I still talking? Why haven’t I said, ‘I think you have me confused with someone else’)
Him: Haven’t seen you in ages, things good?
Me: Yeah not bad (can’t go back now, I would look like a weirdo who is happy to accept conversations with anyone at traffic lights because I am too lonely)
Him: I’ll catch you around, love to the missus (off he pedals)
Me: (weak pathetic stuttering voice) Y..yeah and… umm yours.


Why, how, who? @slroh is convinced you follow me on twitter. I am not so sure.

Let me know who you are and, indeed, if you know me?

CONVERSATION WITH AN ARTIST

Following the excellent Twenty Twelve on BBC4 last night, which has caused a small amount of introspection among colleagues, I have been reminded of an occasion that has been repeated many times over in my career. In particular the misconceived clock and conversations surrounding its creation and eventual display.

I am not represented by any of these fine actors

The Context.

In my daily life I have to, occasionally, take an artist’s vision, words or imagery and convert it into some copy that the rest of us can understand or show some relevance to the festival or performance that it forms part of.

I then have to go and sell it to the world's media and mostly first time audiences, people who would usually be scared off by all the bullshit that is so frequently wrapped around art so that the art elite can sit in judgement of everyone who 'doesn't get it'. This is my professional and personal crusade, to strip away bullshit and make sure people are comfortable with attending whatever they want and not be bullied into any specific reactions or false notions of art in the broadest sense. All art can be engaged with on any level.

The conversation.

Many many years ago I had, how shall I put it, a curious conversation with an artist that was representing a collective who had created a site-specific piece intended for ‘families to explore the nature of fairy tales through interaction and immersive theatrical experience’ – or as I would call it, something you walk through while actors make you unbelievably uncomfortable and scare your children. Any apparent misogyny on my part is not intentional, this is purely relating to the art and not the the social context. Here was the conversation:

Me: Hello, you must be Jane (name obviously not the real one), I am Simon. Can we talk about your piece so that I can put some copy together for PR and marketing?
Jane: Yes, I am. You realise that I don’t usually talk to men? (cold face, not actually looking at me)
Me: (nervous laugh) Oh really, you must be missing about 50% of the best conversations (idiot).
Jane: (silence)
Me: So tell me about your work.
Jane: It is not something that words can describe, it is something that needs to be experienced.
Me: OK, but in order to get people to experience it, it would be great to be able to sum it up in some way, tease the audience with what they might be seeing (stupidly over enthusiastic and nice).
Jane: But I don’t want it represented in a way that doesn’t represent it. (cold face, still not actually looking at me)
Me: Umm… yes, this is why we are talking about it now.
Jane: How do I know you understand what we are trying to do, you are a man?
Me: Well, I think the first step is to tell me what you are trying to do. (remarkably upbeat, considering)
Jane: (silence)
Me: So?
Jane: (launches into a rapid fire ACE application style description of what they plan) We see the role of women in European fairy tales damaged by the historical patriarchal dominance in authorship and publishing (so far so good). We aim to redress the balance through a series of female signifiers so that the theatrical semiotics are once again under the ownership of the correct gender, the gender that created the stories to provide a direct guardianship of grandmother, mother and daughter (again, I understand – am now thinking how do I convert this into copy to attract families).
Me: What kind of signifiers will you be using, are we looking at Red Riding Hood, with emphasis on the [folk] traditions, uses colour, moon, the kind of flora that suggests different aspects of femininity (I am bluffing a little here but I think I have pulled it off).
Jane: No.
Me: Oh.
Jane: Well that is a bit obvious isn’t it?
Me: Oh OK, but you said it was for families (said nicely trying to hint that highbrow is fine but different entry levels for different audiences is always helpful).
Jane: I have some images that may help explain it (she still hasn’t actually looked at me)
Me: Great! (could have shown these at the beginning of the conversation)


At this point three images were placed in front of me.


One labelled, The Gateway.
This consisted of two men (yeah I know, irony is a funny thing) basically dressed as the two halves of a vagina, making the shape of said body part for people to step through.

This is North Carolina - it rhymes with vagina

Two labelled, The Journey.
This was a series of artist impressions of, again, vaginas, only this time as trees, for the audience to wander through.

A forest - all you have to do is image these trees as vaginas. I can't un-imagine this now.

Three labelled, The Characters.
A hairy naked man with a large phallus, and a hairy naked woman.

This is hair. Imagine this all over a naked man and a naked woman. Or don't. I wouldn't.

Three things stick in my mind, Families, ‘Well that is a bit obvious isn’t it?’, Relief.

The work never saw the light of day.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - OR HOW TO OVERPOLITICISE YOUR KIDS

A couple of moments have occurred over the passing of the last fortnight that has made me question just what exactly I tell my children. They are still tender young saplings ready to be tied to the vine of life and trained to grow in the desired direction of this keen gardener. Although I understand that they must develop their own ideological viewpoints independent of me, I will use this ever narrowing window of opportunity to impart what I believe are important building blocks in their social understandings and hopefully, just possible steer them in the direction of being kind, tolerant and completely fabulous humans.

Moment 1.
Stranger Danger. All parents have to deal with this one quite early on. The need to impress upon your child that there are 'bad' people out there. But to also impress upon your child that those 'bad' people make up a tiny minority, and on the whole they will hopefully never meet one. This was covered right back a nursery level with both Ginger and Blondie. However, recently, Ginger, the eldest of my two, started to ask some very curious questions like, 'what would a stranger do to me? Would 'he' kill me? Why would he kill me?' This is not a level of detail I was prepared to enter into. I will admit that I glossed a bit. 'Umm yes he might kill you, because 'he' is really bad. Nobody really knows why they do this.'

Fortunately I am married to a far more resourceful wife who was able to expand on the whole arena of inappropriate contact, and was able to divert fear and channel it into respect and looking out for others, privacy, nobody has a right to make you feel scared or uncomfortable. I have to say I felt a little rubbish at this moment. They are still so small, so innocent that I don't want to fill their heads with bad stuff. Only the other week Ginger, as part of her homework, was as to collect two books from home, one fiction and one fact. For her fact she chose a book about the Tooth Fairy, because in her mind the Tooth Fairy very much exists as benign (and seemingly bottomless pit of money) sylph that will visit her when her next teeth fall out.

Moment 2:
International Women's Day. Very important in every way, especially as I am raising two girls who I want to be all the things I said earlier. This, I thought, is where I can make up for my previous failings. There would be too thrusts to my topical debate with Ginger and Blondie. First will be respect and celebration of achievement. This was easy enough; Granny was a Practice Nurse, pioneering in her field of Practice Nursing. Aunty Lucy one of the first women in this country to get a Forensic Science degree (abridged to scientist) these were duly held up for pride and celebration along with teachers, policewomen, the lady at the library, the cats (I don't, they are girl cats - let them have the cats) and so forth. They completely got that it is a day to have pride and limitless aspiration.

The second thrust was the 'there are people (men) and cultures that don't believe that everyone is important, that think that women and girls should not be allowed to do everything that men and boys do' conversation. I am proud to say that the fact that this is the case was completely incomprehensible to them. Blondie just laughed and said 'that is silly'. Ginger just didn't get it at all, more or less 'why?' I tried to answer this with a positive and say that today was all about making sure that everybody knows these people are wrong, the same way that if they and their friends all knew someone in their class was being mean they could stop it happening by all telling their teacher.

Emotion Over Logic
I feel secure in what I have passed on in my lame arsed way. But it is one step up the ladder of awareness towards independent thought and another down the ladder of magical innocence towards being fully grounded. As a Dad who loves the crazy chat about 'cheese-balls, penguins, her from Tangled and all the things they will suddenly be able to do when they are a year older' it is with mixed emotions that these chats happen. Especially as the youngest will generally learn at the same pace as the eldest.


For the next few months, at least, I will revert back to sarcasm as my primary tool for parenting.