Give us this day our (almost) daily Blog part 1: Latitude

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

It’s been thirteen days since my last post. I needed a break, this incessant textual harassment of you, well, I just began to think it made me come across all needy and stuff. I’ve been on tour, I thought I’d use my time away as an opportunity to cool things off, get some perspective. I’ve learnt a lot about myself in our time apart. I’ve learnt that I need you, I’m nothing without you. Without you around to read these words I’d probably just disappear, like a fairy with no child to believe in it.

Let’s not make a big frickin hoo ha of it though, I’m back now, we need to get past my mistakes and to look to the future. That’s why I intend to make up for my absence by posting a new blog every couple of days until I’ve tediously deconstructed every element of my peripatetic poesying. I shall be regaling you with memoirs, musings and if for no other reason than alliteration manifest truths regarding my time on the road. Think Kerouac meets Pam Ayers via the Peterborough tourist board, its gonna be well bum.

So let’s start at the beginning: latitude Festival.

It was a weird start to the weekend; I travelled down by rail on Saturday. I was perusing this months copy of Take a Break Fate and Fortune. A publication recommended to me by my mate Tim, in particular a segment entitled Texas the Psychic Horse in which readers are encouraged to pose questions regarding their personal quandaries to a clairvoyant Appaloosa stallion named Texas, as you can imagine, I was engrossed. Somewhere between Reading and London the train jolted to an unsettling halt. There were the usual murmured grumbles for a few minutes until a disembodied voice silenced the fractious whispers.

With the empathy of Davros’ accountant it matter of factly announced that there had been a fatality on the track and that this was likely to cause some delays. It apologised for “any inconvenience this might cause” in the same casual manner it might have announced a Panini shortage in the catering carriage.

My Five hour journey on three trains had evolved into a ten hour journey on five, but given the context, being “inconvenienced” seemed like a selfish and petty evaluation of my situation. The ensuing disruption meant I’d been forced to hop on a succession of anachronistically bedecked choo choos through some impossibly picturesque country side.  The sun was peeping through torn silver-grey clouds; and when I saw the Sea I let out an involuntary whoop, loud enough to distract a ruddy faced young couple from their bickering. I felt happy-sad, self indulgently emotional and indiscriminately grateful, but not inconvenienced.

My gigs went ok, I could have been more focussed but I didn’t bomb. I learnt some lessons about remembering to enjoy myself on stage and put them in to practise throughout the rest of the tour, which by the way was amazing, but that’s for subsequent blogs to address.

As always my latitude experience can be broken down into a series of unfathomable happenings. Like on Saturday night, I was walking back to my tent when someone threw a worn parka sleeve around my neck. The arm inside it turned out to be attached to the beffugered torso of Actor and Comedian Michael Smiley. You may remember him as Tyres O‘Flaherty, the ecstasy addled bike courier from Spaced. I loved Spaced, and always had time for Smiley’s stand up, so was quite happy to indulge a bit of bibulous banter. The Conversation went something along these lines:

Smiley: Latitude, Latte – tude

Me: Yeah it’s a bit middle class innit.

Smiley: Latitude, Latte – tude, Latte, latte – tude, yeah? Latitude, Latte – tude, Latte – tude.

Me: Yeah mate.

Smiley: Latte – tude. Latitude, Latte – tude, latte, latte, Latitude… I’m so lonely.

My plus one then attempted a lucid conversation but just got more of the same.

This interaction continued in a similar vain until it was interrupted by Artsy Journo, culture show presenter and as I later discovered, Smiley’s wife, Miranda Sawyer, who patronisingly interjected with:

“Yeah, and if you put a pee in front of it, it spells platitude, and that means when you don’t like a thing, or you’re not bothered about it”

So we were essentially condescended to by someone who would benefit from investing in a pocket Collins. She must have heard our stolid provincial accents and assumed we’d normally be too busy scraping the scabs off our ferrets to do any book learning.

At this point I pondered making some hackneyed generalisation about “media types” and their erudition being diametrically opposed to their sense of self worth but that would just be fallacious nonsense born of my own intellectual insecurity. And besides, I quite like her, the following day I saw her interviewing sweary, Britshock, diss-artist Jake Chapman and doing a really good job of it. So fair play, it was three o clock in the morning, she was probably a bit tired and emotional, people off the telly are allowed to get shitfaced too suppose.

That’s the great thing about the relative anonymity of poetry, I can (and all too frequently do) spout embarrassingly inane cods-cock, safe in the knowledge that my ignorance isn’t interesting enough to be used as anecdotal fodder in some petulant blog. Celebrity must suck eh.

Speaking of garrulous slebs, another bizarre happening at Latitude 09 was professional blatherskite Kieth Allen’s storming of the poetry stage, and the subsequent impromptu rap battle parody with MC Angel. I was back stage when it was all going off so can’t really comment about its virtues or failings. I’ve heard vehemently mixed reviews from both camps. Regardless of its literary merit, I’m sure it was a spectacle and I’m kind of sorry I pretended to be too cool to care and had a nosey for myself.

The real highlight for me was watching Kate Tempest’s band, Sounds of Rum whipping up a lethargic afternoon crowd into an appreciative frenzy, just awesome.

Latitude is definitely one of the biggest events on the poetry calendar; this is mostly down to the boundless enthusiasm and implausible energy of programmer Luke Wright. Who by the way will be putting out my first pamphlet in February under his new publishing venture Nasty Little Press. Imagine that, me with my own little book, boomshank!

Next blog: Norwich, Peterborough, St Albans. Until then, keep it crispy*.

*I have no idea what this means

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