Kid, I wrote back

At the start of each month, I can be found in a bar in Shoreditch.

What coincidentally is my favourite bar in London -- and possibly in the whole world -- also hosts a monthly open mike night of spoken word.  And I live for this kind of thing.

Back in my Derby days as a student, I joined a poetry group and we'd meet once a week in a pub to share our poetry and give feedback and drink a lot.  Then once a month we'd all perform at an open mike night, called Raised Voices.

Raised Voices was held in the back room of a pub, which was freezing cold with no power other than a generator.  It seemed to fit the mood.  The students made only a small percentage of the people there, and I got a taste for spoken word -- despite needing a drink or two to have the courage to perform.

Raised Voices lost its edge for me when it moved out of the pub's back room and into a plush, carpeted conference space.  The florescent lighting had to be on, because it was either on or off -- no dimmed -- and the bar tender always had a slightly sarcastic smirk on his face.  The whole thing just felt wrong.

Then I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and met up with an old poetry friend who had been there for a year already, where he introduced me again to something new.  To two new things, really -- performing sober, and to performing in coffee shops.  It was often disconcerting being an Englishman abroad, when it wasn't just a short holiday but where people would stare at you in class, or be shocked to hear your accent when you stood up to perform in Cup o' Joes.

I think after I left Utah and until moved to London I had only performed twice -- once in Derby, when Raised Voices again had a new home (but none of the old faces, all my old poetry friends had scattered), and once when I was doing my Journalism post-grad in Leicester.  An amusing sidenote to that is that when I was interviewed for the journalism course, I spoke with great passion about how I loved to just write.  I was asked if I wasn't just a frustrated novelist -- I told them no.  I was a frustrated poet.  Why they still took me on is beyind me, I guess it was despite this they knew I could write, and saw potential.

So years and years later, we're living in London and I'm not giving much thought to poetry, let alone spoken word.  I have a dedicated bookshelf for poetry -- mainly consisting of Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Pablo Neruda, John Hegley and Beat writers, along with a huge anthology that I dip into from time to time.  It's years later, I don't think of poetry until we're in my favourite bar for my birthday celebration and I see a poster for Kid, I Wrote Back -- a new spoken word and poetry night, being held there.

It's hosted and organised by the extremely talented Chimène Suleyman and Dylan Sage who are well known in similar circles in the city.   Kid is worth checking out for their performances alone -- but there are so many great and varied poets and writers appearing there each month, I feel almost proud to be able to appear alongside them.  My own work varies so much in quality and theme, I don't feel I hold a candle to a lot of people there, but it's so great just to perform -- and gives me a reason to wirte each month.

Valentine

I wanted on Valentine's Day to link to a superb John Hegley poem about Saint Valentine, and the first Valentine's Day missive.

Unfortunately, the rotten shower of bastards that are Fileden have suspended my account for breach of their terms of service. Since I have been using the site to host various MP3 files to be used in Musical Monday posts, among other things, I expect it is that whole sharing copyrighted materials thing that's got their goat up. But it means I am now without a file hosting service and all the Musical Monday posts that had their own music no longer do.

In theory, I could type it up and post it -- but John Hegley is so much better if you can hear him. I think all poetry is better read aloud to yourself or heard read by the poet, than it is read silently on the page. John Hegley makes his pieces into performances, some become songs and others become songs with ukele in them, while others still become songs with ukele and audience participation -- especially from audience memebers wearing glasses. Anyway, MediaFire seem to offer file hosting for what I want so give this link a go.

Instead what I am going to have to do is copy out for your delectation the recipe from my tapas cookery book that I prepared for the girl. I may also include the recipe for the non-tapas dessert I made, and an explanation as to what went wrong with it. But not yet.

The girl and I agreed to keep spending to a minimum for Valentine's gifts, so I figured the best place to get her something special without spending a fortune was Etsy. That's where I found the sterling silver stud earrings pictured above. I would like to link to the seller's page so everyone (if anyone reads here) can see what amazing items they have, but I'd prefer the girl not to see it. I also decided to forego the usual tacky hallmark cards, and have one custom made from someone I admire -- again on Etsy.

I had to make her stay in the living room with the door shut, talking to the cat, while I unloaded things from the car -- because I didn't want her seeing the card, nor the dozen red roses, before I'd had a chance to prepare things. The card and earrings I hid in her bedside drawer for the morning. And if you're beginning to think it all sounds a bit one-sided, I was very pleased the girl remembered that I wanted a new notebook to take to Peru with me -- and so had bought me one as a gift. What's more she even made me breakfast in bed on the Saturday morning. Ain't she sweet? Before you get too put off by the public display of affection, I shall move swiftly on to Saturday night's dinner recipe.

Pollo a la Plancha
Grilled chicken thighs marinated with harissa, garlic and lemon

Serves 4 8 chicken thighs (skin on), boned
2 tablespoons harissa paste
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
juice of ¹/₂ lemon
olive oil
Maldon sea salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
4 lemon wedges, to serve

Stretch out a piece of clingfilm on a large chopping board, open out 2 of the boned thighs and place them on top. Cover with another piece of clingfilm and bash each one with a meat mallet (or rolling pin) until it's roughly a third bigger than it was originally. Repeat with the remaining thighs and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Add the harissa paste, sliced garlic, lemon juice, 12 dashes of olive oil, 2 generous pinches of salt and 1 of pepper. Mix everything together to ensure the chicken pieces are well coated. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave to marinate in the fridge for 12 hours.
When you are ready to cook, preheat your oven to 150^oC/300^oF/gas mark 2. Place your griddle plate, ridged-side up, on a high heat. When it starts to smoke, put 4 chicken thighs on top, skin-side down. Chargrill for 4 minutes each side -- thigh meat tends to be slightly pinker than breast meat, but don't let this put you off because it's incredibly succulent. If you find its too pink, cook for an extra minute, but take care not to burn it. When you are satisfied the chicken is cooked, transfer it to an ovenproof dish, cover with foil, and place in the oven to keep warm while you cook the remaining pieces. Serve with lemon wedges on the side.

My own cooking of this differed slightly. I forgot to include and garlic, and had missed originally the part about marinating it for 12 hours. I also used skinless breasts rather than thighs. I don't think it suffered for not marinating, nor for missing the garlic, but expect both would add to the overall flavour. I'd never tried harissa before, which I understand is a North African chilli paste and available in most supermarkets, if you have the patience to look for it. It has a familiar flavour perhaps not too unlike piri piri -- but the lemon and the salt in this recipe give the whole thing a very unique taste. I recommend to anyone buying this book, my copy is from the library and will be returned with some slight food splatterings -- which I think is a compliment to a good cookery book.

Now the dessert was strawberry mousse. Or supposed to be.

I think where I went wrong was with the gelatin. The only gelatin I could buy was in sheets, the recipe here calls for a tablespoon. Trying to break a sheet into pieces small enough to fill a tablespoon wasn't easy, and I guess I just didn't manage enough -- half a sheet seemed like it would be plenty, but the next morning it was still like a strawberry smoothie with a lot of sugar in. It made for an interesting breakfast for me at any rate...

Be careful what you wish for

I mentioned in my recent post the idea of attracting people into my life -- whether intentionally or unintentionally, and there was also the issue of not being able to make them do anything. Because even if you could, it's not such a great idea. You'll find ideas like this cropping up in various belief systems -- that you might have more power than you realise, but messing with someone or their free will really is not such a hot idea.

I've always thought you should be careful what you wish for, because you might get them. People disagree with me on this one, and maybe I should think more of crossing those bridges if I come to them -- but either way, it's just how I tend to approach these things.

What could be a case in point. It's no secret that I've wanted someone in my life for however-long now. I've tried the usual things -- placing ads online, meeting girls at punk gigs, all the rest, with very limited success. I have recently been trying to focus my positive thinking in this direction -- whether it's a matter of attracting love to me because I think it, or because I am happy and confident (two words that I have rarely used about myself before, but I am really feeling it a lot more often now) it probably doesn't matter. But as I say, you have to be careful.

I think it was Monday morning I was standing at the bus stop, trying to keep warm -- the usual stamping feet and blowing on hands and hoping the bus turns up this week. I'd noticed when I was walking to the town there had been a teenage girl walking a short distance in front of me, and paid no attention. When I got to the bus stop she arrived shortly after me, because either I'd walked faster or she'd walked a different way at the end. I wasn't paying much attention, just looking idly around at the other people. I saw this blonde girl and my first thought was "She's wearing way too much makeup". Maybe I was looking a little too long, maybe I had a faint, amused smile on my face as I looked at her. But she noticed. I thought I was going to get a "Wot you lookin' at?" sort of response, but instead she said hi to me. Slightly surprised, I said hi back.

The following few days I've seen her again. It turns out she lives over the road to me, I'd never noticed. I didn't realise the girls who lived there were even old enough to go to college. She has progressed in a few days to making a point of saying hi to me when she gets on the bus, walking home and talking away to me in the evening when we get off at the same spot, and last time I saw her actually choosing the seat next to me on the bus. Choosing the seat next to me, and not being content with just a smile and a nod in greeting but wanting me to actually take out my earphones and say hi to her properly. And perhaps even being a little sulky that I was reading my book the whole way home. When we got off the bus she said to me sorry, she hadn't been ignoring me, she could just see I had been reading. Haha, I miss those kinds of head games. In conversation I have established that she's about 17, and despite her attentions says she has a boyfriend. I also know she has been talking about me, because she asked didn't I used to be a policeman.

How she knows this is complicated, but one time Nick was round my house, watching a video when there was a knock at the door. The lady from over the road that I'd never actually spoken to but would smile and wave to in the street explained that she had just reversed into the side of my car. Except it wasn't my car at all, but Nick's car. Nick who had decided parking directly opposite her drive was a sensible thing to do. And so it was in his discussions with her about it all that it must have come up what he did for a living. He's the kind of person that has to tell you, it's a power thing.

So fast forward several years, and for this girl to bring up in conversation that she thought I was a policeman suggests to me that she has talked about meeting me. I didn't hesitate to put her straight that I was not now and never have been a policeman, nor would I want to be. And tried to explain who Nick was.

So, okay -- great, I can attract people to me, I can attract attention to myself. But I need to maybe work on it so it's not from 17 year olds who wear too much makeup and think I'll be impressed if they tell me they want a motorbike. This is what I mean about being careful what you wish for -- the "request", the idea, the thought needs to be more finely tuned.

Looking in from the outside

Have you ever tried to imagine how your life would seem to an outsider? I mean, sure we all blog around here and so we all present our lives to outsiders -- but it's our picture being shown. We choose how it appears to others. Do you ever imagine what someone else would make of it? I'm sure it crosses everyone's mind once in a while -- you're out with friends, and for a second while everyone is talking and laughing you sort of step back out of yourself and try to look at it from above, to see what it looks like.

Go one step further though -- often we write about our countries, our cities -- but how would someone coming in from outside see it all? I've written at some length about my impressions and feelings surrounding England, and being English, but I've rarely stopped to think what someone else would make of it all. Where would they begin?

Early this year, when Dune Princess was planning a trip to Europe, the two of us made plans to meet up in Barcelona. Plans got as far as booking the hostel, before she had to postpone her plans. We said we'd do it next year instead -- and this time, there was some plans of her seeing England too, on a whistle-stop road trip of the country. Circumstances got involved and it looked likely the whole trip would be cancelled again -- until Dune Princess took matters in her own hands, and decided she was coming to London and that was the end of it. Flights were booked, visas arranged.

Being the kind of guy that likes to make online friends into real life friends, and having a "mi casa es su casa" approach to friendship, I have invited the amiable Ms DP to stay for a while. Now, of course, I often catch myself thinking what someone would make of my family, of the town where I live, or of my friends -- although China Blue can probably go some way to answer that last one, having met them.

I wonder what an Australian will make of the South East of England in February, having come from Brisbane in the summer. I rack my brains to try and think of any odd cultural things that you wouldn't expect to know about -- like how DP has already mentioned the TV licence. It's not the first thing you think of, but you can get in a lot of trouble for owning a television without a licence. When I was in Utah, I was surprised by how shocked people were by jaywalking. It wasn't even a term I had heard in England, but I'd never before run into any difficulties with the approach that if there is nothing coming (or if it's far enough away) you can cross the road -- regardless to what the lights say.

I've been asked if we say thank you to bus drivers, and if we make conversation with checkout chicks in supermarkets. The answers being yes, and sort of. It depends. Customers for the most part don't make conversation with me. Some seem to want to ignore me even when I attempt to make conversation. Others see it not as being polite but rather an invitation to stay and chat. An old lady was buying an Ian Rankin crime novel the other day and I made some wholly untrue statement like "I'm looking forward to reading this one myself". That was it, she was off, telling me about authors she liked, authors she didn't like, and one particular author who she thought was "too personal" and didn't like the sexual detail they included. I totally did not need to hear that, but at least she didn't describe it.

While at once trying to put myself in the place of someone new to it all, I'm also trying to make mental lists of things to do/see. Obvious things like the Natural History Museum, and the British Museum -- and personal favourite things like Camden Lock, and Spitalfields, and bars in Shoreditch that are like the south of France. And of course, Southend sea front. Not to mention the South coast by Portsmouth, and all manner of other places both popular and historical or just unique to my country. Of course, she has lists of her own of all the places she wants to see, so it's just as well she plans to stay in the country for at least six months.

It's helped to give me some extra added motivation to try and get some kind of better-paid career -- it would be ideal if by some miracle I could afford to move out by around the time of her visit. In the meantime, I will have to prep my friends on things like how cool and popular I am...