Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018

"Now who wants a fucking beer?"

Is precisely what you want to hear at your first Fringe show. 

Back in Edinbugh I meet up with an old friend and we go and watch 'The Thinking Drinkers', a sitting pub crawl hosted by two knowledgeable men, Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham.

The start of the show is a gloomy one.  They bring in a casket and announced that it could be soon the end of the pub.  3 pubs a day close down currently. They then transform the casket into a bar where they served themselves their drinks.

During the show the pair give you five drinks and talk about their history.  Drinks such as:
12th of Never Pale Ale,
Ketel One Vodka (a dutch Vodka rather than American one as they described Donald Trump to be a 'bell-end' 'total bell-end'),
Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin,
Jameson Irish Whiskey and
Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva Rum.

They go through each drink describing what you should taste and talk about how they originated.  A fascinating look at the circumstances of how each drink was brought about.  Vodka came from the saloons of the wild west, and Gin Palaces were created to make the Victorian scourge of drinking gin (a problem that was bringing Britain to it's knees) more socially acceptable and comfortable.

Two things that I learned which I can still remember are 1) the oldest building found in the world was a pub, and 2) cans are better than bottles for storing beer as the glass of the bottle lets the light in which affects the beer.  Pubs are also places of revolution and dissent from all authorities.

It was entertaining and informative ('You're laughing and learning, you lucky fuckers!'), as well as drinking actual, well chosen, booze alongside them.  This was an absolute delight to be a part of making me wanting to sign their petition to save the local boozer, which can be found at www.longlivethelocal.pub.

Next we go to the late night showing for my friend Adam Elliot's show 'House on Haunted Hill'.  We were given ping pong balls at the start, which were mercilessly thrown at the performers throughout the show despite only needing to be used for one specific scene.   The cast treats us to a horror story based on the B-movie starring Vincent Price.

Of course this is the Lampoons, previously in 'Attack of the Giant Leeches', who have a particularly mad-cap and downright bizarre way of getting humour out of their source material.  The four actors  make up the show with energetic slapstick and silliness give you a frenzy of jokes as they tell the story of the unsuspecting guests at the haunted house.  Pure madness with some excellent set pieces, verve and determined to keep you laughing.

The next day I watched Mark Grist's 'King of Poetry', a children's show about what it would be like if he was crowned poetry King.  It has a great concept and the show had some lovely poems that involved the audience.  Mark had a gentle, warm presence, which became colder and meaner as he got more entitled as his character of the poetry King.  Seeing the younger members of the audience join in with enthusiasm was a delight to witness.

In the late afternoon I then go to see one of my favourite poetry performers Luke Wright (who has appeared on this blog before: http://poetrykindness.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-toll-by-luke-wright.html).  His show was about being Poet Laureate, as Carol Ann Duffy is set to step down from the role next year.   On a smaller stage then what I'm used to see him he delivered an energetic, witty commentary in his journalistic poems  about Britain and it's state. 

He wonders if there should be such a thing as a 'poet laureateship'  as it reflects the power structure in royalty.  This is also a homage to his younger self as 'Poet Laureate' was the title of his first Edinburgh show, which is good to see as he has stuck with this particular art form and become something of a minor master of it.

Phil Jupitus, from the TV quiz show 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks', does poetry, did you know? 

"35 years in the business and not a hint of a publisher.  That's the quality of what you are about to hear"

As Porky the Poet he regales stories of the music business to an audience seated in small room in The Voodoo Rooms.  His all embracing showmanship displays a flair for showing off and an enjoyment of making people laugh.  The poems about the band Madness and his first gig were very well constructed and  very funny, but just his presence  alone was intoxicating enough. 

As he took donations  with a bucket I told him how it's great that he does poetry.  And he replied, for some reason,with "Never give up", which is exactly what you want to hear in your last show in Edinburgh.

It's great to see all manner of art alive and well in Scotland and to see performers in every stage of their careers.  I go up every year and hope to do so next year.  See you there?

Matthew Borne's 'Cinderella'

It's not often that I find myself watching ballet.  The last time I saw any contemporary dance was at Uni with a piece about 9/11, which I was stewarding.  To which the stewardess that I worked with said "well, did you understand that?".

Fortunately the well worn story of Cinderella comes to us ready understood, being so well known.  But this has to be told entirely through the language of dance, not a language I am well versed in.  I tap dance but ballet is something else, perhaps something more elegant, softer. 

This is the perception of classical ballet, full of dainty little fairies in tutus turning pirouettes to Tchaikovsky.  Matthew Borne over the years has turned ballet into something more modern, more subversive and, maybe, more accessible.

The story is set during the Second World War.  An upper class family have invitations to go to a dance, something that their servant girl, Cinderella, wishes she could go.  The setting of the living room is cold and eerie, slightly dilapidated due to the austerity of the war.  It shows a family in decline.  Interrupting all this is a magical dandy of a fairy godmother who introduces sparkle in the gloom and offers Cinderella an answer to her wish.  She shall go to the ball!

In the beginning there seemed to be a lack of dancing as there was more of a stylised movement, but later in the ball scene there was dancing aplenty.  The dancer's accurate points of their twists and turns was captivating, indeed I didn't feel time pass.  What the dancer's had to say with their bodies was controlled to allow them full expression of what the human body could achieve.  This dissolved any other awareness of the world that one may have.

There wasn't the usual ballet moves that one might expect, instead there was lots of angular shapes being made and unexpected sudden gestures that surprised.  This was evident in particular in the hospital scene at the end where having met Prince Charming Cinderella is separated from him and his search for her while her 'family' galloped through the corridors.

The most affecting scene in the ballet was the day after Cinderella and Prince Charming's night together where they danced away from the prying eyes of others.  The morning was theirs with the possibility of owning the rest of their lives together.  It was really a splendid moment that you almost wanted to leave them to privacy.

I was entranced in this performance, I thought it was remarkable work from very hard working dancers guided by a very capable director.  It made me want to watch more ballet, classical and modern, so I can get more of a nuance in their art, so I can learn the language of dance. 

Good Brains

'It's a shame to see good brains go to waste',

Says the CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau) woman who is dealing with my PIP (Personal Independent Payment) Appeal claim after it had been cancelled on dubious evidence.

This made me think of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' with it's haunting first line:

 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...' 

Which didn't make me think of myself but of someone I knew at University, and who decided to die.

How anecdotal to almost everyone has that become.  We probably all knew someone who was bright, well-liked, fundamentally decent and aspired to the Good, yet who was able to give up on life without hope, sinking in a society that could no longer support them.

More than the distraction of Russian spies trying to re-surge the Cold War I would like the News to tell me about why people with good brains are being wasted.  Why we end up having to do all we can to defend our benefits, why we struggle to get a foothold in the housing market and why, some of us, decide it is all too much?

This won't be polemical piece as I think politics is divisive enough but ask yourself why do these things happen to these people, and then is there anything that could make the situation better?

I'm an explorer of such questions and I don't necessarily expect easy or clear answers, but in pursuit of the question we may just find something that might work along the way.  At least against the waste of life we may well feel that it's worth the journey.

'The Toll' by Luke Wright

Video for his poem The Toll.

The last time I saw performance poet Luke Wright was at the Tropicana in Weston-Super-Mare, where I gave him a post card for his trouble, with his show 'What I Learned From Johnny Bevan'.

This time round we were in Clevedon's Theatre Shop, a small intimate space where it gave Luke a tight grip on the audience as he performed some poems from his collection 'The Toll'.

Swaggering on stage he gives a high energy performance with rollicking anecdotes about Brian Eno having a Korma and conversations about Iain Duncan Smith with his dad.

He gives off a laddish air of a macho one-of-the-boys attitude but there are several sensitive moments including in the titular poem about a woman working at a toll booth.

Luke seems to be a poet that yearns and wishes there to be a coherent identity to England, a land he loves and tussles with, with his connection to one of the most English of poets John Betjeman.  Indeed with the way that Luke entertains he could arguably be considered as an heir to the man who wrote about teacakes and tennis.  Luke is not only interested in the England of now but also of the England of the past.

There's a poem about a man in Georgian times who decides to eat what he likes when he likes, which involves a lot of Oysters being shucked and a lot of prison arrests that has no rehabilitative effect.  Apparently the news, in those times, were sung as poems on street corners.  Luke muses on the lovely voice that Huw Edwards must have.

Iain Duncan Smith  (a 'shyster' in Luke's opinion) is used in a poem reflecting austerity by using only his initials for the beginning of each word.  This shows the robust flexibility of the English language that Luke exploits time and again.

It's a lot of fun and certainly not as harrowing as 'Johnny Bevan' but it does reflect a nation still divided, still arguing, with the desire for wholeness and healing.  Luke does a fantastic job at raconteur and public poet, hectoring when necessary and then bringing the whole audience into a secret that he allows us to be in on. 

He does a new show every year and this year he is touring with his new verse play 'Frankie Vah'.  You can see where he is playing next here.

In my opinion we live in one of the greatest times for poetry and will performers such as Luke Wright it will continue to be so for a good long time to come.

The First Man In Space- the offical book

'You are born in darkness'

Finally I have managed to do something special. 


Using the company Lulu I have self-published my long poem 'The First Man In Space' as the first of, hopefully, many books to come under my Handmade Tales logo.


The poem takes the symbol of the astronaut and uses them to explore the nature of progress, loneliness and humanity's determination to explore.


There is a couple of ways you can get this, either through the Lulu store website, which I'll put here for ease:  http://www.lulu.com/shop/alistair-david-todd/the-first-man-in-space/paperback/product-23403928.html

You can also get this through the Orchard Treasure shop on Orchard Street in Weston-Super-Mare. 


Or if you are lucky enough to get the chance to see me in various open mic poetry sessions around the South-West area then you can buy a copy off me personally.


Either way I will be very happy if you do and I hope that you enjoy what I have produced.


Watch this space as  there will be more where that's come from.

Edinburgh's Sights and Shows

Atmospheric though the city of Edinburgh is it's ghosts come alive every year when the Festival pops up and performs it's rite of enactment of crowd pleasing.  Every year is a pilgrimage for me to discover the odd, strange and even the weird and I never regret it. 


First stop is another mini-pilgrimage to the Poetry Library that stands as a testament to the enduring quality of poetry and it's many delights that lie within it.  This year I discover the poet Tony Curtis whom I wish to read more of and of the interestingly titled 'Nietzsche's Attaché Case' that I wish another browse through.  Stacked with everything from Pam Ayers to Zoe Skolding it is my own mecca that I love for what it posses and for where it is; tucked away, for those in the know, in a side street off the Royal Mile as humbly as those who read poetry, I say not without a little hope. 


It is a hard person who could not be a bit more idealised sitting in an entire library packed with words written by hungry writers. 


In previous years I learned that Edwin Muir himself contemplated suicide rather than work another year at the dreaded fish remains factory and having to bath himself every night to be rid of the stench.  It was a fact I needed to have and now have passed it on to you, both without charge.  Though I could have stayed I had to leave for I had another appointment- one with the Metaphoric Table.


  Chiasmus was my new word for the day.  The meaning being the second half of a sentence reflecting the first, as in: 'Scotland has not let you down, don't let Scotland down'.  There were many other words in the show but that was the first.  Written as a lecture by a professional writer due to the lack of easy to access information about literary devices they have devised a table similar to the Periodic Table showing these devises and their names. 


Most were frankly (should that be embarrassingly?)  new to me as the techniques of writing I've never given much thought to, but this show gave me an understanding of how useful these trials could be if one were only aware of them.  Fortunately they are all printed out on a sheet to buy for only a fiver.  A future purchase, I expect.


  Next was a show by fellow Word Mustard poet Melanie Branton and her inability to 'get' a boyfriend.  Though I have seen Melanie perform a number of times most of the material was new to me and though there was a total of four audience members we were captive.  Mostly humorous pokes at the advice she has been given about relationships, and the idea of relationships in general, the tone turned harrowing with the poem about Jesus being her boyfriend.  "It was very good therapy", she said. 


  Congratulating her with her show I moved on to another poet from one door to the next, which turned out to be apt as the show was The Door to Door poet by Rowan McCabe.  The premise for this was the poet knocking on doors and asking people if they wanted a poem written for them showing that poetry can be for them.  A good idea that I'm firmly in favour for but his show demonstrated the pitfalls of this lowly line of work.  Performed well and with a sweetness of human kindness Rowan showed that he was OK to open the door to.


  Further afield in the Summerhall, an ex-veterinary training centre, was the play Black Cat Fish Musketeer, which was about online relationships.  Probably cleverer than it needed to be it was a ingenious use of space, which there wasn't much of.  Using filing boxes and a personified computer to mediate between the two leads.  Very satisfying. 


  Last, after a hallomi burger in a bar round the corner of the coach station, was a late night show double bill of two comedians male and female.  The smallest stage so far yet the two did a comparable job of making whoever was there laugh.  The best line was from the woman with 'I'm told I'm sexually active, which is strange because mostly I just lie there.'  There the night ends and I go back to my tent next to the airport and sleep as the planes fly over.


Edinburgh, welcoming, forgiving and trying.  Fun experiments in the art and science of creating, I'll see you next year.
 
Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more books. 

Another way you can support me is by buying one of the literary books that I write.  The links are on the side of the website, if you are reading this from a mobile phone than switch to web mode to see it.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already, I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you.

'This Is Calcutta'- An Evening with Will Self

Will Self, writer of books such as Great Apes and Cock and Bull, owns a pair of the deepest set eyes I have seen as if they are looking out from a tunnel and inspecting and dissecting every aspect of modern life.  

When I say to him that I am a fellow writer he sympathises admitting that even writers of his own generation will never reach the stature of the generation before with the likes of Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.  The changes in publishing and in reading have been such that it's very difficult to get yourself noticed.  The advent of creative writing courses means there are plenty of writers, just not readers. 

We are at the Watershed in Bristol, Will has just arrived and is getting his picture taken with his back against the harbourside, for an event about Mental Health and Homelessness, which takes place during Mental Health Week.   

I confess to have a vested interest in this event in having been diagnosed with Bi-Polar and also technically homeless due to my illness.  In the context of a steadily increasing homelessness and more becoming housed in temporary accommodation with  an increasing suicide rate, according to government statistics, it seems to be a timely event for St Mungos to put on.  

St Mungos recently launched a new initiative called Safer Off the Steets (SOS Bristol), a fund raising fund raising campaign to help tackle the rising problem of homelessness.  

Will Self is known for his scathing attacks on politicians and general cultural he unusually turns out to be a generous and deeply sympathetic, as well as a (not so unusual) deeply articulate, speaker.  His voice has a particular drawling quality as if it was made out of a strong wood like oak with someone raking the bark.  It's as deep set as his eyes and unerringly always at the concept level of ideas. 

 His talk began with an article that he had written for the New Statesmen, which was not published and subsequently for which he was fired for (“O woe is me”).   It was about a homeless man he knows called George and about the housing culture of which he tries, and tries and tries, to get a footing in.  Normally he is found under a cash machine trying to get a few pounds for a drink so he can be somewhere warm and to temporally forget his situation.

Will talks about how new houses are being developed, which are normally luxury flats way out the means of people like George.  He describes how he helped George to get back into the system with the council as it is the only way he can get into some sheltered accommodation and, with some hope, get a stable place to live.  George is only one of the many people who have fallen into homelessness.  He wasn't always like this once he had a wife, a home, a good job, now all lost where all attempts to get any of it back have resulted in hopelessness.  Things can be done on an individual level that can make a difference.

“Personal contact is important”, Will says, “because once you know of the homeless person in question’s name they cease to be a ‘homeless person’ and they become someone who actually want to help get off the street and help them achieve what they would like to achieve out of life.  To give what you can give is also very important as it may be a vital stopgap to hunger before they get some real help.”

“In some periods of history there may be only so much you can do but”, Will encourages, “we here are all people who would wish to help- in fact probably most people here have probably waited with someone at A&E or have spent time talking and providing food for someone who needed it- and that’s not a bad number.”

“In London where I live I saw a man in a wheelchair rolling down a busy highstreet, his leg newly amputated because I could see it was still raw and bloody, and his look was the look of a crazy man and I thought this thought, which I don’t think often, is that we have stopped being a civilised country, we have become Calcutta.”

“Calcutta was a country that became a byword for every sin and nastiness you could find because of it’s large poor population.  In a sense we distrust poverty, hate it, which is right but we hate the people who are in it and ascribe negative characteristics to those people of whose fault is not of their own making.  That’s what’s happened here and a lot of that is because of our new Victorian values we have been coerced into believe because of neo-liberal dogma that we’ve allowed to govern so much of our lives.”

In being asked a question, that refers to Dostoevsky’s quote about how you can tell what a country is like by how they treat their mental insane, Will admits to being pessimistic about hospitals’ futures and generally pessimistic about how people on the lowest rung of the ladder are treated by governments.  And on a question of politics Will said how he would vote for Labour if only they were more honest about their proposed government. 

“If they had said ‘We’ll be poor for ten, twenty, thirty, hell, a whole generation, we’ll stop buying iphones from China and stop consuming the shit out of everything but everyone will be equal’ then I’d vote for it but to think it can get everything it wants is dishonest”.  

A question from someone in a housing association for drug addicts told how he was having to leave the property because the association has calculated that it will not make enough profit.  To which Will said with disgust, and worry, of how poorly people like this man and himself (Will Self was a drug addict for twenty years) will be treated and are treated shows how badly the market based system has encroached on our moral ability to look after each other as everything has to make it’s own way without central government support.   

The Grass Arena by John Healy is recommended by Will.  A good book if you want to understand the nature of addiction.   

A weighty evening yet an enjoyable one, a happy one where a major writer gave his thoughts about the concerns of the day and also a sad one where our group of around thirty or forty people felt just as ignored to by most people as the homeless he was talking about.  

But the difference we can all make to those who are less fortunate and are struggling their way though life can make all the difference.  I have started asking the names of those whom I give money to as a beginning of a friendship that may one day be as useful to me as it is to those without homes or family.

If you wish to donate anything to the SOS Bristol project the website is here for their crowd funding site: 

https://www.fundsurfer.com/project/bristol-rough-sleeping-partnership 

Will Self's new book 'Phone' is out this Thursday, 25th of May.