Cafe Crashview

Here in the window of my café all is peaceful - Until wallop!
A silver van crashes up on the pavement in front of me, through the glass.
It judders to a halt and takes out a cash machine sign.
Inside is a 65 year old woman wearing a white wooly hat. She looks shocked.
Next I notice a flashing blue light behind the van.
My brain puts 2 and 2 together. Maybe the police car had been following her.
Had she panicked and pulled over recklessly, or did the police just happen to be here and spun around in pursuit?

Before she could get out of the vehicle, one of the blonde women traffic police was there holding her driver’s door and removing her car keys.
The driver smiled nervously as the second policewoman arrived with an enormous set of handcuffs jangling from her belt.
The police seemed to be assessing if the driver was drunk or simply inept.
They took details. Heads were shaken. Phonecalls were made.

No harm done it seems. It was lucky that there was no one on the pavement.
In the end, the police car drove off with the van driving following them. I think the driver had damaged a tyre as she bumped up on the kerb.
Maybe she was being led to a tyre garage.
Maybe she was a ‘would be ram raider'......
Maybe I should drink less coffee.

Sylvia Murphy and chips

I’m told it’s the best fish supper in town….
‘Never had Montpelciano in a chippie before.
(Can’t spell it even)
On my left is a bloke in clothes that Elton John would be proud of - complete with spangled glasses.
Sitting opposite him is ‘dufflecoat man’. (Ooooh. Watch it.)
There’s a queue for fish and chips as long as your arm.
I can see why.
I have lucked into a different world.
I’ve gone back to a Friday night forty years ago.
My waitress, Silvia, Is straight from a Shepperton movie, with her kindly ‘Loves’ and ‘Darlins’.
Hopefully the recession is good for this timeless institution……
more smiling faces than I’ve seen in a restaurant for a long time.
Anxious man - on phone talks about his Mum in hospital, exchanges a constant flow of pleasantries with Silvia.
Lady - with a cap that she’s had since the sixties, goes through her texts and awaits her cod.
She holds her cheeks and wonders what I’m writing about.

Mark Knopfler in Dunkirk

Dear Mark,

I just had lunch in a restaurant in Dunkirk on my way to the Channel Tunnel. It was run by your French double.

He chatted up a pair of 40 plus dyed blondes until they giggled and wiggled. He deftly crouched down to table level and whispered outrageous things in their ears. He then ‘shimmied’ across the restaurant and even mimed playing guitar to a James Brown record!

His staff were oppressed and under-dressed. (If a little overfed.)

He had a two-faced smile and regularly went out for cigarettes.

The steak and chips weren’t any more exciting.

Hope you’re well,

Love,

John.

Broken Bus

Roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up
For the sordid broken bus
The train line’s dead
You’ve got this instead
But it sure ain’t down to us.
Baldies, coughing Yugoslavians
Air hostess with perfect nylons
Camp in glasses
Punk in hat
Almost sleeping almost sat

Back behind me angry couple
Haven’t spoken.. he’s in trouble
Roll on Brighton, roll on bed
Mr.Marples must be dead.

How to treat your muse.

Picasso seems to have had seven significant muses in his life, the majority of whom came to a sticky end.
It is sometimes overlooked that his last wife had him exclusively for the best part of forty years.
She did however, kill herself after his death.
Would contemporary society tolerate a Damien Hurst blatantly engaging in an affair with another woman, if his partner was dying of consumption?
In our PC world a Tracey Emin would surely be lauded for keeping a boyfriend on a lead.

Surreal's alright

So high up the mountain
So low for a moment
So full of impatience
So heavily laden
So near to the door
So sure that it’s closing
So tempted to panic
So damn well imposing.

So close to fulfilment
So far from elation
So on the right track but..
So far from the station
So aware of the pressure
So scared of the heights
So squeeze me so squeeze me
Surreal’s alright.

Language Limitation

At the brasserie I sit and listen to 3 or 4 conversations in French.
It’s a bit like being dumb.
I can understand the gist of what they’re saying, but I can’t join in.
Words are precious to me.
My ability to interact in French is so limited.
I am actually ashamed.

“How am I?”
“Well… I’m fine thank you.”
“What would I like for lunch?”
“A chef’s salad and a small red, please.”
“What is Sarah doing?”
“She is having lunch with her mother.”

That’s it for me ..... until later.

“How’s your food?”
“Fantastic.”
“Where are you going now?”
“I’m going up the mountain.”

But what a waste.
I can’t let anyone how I feel.
I can’t ridicule Sarkozy's political arrogance.
More importantly, I can’t explain how the glorious Mediterranean sunlight balancing upon the top of the bombed-out 'deco' hotel, makes me feel glad to be a human being.

Extract 3 from 'The Reconciled'

Fleur : “Pete … We’re losing you!”
(Pete smiles..)
Pete : “I was just trying to remember the ‘Christmas Crunch’ Poem. It seems a bit irrelevent now.”
He turns to Max. The man who’s face seems to be permanently smiling.

Pete : “Max… Do you think that we will be able to see Jean-Claude Thackery tomorrow before I fly up to Paris?”

Max : “I’ll give him a ring…Or at least I’ll speak to his Missus.

It’s so difficult to pin him down … because he’s so bonkers! You realise he has virtually no contact with what we know as the real world.
Without his wife Veronique, he would be totally stuffed.
Do you remember the story I told you about him flying into Amsterdam to do an exhibition in The Hague?
Veronique was unable to go too because she had pleuresy.
He arrived…. then rode around on the Dutch railway network for a few hours, ending up in Rotterdam station. Fortunately Veronique was contacted when Jean-Claude tried to purchase a first class ticket to Prague with her credit card!”

Pete : “I remember." (Pause.)

Pont du Loup 09.02.09

Moving water on all sides.

A week of mountain rain has produced a fine free flowing legacy.
The river as wild as white horses – a rush of liquid wonder.
The magnificent sun over the Gorges accentuates the exotic perspective and produces a constant flow of gem reflections.

I remember her favourite phrase. “There Is no love without proof of love.”
(It’s better in French, but I can’t reproduce it here.)

Love must be lived. Not just the fundamental love between men and women and parents and children. Religions constantly refer to loving a God.

Loving the river, the sun, the glorious landscape, the glistening waterscape, the sound of the birds singing, the smell of this coffee, even the freedom to be sitting here right now is an inspirational experience if not a spiritual one. I certainly feel love, loved and enlightened without the restrictions of any religious formality.

Nice Snow Poem revisited in French 2009

Snowing on the sunny Cote
The folks are in a flurry
Cocooned up in their overcoats
Like rich old girls in Surrey
Minks and foxes, polar fleece
Are de rigueur in central Nice
I must alert the style police
And go in search of curry.

Il neige sur la Côte
Les gens ont froid et s'agitent
Emballés dans leurs manteaux
Comme des vieilles dames riches
fourrures, renard, lapin, polaires
sont de rigueur à Théoule-sur-Mer
Je dois alerter la police de la mode
Et aller à la recherche d'une boisson chaude.

Roll on Apocalypse - the Easyjet way.

Well before Global warming finally destroys the planet, the vast majority of humankind will have already have exterminated one another. Whenever you get too many people jammed into a tight space, especially if they are in a tense-making enviroment, there will be impatience and aggression leading to violence. I thoroughly approve of this situation. It will be the great leveller.

Before the world’s resources are used up there will inevitably be resource wars. Competition for control of fossil fuel resources has aready caused major armed conflict in the last twenty years and this is only the start of an apocalyptic phase.. Good I say. Good bad news for newspapers, better ratings for news TV, More news as entertainment.

The myth that there is enough food and resources to give every single human being a reasonable standard of living is complete hogwash. Even if this were true the life-comforting commodities are not distributed in the right places. We are a fundamentally selfish, unpleasant, self-destructive species. There is basically no hope for us whatsoever. Being delayed in Gatwick airport in the claustrophobic confines of Gate1 with the fellow passengers of Easyjet Fight EZY5069 to Nice, simply reinforces my scepticism.

DO YOU BELIEVE THIS? Don’t you get so irritated with the negativity exhuded by the majority of people who should be so grateful for their sheltered cosy existences? The so-called “Credit Crunch’ is the obsession and creation of predominantly middle class people who stand to pay slightly less on their mortgages, a little more for their electronic gadgets, lose out on a bit of their pensions and maybe find it a little more expensive to retire in France. They may drink less fine wine and In the most extreme of cases even lose their overpaid job and consider a real existence…. Let’s ditch this pathetic melodrama.
Roll on a mega material collapse. Viva humanity. BRING IT ON!

My 21st Century Thong

I saw the most 21st century thing,
A girl with a tattooed on thong.
Not silken, or cotton, or held up with string,
The concept of 'undies' undone.
It might save the laundry and ironing as such,
But increasing the number of holes in your crotch,
Is unnatural and doesn't appeal to me much.
It seems fundamentally wrong.

Flippant extract 2 from 'The Reconciled' draft

Our hero spent the last 2 minutes trying to think himself into the persona of a pot plant
to avoid detection and grisly death.
Look “I am a geranium! I am a geranium! I am a geranium!”
He said ... I can frighten away mosquitoes,
I make a passable addition to salads and…
I have never been up Morrissey’s bottom.
Leave that to the Gladys the gladioli.

At that moment a hairy brown monstrous arm smashed through the ceiling and attempted to crush our hero like a ripe plum would be squashed between the thighs of an Austrian lady downhill skier…

Poem for John Mortimer

Brother John is moving on
To where the greatest wits have gone
Defender of the justly lewd
There wont be any more like you

Oxford born and Oxbridge raised
Grand master of the courts and stage
Divorce and murder innuendo
Silk success Chianti Cocteau

“No brilliance needed in the law”
His father blind before him saw
Common sense and fingernails
Is all that being ‘brief’’ entails

He circumnavigated Dad
His muse and literary launching pad
He found the secret of divorce
And championed sexual intercourse

He stood accused of flippancy
Became his Rumpole legacy
Author playwright at the bar
How I wonder where you are.

Extract from my 'Ergo Eggers' S.O.C (revisited)

Seriously short of short short stories. Story writer, poet and starving scribbler of English descent (falling over so much less these days) will cover anything you like from Credit crunch to Sunday lunch, Gordon Brown to Eva von Braun, Karl Marx to stripey underpants, Stockhausen to Waterman, Raymond Briggs to Raymond Chandler, Botticelli to vaseline, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Beck to Becks, black is black I want my country back. Damon Albarn to colonic irrigation. Malaria, TB, asylum seekers, gold diggers, Mafia in Brighton, yappies, tramps and thieves, vast numbers of welded on body parts - spare a little Cher for me. But let's cut to the chase here. The point, the reason, the focus, the strap line. There are too many men in my life - to one I'm a husband and the other I'm a wife (and they both eat shredded wheat). Words, words, what are words worth? I wandered lonely as a goat, that dug some holes in Basingstoke. Alas, poor Shakespeare, I knew him well enough to know that he had so much trouble writing The Tempest at the same time as undergoing sex change surgery. Evidence? But should suffer a sea change into something rich and strange…I'm a qualified clinical psychologist you know. I can create problems for anyone. Celebrated celibates and celebrities a speciality. Hey, we're all going on a summer holiday! I specialise in free-flowing extrapolation of overheard snippets of real lives of passing strangers. (Overheard not two minutes ago.) "Do you know what Rosie does when she gets excited?". Hmmmm. Now is Rosie a cute little girl? Or a one-legged Lituanian opportunist pole dancer? The answer must be that when Rosie gets excited she either 1) emits green projectile vomit in all directions a la Carrie Fisher, or 2) transforms her freshly acquired copy of The Spectator into a more than acceptable didgeridoo. Rosie looms into view and rumbles past pierced, pissed, lewd and tattooed. (My illusions shattered.)

Midlife Social Intercourse (In the snow)

Today 12 cm (of snow) stopped almost half the UK population from working.
In fact, almost half the population of the UK were confined in my cafe where I was trying to write dialogue. I was surrounded mainly by women who were mainly younger than me.

And why not?

It reminded me of this poem.
(And remember..... even the snow is Gordon's fault.)


Women of a certain age
Brunching on a winter's day
Coiffured hair and subtle colours
Divorced of course, unmarried mothers.

When 'Girls night out' turns into lunch
Organic takes the place of wine
And therapy the place of sex
That's what the modern world expects.

And as they congregate to go
The 'ipod touches' out in force
The dates put in, the ebb and flow
Of Midlife Social Intercourse.

Extract 1 from 'The Reconciled' draft

(He gets up in the carriage…and makes as if to sing. Then changes his mind and sits down again.)

“I’m not dead… I’m not dead
There’s just a little alien growing in my head
We’ve poisoned it with chemicals
And zapped it very hard
I get hallucinations and I’m permanently scarred.
I get hallucinations and I’m permanently scarred.
I’m doing lots of things… that I’ve never done
I think I’ll shove a gladioli halfway up my bum
The business-lady opposite
Would get a nasty shock
If I took my freezing Nokia
And shoved it up her frock! ……..Weeeeeeee”
(Pete laughs to himself – someone has to)

His mobile phone rings… (A beautiful piece of classical music)
He answers it.
Its his agent.

“Hello Petal. “

Ans : “Hello Luvvie. .. Do you want to show off for me next week?”

“Hmmmmmm.. Maybe. Where?”