Jo; after our walk in the Garden of Zion,
Her sacrifice gave me breath
Void of hate, void of fear
She never succumbed to the drug
That I, in the garden, touched.
Jo; after our walk in the Garden of Zion,
Took my hand in hers,
I sang the song of disease
As she ran my palm over her breast,
And without the lust of Eden,
She left me to tempt another.
It’s a time warp this place, a black hole.
In here, time is lost.
There’s no clock on the wall to prompt movement
no hands to direct you home.
Your dinner sits cold on a cracking plate, as the
lonely pace the floor, awaiting the beer-breath kiss
and clumsy grope goodnight.
It’s like the land that time forgot, this place.
Fossils from a prehistoric age
embalm themselves in pints of amber nectar.
Like caged rodents, they sniff around,
searching for boredom breakers.
Their nicotine fingers lay to rest in the
venomous, brimming trays.
They chew on fatty rinds and
wish they were somewhere else.
It’s like a drug, this place.
Imprisoned in the four walls, they grope
for wooden cues -the emblem of The Man.
The mossy table is their grave.
Hours disappear as they
smack shiny balls into darkened pockets,
praying for the glory of victory.
In here, they can be champions.
The walls, colour of cancer, bear scars of a
thousand misjudged battles.
Ale soldiers blindly throw their mini spears,
missing the enemy one by one.
Wounded, they stumble back to
the wooden pews, seeking solace in toxic optics.
It smells like a coffin, this place.
Crumbling skeletons of the glory years line
the dusty shelves and lurk in cobwebbed corners.
A stuffed trout, its glassy eyes staring,
watches over its hapless congregation.
Tug Wilson and Herbert Slade pose, fists clenched,
ready to fight their way out of their glass prisons.
But, they too are trapped in this black magic place.
Paget, frozen in time, stares out from his wooden frame.
His Mecca now a breeding-ground for disease.
It’s a time warp, this place.
A black hole.
The Paget Arms, inspired by a pub in Loughborough, was published in Speaking Words: Writing for Reading Aloud (CCC)
It’s the beat. The rhythm. The pulsing. It throbs. It gets in your head. Makes your skull vibrate. Makes your brain wanna squeeze through your eye sockets and join the party. The sweat. The heat. Makes me horny as a dog with two dicks; makes me wanna fuck. The grinding. The glistening skin. Makes me wanna lick it. Taste it. Taste you. Lick you. Consume you. Drink you up. Every drop. Inhale you. Breathe you in. Suck you into me. You know what? At this precise moment, I love you. Let’s make our own music, yeah? Get lost in the pounding. Lay your melody over me and we’ll make a masterpiece.
You know, they said I wouldn’t make it, yet here I am. Dancing. Laughing. Living. Seven months lying flat on a bed, metal twisting out of my bones. Seven fucking months. A bed bath was the closest thing I got to a wank. I was reborn in that bed and this, this beat, this is my first gasp of air. Oh yeah, Mummy, this is the start, the beginning. There’s no going back now the music’s started. This is it. Once upon a time, they said I wouldn’t be here. But I am. Fucking look at me now. I’m here. Dancing. If you’re not dancing, you’re dying.
Can you feel it? The boom, boom, doof, doof of that bass throbbing in your veins. Filling your arteries with the sound…the sound…the sound of the past, the future, the here and fucking now. I want to bottle this moment. Bottle it and sniff it, take it in, perk me up like poppers. The heat rippling through me, tickling, trickling through my veins, over my flesh, making my brain pulse. Goose bumps, bubbling across my skin, keeping my hairs on end. Makes me feel alive.
Christ, that sound…that sound…that sound of the over, under, bend-over-ground, sound as a pound of flesh. Bodies mesh. A full on sesh that I never want to end. Not now. Not ever. Never. Everlong the throng of the crowd dancing to the beat. Never forget that we were here. Cut it with a knife, the buzzing electric. I’m gonna skip the light fantastic and click my heels three times. I heard the death bell chime, but I fucking ignored it. I’ve soared through the sky and dropped through the black into forever. But that was then. This is now. I wanna be in this moment until the light fades, the tunnel darkens. Because this is the dawn, the scorn, the fucking horn and porn of life. Right here, playing out in the beat. I’ve got a stiffy. I’ve got a stalk on the size of the empire state. I can’t wait; I need to fuck. I need to fuck to keep this rhythm going. If I’m not dancing, I’m dying. Please. Just one more time. I’m not high, I’m just alive. Still. Baboom, baboom, baboom; the beat, it pumps to the rhythm of my heart. I can’t stop now. I’ve danced so much I can’t feel my legs. Listened so long, I can’t hear your words. But I know you’re there. Watching. Don’t pull the plug or flick the switch, keep my beat going. Because you know what? At this precise moment, I fucking love you.
Beat was produced as part of ‘Ave It at the Old Vic Tunnels in July 2011, and published in Hearing Voices (October 2011)
Goodbye Darling
Blind as I am
To the sense I had of wanting,
I loved those little pictures.
How it seizes upon one,
Dream after dream,
So depressed and restless.
Oh, how I wished
We’d brushed aside all that-
The sense of wanting to tell.
The longing and the comfort
Was part of all I did,
And, again, I thank you.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s letters to Dora Carrington.
So, it’s New Year again, is it? It only feels like yesterday that I was slumped in front of the TV with a flaccid ha
ggis on my lap, wishing Jools Holland would choke on his excessive saliva and do us all a favour. Is it just me, or is New Year one of the most anti-climatic, disappointing nights of the whole year? I’ve had more exciting leg cramps than the tosh we’re confronted with on an annual basis.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few memorable New Year’s. 2009 was a cracker; I drunkenly pole danced in the local Yates’s, left with a handbag full of chicken drumsticks and awoke the next morning with a bruise on my thigh that looked like Elvis . Or 2006 – the year when I spent the whole night putting sausage rolls in people’s shoes when they weren’t looking, and carved my name into a giant brie. The millennium was pretty good as well; I watched my brother piss on people’s car door handles, whilst his mate repeatedly kicked a tree.
So, will 2011 be a winner? Let me asses the options:
Maybe I could combine all four? I’ll pop to the pub, down a pint of tramp’s piss and add my own sanitary wear to the bog buffet; I’ll post a pic on Twitter of my boobs smeared in haggis; and then head to my friend’s place just in time to pour vodka on my eyeball and snog Jeff from next door on the stroke of midnight. Perfect.
Happy fucking New Year, everyone. Make sure you lubricate yourself well; I hear 2012 is planning to take us all hard and dry.
This is my gift to you all. Merry Fucking Christmas – a monologue I wrote a few years back, which has since been produced for radio. When I get my act together, I’ll publish an audio version of it too. I hope you enjoy it…
I hate Christmas. I’m not talking about a mild dislike here. I’m talking full on fucking loathing. I hate baubles, brandy and Bing Bastard Crosby. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it because I had an unhappy childhood or because I think the ‘true religious meaning’ has been lost, oh no, I hate it because of one man. Good ol’ Santa, St. Nick, Kriss Kringle, Papa Noel, Father Bloody Christmas. And do you know why I hate him? Because he stole my husband.
Every December for the past four years it’s been the same. Dick leaves his early retirement to dress up in a stupid red suit and pretend to be Santa. He’s always been adamant that he’s a ‘serious actooor’, so for the whole of December I have to put up with him practicing his ho ho ho’s, whilst I have to pretend that I actually give a shit about his Christmas career.
When I first met him down the local, he told me he was an actor, so obviously I thought he was a poof. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I did eventually find out what type of acting he did, it was too bloody late coz I was already up the duff and halfway up the aisle. You see, Dick isn’t your ordinary type of Santa. Oh no. Put it this way, if he was in the
Debenhams Christmas Grotto he’d be arrested, the stuff he gets up to. He’s not for the kids, my Dick…he’s a triple x-rated porno Santa. Well, he used to be anyway- he quit the business after a messy Come Doink With Me experience involving a German and a plate of her bowel movements.
He was very successful before he retired, though, in fact you may have seen him in films such as: Edward Penishands; Shaving Ryan’s Privates; Lord of the Cock Rings; Bride of Wankenstein? No? Anyway, he’s got a very big fan base, so to make us a bit more cash for Christmas, he makes a one-off festive special. So whilst I’m here looking after the bloody kids, he’s dressed up as Santa, porking a load of trollops. But his job has never really bothered me that much, you know. Honestly. You see, I’ve always classed myself as a ‘doggy position’ kinda girl – you know, a little bit dirty but nothing too pervy. I’m not frigid or nothing, in fact I think I’m very open minded, but Dick…well… he’s something else. He’s all butt plugs and nipple clamps, not my cup of tea at all.
Now don’t get me wrong, ‘cause I do love my Dick, I wouldn’t have stuck around for fourteen years if I didn’t, but he’s not a great looker. In fact, he looks a cross between Ron Jeremy and John Prescott – kinda half-man, half-toad with a fat stomach, podgy, sweaty hands…mullet. But of course, his success doesn’t lie in his looks, does it? It’s all about what he’s got in his pants, and the only way I can describe that, ladies, is ‘butcher’s knob’ – big and fat, like a Cumberland sausage. It’s just a shame he doesn’t use it on me more often. But, I suppose it’s a bit like if you work in a chip shop all day, the last thing you’re gonna want for your tea is a battered sausage.
He’s had more sex with more women than you can imagine. In fact, I’m surprised his willy hasn’t dropped off by now. But, I don’t mind. Honest. What I do mind, though, is how these Christmas specials take over my life. As a ‘serious actooor’, he takes his part very seriously and he spends weeks getting into character. And of course it’s not just his ho ho ho’s he has to perfect. He has to make sure his little elf’s up to the job as well. So if it’s not bad enough that I hardly ever get laid, when I do it’s just a bloody rehearsal for him. I feel like a fucking fluffer. It’s so boring and it always starts of the same. I sit on his lap and he asks me if I’ve been a good girl and I have to say, “Oh no Santa, I’ve been a very naughty girl and I don’t deserve any presents this year. What I really deserve is a damn good spanking.” As you can see, the script is really crap this year. Carry On films have got nothing on this tosh. Oh, it’s full of all the classic Christmas innuendos like, “Come here and empty my sack”, and “Oh Santa, stuff me like a turkey!” But, I don’t mind. Honest. Because he comes home to me, right? I’m the one he cuddles at night, right? I’m his wife.
Will you do me a favour, though? If you wake up on Christmas morning with a copy of ‘Santa’s Cumming’ starring Dick Upper in your stocking, please spare a thought for me. Whilst you’re tucking into your Christmas pud and listening to the Queen’s speech, I’ll be sat at a table full of slags he’s shagged. I’ll have to be all nice and friendly when all I wanna do is scratch their eyes out. Because, you know what? I do mind. Honest.
It’s three days before Christmas and, despite us agreeing to buy minimal gifts this year, the Yuletide Panic has descended. I’m frantically elbowing small children in the face as I force my way through the Christmas crowds of Grotford, searching for festive tat to pad out the measly offering of gifts I’ve already purchased. For me, it’s all about quantity over quality. BHS could be selling a frozen shit on a stick and I’d probably buy it right now.
Having kicked a granny in the shins and headbutted a toddler in my desperate panic to get within arm’s reach of the nearest shelf of festive pap, I snatch the first two things that grab my attention. What do I end up with? A novelty apron with giant tits on it and puncture repair kit. A fucking puncture repair kit. I don’t even know if they have a bike. It was a toss-up between that and a ceramic cock with a Santa’s hat on it.
Now, I could pop in to the middle-class warmth of M&S and buy a novelty reindeer torch with a built in compass for a fiver. But who wants to spend that on something that you know will end up in a bedside drawer for the rest of eternity; something so crap that it’s not even worth regurgitating as next year’s Secret Santa gift. At least my cheapo stocking fillers can be thrown in the bin without a real sense of guilt. I avoid the comforting glow of John Lewis and M&S and head for the high street, where a plethora of bargain basement stores awaits.
You see, this is what happens in a recession. The boutiques have been replaced with 99p stores. The independent craft stalls selling handmade gems of wool and wicker have been replaced with diamante Hello Kitty crap, shipped over from China. Even the local bakers has been replaced with a Greggs (now, I love a sausage roll as much as the next person, but I prefer mine to made at the hand of a pork-master, not a processed ball of scrotum and lips.)
The empty high street stores have been replaced with a new breed of retailing – the pop-up shop. Poorly made vice-girl garments line the windows on mannequins that are always missing body parts and have a facial expression akin to being buggered by a donkey. The allure of the 1990s garage music blaring from the pop-up mobile phone stores is enough to make me want to pluck out my eyes and stick them in my ears. And that’s before I’ve even seen their chav-vom line of Ed Harvey iphone covers filling the shelves. There is always a whiff of desperation with these havens of retail shite – buy your crap now, as the shop will be gone next week, once they’ve sold their last sweat-shop pashmina.
I will be eternally baffled by one such shop in Grotford that is selling not only cheap Christmas tat and children’s toys with loose parts that pose not only a choking hazard, but are an insult to any child with even the tiniest ‘shit-toy detector’, but also does a fantastic line in guns. And sex toys. “Would you like an 14 inch Pussy-Punch dildo to go with your Santa mug, Madam. It’s only £1?” Oh, go on then, it’ll make a wonderful addition to Grandma’s stocking.
I’m still buzzing from the fantastic production of Millionaire at Hertford Theatre over Easter weekend. I was commissioned to write Millionaire by Mayhem Theatre Arts; an exceptionally talented group of performers.
The musical centres on Stella, a factory-worker who is bored and frustrated with how her life is going. Having spent her whole life living in a grim Northern town, she dreams of swapping her mundane existence for one full of glitz and glamour. Her dreams come true when she scoops £32 million in a triple-rollover lottery draw and a production company make her the star of her own reality show. But does she know what she’s letting herself in for?
Mayhem Theatre Arts is a multi-talented organisation and Millionaire was written to showcase the skills of the performers to the best of their ability. With a cast of over fifty people and featuring music and dances to suit all tastes, the show aimed to include something for everyone. Mark Neville did a cracking job of directing the show; god knows how he found the energy to also be in it as well!
Around 800 people came to see the show and I’ve heard nothing but great feedback about the spectacular performances. Alison Latchford was the perfect leading lady both on and off stage, and captured Stella’s personality perfectly. Tara May (who was also MD) put in a memorable performance as Selina, the bitchy diva who makes life difficult for all those around her. Tara’s rendition of Queen’s ‘I Want It All’ will long be remembered.
Louis Purves and Alison Latchford’s version of Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ has been chosen by many as the highlight of show. It was absolutely note-perfect and sung with such tenderness, that there weren’t many dry eyes in the house!
Dave McEwan, Del Parcell and Mark Neville all put in fantastic comedic performances as Max, Vince and Mr Frumble. Dave and Del’s rendition of ‘Let Me Entertain You’ did just that, and Mark’s dancing was hilarious (whether intentional or not!)
As for the dancers, Nicole May did a sterling job of choreographing and managed to include a vast range of styles. From tap to street, Millionaire had it all! Andy Barke and the Street Dance troupe were are real crowd-pleaser, wowing the audience with their perfected routines. The audience were in awe of Sean Ball and Michael May running up walls and doing back flips, and gasped when little Grace Neville was being swung round at death-defying speed.
Seeing the Millionaire characters come to life is one of the most incredible feelings I’ve ever had. The cast did my words justice and did themselves proud. I can not wait to work with them again in the future, and already have an idea for next year’s show…
Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke 