Ghost Town

Visual artist Issam Kourbaj and I are currently enjoying 30 seconds' fame after being featured in a Cambridge University Newsletter article on ghosts. The piece, which is also being printed in the Cambridge Evening News, is illustrated by Issam's haunting photos of the city, taking using camera obscura.

The article marks the publication of two ghostly volumes by Oleander Press, the first a set of supernatural tales from Jesus College and the second a collection of ghostly fiction by a former Chaplain of King's. It's a spine chilling read... though, I must confess, I'm not convinced by the article's claim that Christ's Pieces is a disconcerting place to be:

"On a misty November evening, with the perimeter trees masking the city’s landmarks, it’s hard to navigate the criss-cross of paths..."

The only times I've got lost on Christ's Pieces have been after a lock in at The Champion of the Thames, when I could have happily wandered round in circles all night...

Seasonal Terrors

As the pubs begin their annual tirade, and the Saturday night streets of Cambridge fill with women in tinsel-trimmed boob tubes and Santa hats, it's time to face the long countdown to Christmas again. Scarred from too many winters working in pubs where 'Santa Baby' played on loop all day long and the stalwart drinkers started December with a seasonal arm-wrestling match (repeated with gusto throughout the month), I've usually had about enough merriment and mince pies long before Christmas eve.

Luckily, this year December also means the opening of Robert Lloyd Parry's show 'A Warning To The Curious' at the Corpus Playroom in Cambridge. He'll be re-telling one of M.R. James' finest tales from Dec 14th to Dec 19th, and it's not to be missed: http://www.nunkie.co.uk/

And, of course, no Christmas would be complete without a cynical marketing ploy, so I suppose this would be my cue to remind you that a copy of my pamphlet 'A Pint For The Ghost' might make a good stocking filler. To be frank, it'd make a rubbish stocking filler, being the slender volume that it is. But if you're as bad at wrapping presents as I am, you'll find it reassuringly square and unchallenging.

Or, if you prefer, you may be able to own 'A Pint...' on cd by the time Christmas comes to town. Neil and I spent this weekend recording the stories and poems from the show, with a huge amount of help from Ian Cartland, who is currently editing the material into a proper recording. If we're pleased enough with the results, you may soon be able to buy a CD featuring new music by Sam Genders, as well as my ramblings and Neil's sinister tones.

Finally, in the spirit of festive cheer (or seasonal boredom) I'll be doing my own ghostly 'Twelve Days of Christmas' here on the blog, posting a different, new ghost story or poem on the site every day between Christmas day and January 5th. So if you can't afford an advent calendar, look no further...

Go forth and be merry.

A tale told by an idiot

Of all the quotes that abound about life being a stage, Shakespeare still gets the biggest thumbs up from me for saying:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

On Sunday night, above a pub in Camden, I ended up strutting and fretting in equal measure. Having never even attempted to act before 'A Pint For The Ghost', I somehow found myself on a stage in front of a packed house, pretending to be a grumpy Yorkshireman.

How did all this sound and fury come about? Last year, I wrote a short play 'Careless Torque' about two climbers, trapped in a mountain hut. Here's a trailer for you. Imagine a gravelly voiced American bloke who makes a trip to the offy sound like the end of the world:

United by boredom in the northern town where they grew up, Niall and Jackson became partners in crime as teenagers - bunking school to climb on the rock outcrops of the Peak District. Ambition took Jackson to university, but kept Niall at home, labouring for cash and taking risks with extreme climbs. Now, with Jackson about to start a job in London and give up climbing for good, the pair have decided to reunite for one last adventure: a dangerous route on the north face of Mont Blanc. But when a blizzard traps them in a small mountain hut in Chamonix, they find themselves with nothing but each other, and their separate versions of a past that both have struggled to forget...

This would all have been well and good, except that, following an unfortunate turn of events, I found myself without any actors just three days before the performance.

My first thought was to go to Wetherspoons, find a pair of blokes propping up the bar and drag them to a London stage. But even the drunks in Cambridge sound posh, and my characters were meant to be northern. After a manic afternoon of bribery, blackmail, treachery and corruption, I was rescued by Simon Perkins, a fine actor with a good line in Barnsley dialect. Five minutes on the phone to him convinced me that I was talking to Ian McMillan. I was sold.But the cast was still only half complete. With the clock ticking, there was no other option: I'd have to play the part of twenty-something lazy and feckless Jackson myself.

Some of the exchanges between Niall and Jackson certainly took on a new dimension:

JACKSON: I’m freezing my bollocks off.

NIALL: What bollocks?

Indeed.

It's also worth pointing out that Niall (referred to throughout the play as 'a whippet) was being played by the tallest man I've ever met in my life.

Did we get away with it? Who knows. But we certainly had a laugh along the way, and I've learned a lot about performance which should feed back into 'A Pint For The Ghost'. You can read more about Sunday's shenanigans here.

To Brum and back

Happy Halloween to you. It's been a busy week in the life of 'a pint for the ghost'. On Tuesday, Neil, Patrick and I dug out the pint glasses and fake whisky again and headed up the motorway to Birmingham to perform at a book festival in the central library. Birmingham is full of spectres. According to the local paranormal investigations team, there's a ghost in the Three Tuns pub that likes to stroke people's hair. So it was with trepidation that we set up our stuff in a darkened theatre and got ready to take to the stage again.

There was definitely some sly spirit at work: the stairs seemed intent to leg Patrick up, and I kept breaking glasses. Despite my clumsiness, we survived and made an executive decision to use real beer on stage instead of the evil concoction Super Malt (which has been giving me nightmares since June). It was very interesting to perform in a less intimate venue than the setting of the Hotbed festival, and we discovered theatres are possibly not the natural habitat for the landlord and his ghosts. Nonetheless, it was a great experience. And none of us got our hair stroked.

On Friday, the pamphlet was launched in style with readings from some fine poets (including a pub crawl with Michael McKimm and Tim Wells' encounter with a goth on the bus) and music courtsey of Gareth's ipod. Ta, Gareth! And if that weren't enough excitement for one week, you can now listen to the landlord's stories from 'A Pint...' online at Short Story Radio. The tales are read by Keith Drinkel, who played Liz McDonald's boyfriend in Coronation Street years ago, as well as appearing in the comedy series 'I Didn't Know You Cared'. Find a dark room, light some candles, pour yourself a dram, and click this link.

Freaky Friday

There's no rest for the wicked. Today, Neil, Patrick and I are off to Birmingham Book Festival to perform a scaled-down version of 'A Pint for the Ghost' in the West Midlands. Then, tomorrow, I'm making the long journey to Barnstaple to perform a few poems from the show, amongst other work, for Apples & Snakes. Luckily, I've got some good reading matter, having purchased a book with the intriguing title 'Michael Jackson's Beer Companion' in London on Sunday. I can't find any evidence that it's by the late pop star, but it makes for an interesting read...

The week finishes with the launch of my tall-lighthouse pamphlet 'a pint for the ghost' on Friday 30th (the night before Halloween) upstairs in the spooky Betsey Trotwood pub, Farringdon. Joining me on stage will be John McCullough whose fantastic tall-lighthouse pamphlet is appropriately named 'the lives of ghosts', Michael McKimm whose first collection 'Still This Need' is full of haunting poems, and Tim Wells, whose cracking poems need no introduction and often feature that fine institution, the pub. We'll be taking to the mic from about 8pm, so please come and join us at The Betsey.

If you can't make it for Friday's merriment, but you'd like a copy of the pamphlet, you can get one online here. But you can't get a pint online, or try one of the Betsey's famous whiskies, which make the perfect companion to ghost stories!

Whisky: a friend in need

I was performing in Soho last night, and I asked the crowd whether there were any whisky lovers in the audience. It hit me immediately that it’s hard to be a true ‘lover’ of whisky, because I’ve come to regard it as a long-standing, shit friend - the kind who legs you up in the street, steers you into embarrassing conversations and nicks twenty quid off you on a Saturday night. The sort of friend you stay mates with all the same, because no matter how much they abuse you, they’re always there when you want a good weep.

Over the course of our acquaintance, my fair-weather friend has encouraged me to spend an hour trying to get into my neighbour’s house instead of my own (“but I DO live here officer!”), pushed me headfirst over a garden wall and convinced me that The OffSpring’s ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ is an excellent choice of karaoke song. But whisky was also there the night I sat by a pitch black canal with no company except a moon as bright as a lamp, and the time I stood on Birchover rocks in the snow, so I keep reminding myself that we’ve had a good innings.

And, in defence, whisky isn’t the kind of mate who rings you up the morning after the night before to give you an earful about what a twat you made of yourself (wine can’t resist popping round to shriek: “but you MUST remember dancing on the pool table…”). It preserves a blissful nonchalance, almost as if nothing happened at all.

It was my friend Alastair who introduced us, at a party. He’d known whisky for years, didn’t have a bad word to say. It was only later that I found out people had been slagging her off: I heard some bloke called Logan Pearsall Smith (erm, obviously, I know a lot of people with names like that) muttering that “whisky has killed more men than bullets.” Which is a bit harsh to be honest. And according to Ralph Emerson “as a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky.” Well, that depends very much where you work, doesn’t it Ralph? I used to sit at the reception desk of the Chesterfield nightclub Livingstones, and I was definitely calmer when I was up in the bar after closing time with a Famous Grouse than when I was downstairs in the cloakroom having to confiscate lollipop lady signs, large inflatable dolls and traffic cones.

And without whisky’s steady inspiration, I wouldn’t have written this poem from ‘a pint for the ghost’:

A dram for all the men I’ve never drunk with

Sigmund Freud refuses every neat Ardbeg
or soft Caol Ila swirled beneath his nose,

but Byron knocks them back in one, then winks
and taps his glass against the lacquered tabletop.

Beside me, Marx is dishing out full measures
of the sherry-finished, twelve-year old Ledaig

but Larkin’s nothing but a bitter man, he says,
he’ll have no truck with spirits.

I’ve brought them to my local, in the snug
armpit of Sheffield, where the landlord

doesn’t bat an eyelid if my wise companions
sometimes slip their guard;

pass fingers through their glasses, take a shortcut
through a wall to reach the loos. It’s Sat’dy neet

he says, there’s stranger folk in here than these.
And, after all, he’s seen the likes of me before as well,

he gently lifts them out of corner seats
past closing time; the women who arrive alone,

who murmur toasts into the air, who raise a glass
to men who’ve never answered them.

* * *

And, just for a laff, here’s my whisky top 5. Arguments, additions, free samples from distilleries all welcome…

5. Bushmills summat-or-other – I had it once and it was nice but I don’t know much more than that.
4. Bruichladdich – unpronounceable and brilliant.
3. Macallan – what a winter walk in the park would taste like.
2. Caol Ila 1996– stinks of cigarettes. As many of my best mates do.
1. 10 year old Ardbeg – the real deal.

Definitely not making the list is a bottle of whisky I once drank in Chesterfield, which was to Bells what Blue Shark is to Red Bull, and was possibly called something like Rings…

Deepest darkest London Bridge

Before I went to London Bridge to start the Shunt residency last week, a page from 'ghostweb' had already had me in stitches. 'Spirit energy', or the powers of photoshop? You decide...

Nonetheless, walking through Shunt lounge (pictured above!), the first sounds you hear are screams of terror from the London Dungeons. By night, the place is a gloomy maze of dark archways, eerie corners and green lights. Worse still, if you'd stumbled into the Vaults last week, you might have been ambushed by a terrifying group of apparitions: haggard, sun-starved, muttering. Yes, that's right, the most unearthly of species - poets in a bar.

The theme of our residency at Shunt was 'when no-one's listening', which strikes me as a ghostly topic in itself. The other performers all put me to shame with their inventiveness: poems featured an onslaught of paper aeroplanes, the voice of a drinker's liver, the subconscious mind of Dave and even the voice of God. My piece was about the things objects in the bar might say to each other when there's no-one around, and it's posted below, just for a laff...

While you weren’t listening...

I heard the glass
say to the tabletop:
I like the way you hold me.

I heard the table
answer back:
I like the way you feel.

The barstools
thanked the floor
for all the nights it propped them up

And though
I didn’t catch the floor’s reply
it sounded delicate

and I wondered
what the wind says to the trees outside
to make them swoon like that

and what it tells
the grass
to set it shivering,

or what it is
that’s spoken when you
press that bottle to your lips,

what passes there
between you
in that silent and repeated kiss

that seems to say
I’m here,
I’m listening.