Man From Wedlock

I already had it planned out in my head when I woke up.

It was sort of a Python-esque song/poem/rhyme about the chances of meeting anyone, in the context of the age of the Universe. I wrote down some key words to help me remember:

·         Infinitesimal

·         Incredible

·         Supernova-born

·         You and me

·         9 dimensions

·         Extraordinary

·         Gravitational waves

It was going to list all the coincidences and unbelievable sets of chance that:

a)       The physics of the universe exist in the way they do, so

b)      Elements were fused and exploded and planets and stars and gravity and all that sort of did whatever, and

c)       Earth was born

d)      Eventually life appeared

e)      Loads later humans came along

f)        All our ancestors passed on their DNA in a very specific and aleatory way, so

g)       Eventually I was born and you were born, separately, and knowing nothing of each other, until

h)      We led our lives making choices that we didn’t know were choices that would lead us to meet, because any single different thing may have meant we wouldn’t get on the same train, or the same carriage, or the same set of seats, but we did and we talked and then parted, but

i)        I went back to get your number, because I felt brave and I never felt brave, and

j)        We went out, and

k)       Eventually got married and all that.

It was going to be a sort of faux-epic, which started with the size of the universe and – a bit like one of those graphics on Google Earth – zoomed right in, right in from the Oort cloud through the outer planets toward Mars past Mars toward Earth through the lovely swirling cloud cover through the skies right down right down to Merseyside to a moving train that we both got on randomly and the camera, the poem, would centre on us just laughing, me with my big book of Ideas and you with paint under your fingernails and brown fingers from doing make-up in a school play, and it was going to be a cinematic type of poem but one that knew it was a bit silly and one that was celebrating the chance, I spose, of love and all that, in an infinite and ineffable universe, a universe that even the cleverest bastards have no idea what constitutes 95% of it.

I was going to end this poem by re-listing all the coincidences and stellar explosions and decisions to take the slightly later train than I planned and all of that. It was going to point to how incredibly unlikely all this was that brought us together in the same lifetime, let alone the same city, the same train, the same language and the same joke, and it was going to end with the last line:

 All this considered, me not taking the bins out yet really isn’t worth having a row about.

Which would have been sort of a mini-ha-ha sort of quite cute and a bit silly but maybe adorable and cheeky comment on life and all that.

Instead of all this, which I’d had planned so well in my brain’s hypnagogic state, I had to do prosaic, boring, mundane, annoying paperworky stuff. So I forgot the rhythms and the rhymes and the structure and even the tune I’d been singing it to when I was half-asleep. Trying to log in to websites, with credentials you know are absolutely spot on, but consistently being told the details are wrong, is a great way to kill poems or little stories or whatever snippets of creativity can be wrestled screaming from unwilling muses.

But maybe, maybe this was how it was meant to be too, and maybe this is a better way, or the real way, that these ideas and memories needed to be written down.

Because it all, actually, really, truly, did happen. 

Because stardust is magic.

Here is me reading two poems

couldn't work out how to embed it but here it is: HERE IS A VIDEOOOOO

Own up

Which lout has chucked dust in the calendar’s eyes

So the weeks wobble past, and the weekends are blind,

And the days drip and dribble?

Which new Luther has pinned up these strange proclamations

On shuttered shop windows? Morose intimations

Of virulent rabble?

Who has stolen the sound of the engines, replaced them

With finches and magpies and birdsong and plainsong

And indolent angels?

Who shrouded the playgrounds in velvet-fog silence

That choked up the classrooms and shushed up the cadence

Of break-time choirs’ giggles?

Is there anything sadder than boarded-up pubs?

All that ale turning sour in barrels and pumps,

When cocktails are curdled?

Who piled-up these market-stall skeleton shapes?

These metal bones rusting, their cloth bodies draped

Over nothing and no-one?

Was it you who threw salt in my eyes? Burned my face?

Can you see underwater? Make out the shapes

Of sharks sniffing blood?

If we ever emerge, blinking, out of this mire

Can we re-set the months and the days and the hours

Of March and of April?

Whilst the calendar’s blinded, we must get it done;

We must take back control of this non-time that’s come,

And sort out this muddle.

A New New Year’s Eve and we’ll work on the rest:

A couple of leap-months, make it a contest

To name them, and people

Will soon forget the louts, the Luthers,

the sound-thieves, the shushers.

The boards will come down

And the skeletons stir and yawn.

And the sharks.

Well.

They die if they stop
So,

I hope one day they will.

Come, friendly rains

Come friendly rains, come cold, come clouds!

The weather’s lovely out there now,

So bovine pricks will picnic out.

Storm over - stat!

Come, rains, and soak the hills and greens

To stop them filling up, obscene

With gits, with twits, with fools, with divs,

With mindless twats.

Mess up the mess they claim is fair -

A beach-trip here, a park-rest there -

As if the fucking virus scare

Is not for them.

And get the man whose barbecue

Is full of drinking wankers who

Are flouting the two-metre rule

Once and again.

But spare the knackered nurses, please,

Exhausted on their hands and knees

With cheap bin-bags for PPE:

It’s far from right.

It’s not their fault they’re in distress.

The Tories fucked the NHS,

And think applause will save their necks

On Thursday nights.

First it was Herd Immunity

They spoke of on the BBC:

And all those deaths in Italy?

Unfortunate.

But then the one with frizzy hair

Contracted it (from his au pair?)

You’ll bet he gets the best of care

Til it abates.

Come, friendly rains, come cold, come clouds

So picnickers won’t be around.

A long weekend means nothing now

So Isolate.

Your punchline is your own. Don't forget.

I always knew life was a

Bad

gameshow.

Weals of misfortune

turn

And we’re in

LOCKDOWN.

Play your cards wrong

And

Your temperature is

Higher

Not lower. Unlucky! You must

SELF-ISOLATE.

Maybe when, or if,

But mostly

When

This is all over

We’ll realise that

There’s no nobility in

Being kept in the red

And out of the black

Or that the prizes

We are promised

Are like Bully’s Speedboat:

Glinting guiltily and

Unattainably

Behind a curtain.

I always knew life was a

Bad

Sitcom.

It didn’t take much

Now we’re

All

Not going out.

Friends coming around

Seems half

A world away,

And the Royal Family

Sit on gilded sofas.

Democracy

My Arse.

Maybe when, or if,

But mostly

When

This is all over

We’ll realise that

When we vote this way

This is what can happen

And always does happen

Or that all of the jokes

Come from Westminster

And Eton-soused arseholes

And all of the jokes

Are on us

And always were.

I always knew life was like a

Bad

Action film.

Live and let die,

Die another day,

Death

Becomes

Us.

A glowering infernal

Pulp friction

Tent in quarantino.

Sliding doors of

The tube

Smushing in contagion.

Maybe when, or if,

But mostly

When

This is all over

We’ll realise that

It doesn’t matter

What glowing gold is in the suitcase

Because we’ll never have it.

Or that the stars

Will wink at the rich

And the taxes

That could have clothed

And fed

The world

Will pay for Elon and Jeff and

Richard and the rest

To escape gravity.

I always knew life was like a

Bad

Poem.

Quatrains that don’t scan.

Badly-formed couplets.

At all times keep two

Pentameters

Apart.

Cynghanneddau fler

Wedi greu gan

Gyfrifiadur

Neu, hyd yn oed,

Geiriadur.

Dim ots beth bynnag.

Maybe when, or if,

But mostly

When

This is all over

We’ll realise that

If we can just sing

And not care about notes,

Well, cliché it may be

But the sweetest melody

Is freedom.

Or that there are words

For everyone.

Nobody can steal your thoughts

Or loves

Or any of that.

Cause whether sonnets

Or clerihew

Or I don’t know what –

The miracle, the prize,

The last-second rescue

From the blaze

Are within us

And if we just can

Share

Then we can turn it all good.

Don't you agree?
That people

Are

Good?

Non-holiday solutions: Car Parking

Stuck at home? Cancelled holidays? No need to be downhearted with

Stay Put Car Hire and Parking

We will:

• ·         Pick up your car of choice from our car hire centres, handily positioned within our own car parks
• ·         Drive it to its own car parking space for the duration of your cancelled holiday
• ·         Retrieve it from the space and hand the keys back in to our 24-hour front desk

All at your convenience – and without moving from your sofa! Simply fill in our online booking form from the comfort of your own home, sit back and we’ll do the rest.

And on your now-irrelevant date of when you planned to return…

No need to wait in cold bus stops at midnight in Birmingham, shivering because you’re still wearing your holiday shorts with the misplaced optimism from a brief respite in the sun. We do it all. And you’ll be safe, dry and warm at home, drinking a sad cocktail of Pernod and Pepsi found in the back of the cupboard, and wondering if those wonderful beach days and sultry tapas evenings ever really happened at all. Because they didn't.

Choose from:

• ·         BMW 5 Series/Two weeks not in Magaluf/Manchester Airport: £250
• ·         Ford Zafira (5 or 7-seater)/10 Days All-Inclusive Booking Void at Disneyland Paris/Heathrow: £400
• ·         Suzuki Swift Hatchback/Foiled Long Weekend In Brussels/Leeds-Bradford Airport: £150
• ·         Landrover Discovery/Once-in-a-lifetime non-refunded cancelled round-the-world adventure/Cardiff Airport: £7,000

…and many more combinations from our website www.stayputcarhireandparking.com

Ask about our range of Classic Cars including 1963 Ford Thunderbird; 1970 Oldsmobile; 1948 Chevrolet Pickup Truck; KITT; and six different Batmobiles.

Now 10% extra! Newlywed special: 1939 Cadillac Stretch Limousine, bedecked in ribbons, white tyres, ice buckets and complimentary champagne, picked up from our central England warehouse – and driven lovingly into the on-site garage where it will be washed, valeted and cleaned during your now-moot diving trip to the Maldives. Now only £5,500 (previously £5,000)

Stay Put Car Hire and Parking – don’t just do something, sit there.

Stay Put Car Hire and Parking does not take responsibility for any losses accrued under any circumstances. All bookings are subject to a 20% gouging charge. You may not cancel at any time under penalty of FaceScar Derek visiting you at home with some handy lads. Cars may, that is to say, definitely will, differ from the examples provided which are for entertainment only.

AMWAT: 1876 (reprise)

I got a bit carried away moidering about my first 1876 game for the website interview I did. Rightly, I was asked to do something less... moidery. So I did. Here's the original answer, though, which puts some meat on the bones. Chomp chomp, mmmm moidering.

My first 1876 game was FC United, away. It was the first time in two years or so that I actually woke up with butterflies in my stomach. It was a feeling that I'd missed; a feeling that had been ripped from me, to be precise. It had been a horrendous time: no football, rootless, a part of me atrophying and feeble.

I was nervous, excited, apprehensive, disturbed by myriad thoughts: what if this wasn't it? What if this was going to be the same soulless, asinine crud that had been foisted on us of late? I didn't want to go, maybe. But I had to. A lift with the legendary Mike from Citizens' Choice, and off we drove to Manchester - where City had played so often. It was a kind of squaring of the circle I didn't know existed. I'd thought it was all over. But it wasn't, now.

All doubts were erased as soon as we got in that brilliant stadium built by FCUM. Moiderers, everywhere. Moiderers from Nantporth. Of course. Those that'd stayed til the bitter, bitter end times. Those that'd severed their link earlier and kept their sanity. And, beautifully, moiderers from Farrar Road. From the NPL days. Moiderers that had lost ... not faith, that's not the right word. Lost direction, maybe. Parted with the club for whatever reason along the way: maybe the leaving of the NPL in the first place 20 years ago.

Far from fairweather fans, too: these were programme editors, turnstile operators, tote sellers of the past. And now, decades of barren Saturdays later, they were back in the fold. The booze crew. The food crew. Greyer, maybe: we all were. But eyes shining with the sense that something was happening that was right. Righteous, even. A footy pie in one hand. A beer in the other. 

And I realised then exactly what it was that had been stolen away.

Football isn't a game, not really. 

What happens on the pitch is not actually important.

Well, it is, but it's not everything.

Winning games is nice and all.

But having a community, a family, a place to be, where the moidering flows freely and the songs make you laugh and you see people for the first time in 20 years and you pick up a conversation you never ended because there was a penalty at Farrar Road and you got distracted.

FCUM showed us what was possible. The welcome was incredible. The people, fantastic. The passion shared.

This was it. 

And we'd made it, ourselves. Those days and weeks and months and years of being isolated, feeling broken and bruised and alone: this was our burden and we turned it around. Anger, Bangor, is an energy. 

And the questions raged:

Who owns a club? 

What is a club?

The answer was simple.

It is the feeling you get when you are with your comrades, twelve nil down. The chanting, the encouragement to the players, the shared sense of dread, fear, acceptance, pride and belonging.

And most of all - the utter joy when a 17-year-old Benn Lundstram squeaks home your first ever goal. That moment - magnesium flares of emotion. The most beautiful goal there has ever been.

I will never, ever forget that moment; the day we got our club back. All those thousands of games at Farrar Road, at Nantporth, and away all over Wales and England; all those tears and disappointments and weird boardroom shenanigans, all the hours of crush barrier erecting, pre-season ground painting, programme editing, bad pies, great pies, tinned mystery meat burgers.

All of that, in the minds and memories of the fans: all that was encompassed in that one moment. The culmination of hundreds of hours of work behind the scenes by those who made this happen. The end of a nightmare and the continuation of Bangor's footballing dreams. 

Holy moly.

Merrytime Friends

Barry and Carrie

Decided to marry

And no more to tarry

So Reverend Parry

and Gary and Harry

and Larry were happy.

Berry and Ceri

From Dublin and Derry

Met up on the Ferry

With Generous Gerry

And got very Merry

on Perry with Terry.

Billy was silly

He’d dally and dilly

With Philly and Gilly,

So Jilly and Lily

Took Milly and Willy

To countryside hilly.

Bobby and Dobby

Were noisy and gobby.

Their favourite hobby

In the hotel lobby

Was teasing poor Nobby

And Robbie was snobby.

Buddy was muddy.

A true fuddy-duddy,

He never said ‘ruddy’

He never got nuddy

Unless it was Sundy.

Then bathtime was suddy.

So Barry and Carrie

and Berry and Ceri

and silly old Billy

and Bobby and Dobby

took newly-bathed Buddy

and Nobby and Robbie

and Philly and Gilly

and Generous Gerry

and Gary and Harry

and Milly and Willy

and Jilly and Lily

and Terry and Larry

to Reverend Parry

and they all got married.

Interview about footy

I got interviewed about footy. It is quite niche. It is here.