Wait, No - This Is What I Did On My *Actual* Holidays

I haven't been on holiday, on an actual, bona fide, you're-here-to-relax-not-to-do-work vacation, since I was in sixth form. This is partly because I'm very lucky to do a job that I enjoy, nay love, that sees me heading off to all sorts of interesting places, and a whole slew of festivals, and getting paid to do so. I often feel like I'm a bit on holiday. Even when I have to fill in applications or calculate tax returns, I rarely feel under the cosh because I largely get to dictate the terms under which I do them, I'm at home with a cup of tea and my own music, and it's in the service of stuff I care about (creative stuff and me), rather than marginally advancing the interests of a multinational insurance conglomerate.

But by the same token, I rarely feel like I'm totally off-duty. There's always work that can be done - right now I have a chapter of the next book that should have already been finished, I've got a new performance poem I should have learned, another I want to rewrite, and there are three uke tunes sans lyrics that I want to finish and try out in music sets. That's all stuff outside of the tasks that are taking up my day-to-day workload at the moment, and I feel a bit twitchy if I can't check my email multiple times a day, even on weekends. Let me make my position clear as an unmuddied lake sir - I'm not complaining. I feel very grateful that I get to lead the lifestyle I do and I wouldn't want to go back to office drudgery for the world. All I'm saying is, it gets a bit muddled, without a clear dividing line between work and play.

So anyways, on a whim, in fact, a super-whim, I ended up booking a four-day trip to Tuscany in August. Then I bought a book on Tuscany to find out where we were actually going, and if there was anything worthwhile there. Of course there was. (click on pics for big versions)

This is a detail from the plinth of a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Pisa. Garibaldi was a military commander who believed in universal sufferage, an end to the dominance of the Church, and the unification of an independent Italy. The Garibaldi biscuit was named after him, after he turned up in Tyneside in 1854 and acted all matey with the working classes, who saw him as something of a hero and gave him a sword. Garibaldis are pretty fucking blah biscuits if you ask me - only elderly misanthropes and the mentally subnormal would count them amongst their top five.

Yep. The Leaning Tower. And me doing a goofy clichéd posed like the soulless whore-ist I truly am. We flew into Pisa Airport, and it was a case of either deliberately ignoring the Leaning Tower for the whole time, or sucking it up and embrace our inner ersatz sightseers. The tower leans because the local soil it's built on is soft and silty - awesome for putting a tent up on, not so great for supporting a massive heavy cylinder. They actually corrected some of its lean a few years back, after fears it was going to topple over. Apparently it's now close to the angle it stood at in the nineteenth century. I'm not sure I care that much, but I was glad I went to see it. It looked pretty cool up close. Also there were tat stalls everywhere, and after some frankly disappointing encounters with souvenir vendors it was gratifying to see a decent range of proper genuine tat, often only tangentally related to the Tower, occasionally completely irrelevant, like big ass knives. 'Oh hey peach, I went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I brought you back this massive blade. Enjoy!'

Some of my favourite time was spent drinking and not attempting to achieve anything worthy at all. We camped in Marina di Pisa, which is a coastal resort area just outside Pisa, developed under Mussolini in the 30s and largely populated by retirees who bring their chairs out onto the street at night and sit and chat, staring out across the Mediterranean. And who can blame them?

There are some rocky beaches, then a whole series of cramped, sandy private beaches which you're supposed to pay to use. One belonged to the campsite, so we got to use that free. I want to tell you it was tacky and grim, but I had a lovely time. Sure, it made me appreciate how lucky we are in Britain to have some beautiful, expansive public beaches, but at the same time the blue, cloudless sky, the blazing sun and the warm, lapping ocean made me appreciate how lucky I was not to be stuck in Skegness. In the morning, the camping site staff would lug a big speaker down onto the beach, which promptly started blaring out pounding Eurodisco. Just what you need while you're dozing quietly - something to wake that nascent hangover fizzing in your cranium! I soon got over my dismay, however, when I realised that the music signalled the start of aqua aerobics. A girl from the site stood on the shore doing various punchy-clappy moves, while people in the sea faced her and tried to keep up. I joined in, even though I was pretty much the only male involved for most of it. Even though most of her moves looked suitable for the over-65s, I was struggling to keep pace after a while, perhaps because I was standing in chest-deep water, because I wanted to be behind most of the participants so they couldn't see me.

After seven each evening, staff rolled out matting and the beach became a boozy night spot. There was a cocktail bar up the top and lots of big candles. I really enjoyed getting pissed there, even if it was incredibly cheesy, the mood underscored by endless smooth ambient dance tracks with bizzarely literal lyrics pacing the ongoing reality like 'We're on a beach / the sun is setting / so warm and beautiful / it's the evening and we're here with each other'. I know. Fucking shut up and help me pour this Southern Comfort down my throat.

There were a whole messload of lizards in the campsite. This pic is of a baby one. They're very cute and amazing up close, but they move like shit off a greased shovel and I wouldn't have appreciated waking up with one skittering round the tent or gnashing at my exposed corneas. Not one bit!

So we did a day trip to Florence, and when we crossed over the bridge to south of the River Arno, we found this cluster of padlocks chained to the railings, as if they'd accrued there like weird barnacles. As far as I could tell, each padlock seems to have the name of a couple written on it. Perhaps they're sort of like carving your names into a tree - only shitloads of couples have done it now, so it's like a vast ungainly schmaltz orgy, with the original lovers buried corroding and forgotten beneath the ever-growing heap of new ones. Sort of like a metaphor for how we eventually forget about and in our turn are forgotten by everyone we've ever known or cared about, smothered by a procession of newer, shinier people and memories. That might not sound very romantic, but frankly, if your idea of love is a padlock with no key then you've already set the tone, you shambling co-dependent twatmunch.

Yeah so Florence had some architecture and art and all that jazz and some of the buildings were quite impressive. I was more about the ice cream, though - we hit up gelateri every day, if only to fight back against the intense heat. I had some awesome mango flavoured ice cream, and the Nutella cone I had was a super-strong choice that I feel proud of even as I relate it now. Also, one night in Marina di Pisa I got a delicious seafood pizza that was covered in fresh mussels. By the time I'd finished I had a big stack of shells next to my plate and I was beaming with replete contentment.

So yes, that is my first - and probably only - genuine 'What I Did On My Holidays' post of the entire year. I sweated lots, relaxed, drank too much Diet Coke, often felt deliriously happy, rode buses without tickets, bailed on a half-paid bar tab, and did a whole bunch of other stuff that's none of your goddamn business.

We Can't All Be Astronauts Launch Pics

These are some pics from the launch of We Can't All Be Astronauts. Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland, Steve Aylett and Salena Godden all did some terrific readings, and a good time was had by all. Pics courtesy of Dan 'Scoopmeister' Derrett.

Manchester, Friday Apr 3rd

This is me upstairs at Mother Mac's, the pub hosting the second of the two stand-up open mics I performed at on Friday.

And this is the heaving throng dutifully watching me as I took the previous shot. Look at them grinning. Their low entertainment threshold shall be the ruin of us all.

If you like, you can use this picture to test out your room-working skills. Imagine this is your view from behind the mic. Who do you reckon is going to be an easy sell? Who's going to be a tough nut? Whose left eye will you have to gouge from the socket with trembling index and middle finger, retching at the soft 'potch' noise as it pops free and drops into your lap? (click for a larger image)

The Start Of Open Season

Score: 0 out of 250
Photographer Status: Helen Keller
Job Classes -
Lv25 Performance Poet
Lv1 Stand-up
Lv1 Music

So, I started off on Thursday 2nd April in my current hometown of Cambridge, at Upbeat Open Mic at The Hopbine.


Up until a fortnight before, it had been held in The Zebra, but when the landlady decided she could draw more punters by putting on a more conventional night, the organiser, Alex Millar - AKA Alex Iamb - moved the entire thing across town.


I wasn't particularly nervous. It was a home gig, at a mixed discipline night that I expected would include a few shy poets reading off scraps of paper, some songsmiths busting out their latest ballad, and maybe an errant stand-up or two dying on their arses. The complexion of the night changed a little when The Katydids were added to the bill, a band from Germany fronted by an English singer who had lived in Germany most of her life and called the Deutsch-English pidgin she often spoke now as 'Dinglish'. They were doing a tour of the UK, were in Cambridge anyway, and had asked if they could join in.


I asked the guitarist, who - to me at least - looked like a permed and bleached-haired Penn Juliette, if it was okay for me to take a few snaps of them setting up, and he sort of paused, then nodded, emphatically, and said: 'Yes. Yes, it's really okay.' And smiled. At first I thought he was irritated, or that I'd been too wheedling, but then I sussed that he was using 'really okay' as a synonym for 'absolutely fine', which I suppose it is. Their music was poppy, 3-part harmony stuff - not exactly my kind of thing, truth be told.

The picture above is of 'Magic Phil', a friend of Alex's, Scouser, performance poet and erstwhile stand-up. Over a pint, Magic Phil had told me how he'd been doing three stand-up gigs a week at one point during the 90s. But he said he gave it up.

'It's too commercial,' he said. 'It's been ruined.' I told him about my Open Mic project and he seemed intrigued. 'Are you going to do a book about it?' he said. 'Cos if you aren't, I will.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'It depends if I find enough interesting people and things to write about.'

'I did a bunch of gigs at one stage, a bit like you're doing, y'know, booked up a bunch in a row and that, went on the road for a couple of months.'

'Oh really?'

'Loneliest time of my fucking life.'

I felt my stomach drop into my shoes. 'Oh Christ.'

'I mean, the shows went fine, y'know, I'd go on stage and get laughs and that, and then come off and be on my own again. It was dreadful.'

I facepalmed. 'Oh God. I can't hack two months of that.'

Magic Phil looked taken aback. 'Why not? Why do you deserve to be happy?' He jabbed his finger at me over my pint of Guinness. 'If you're gonna have a shit two months you'll have a shit two months. My last two months were crap, and I've been at home. You might have a shit time at home anyway. At home, on the road, what does it matter? What gives you the right to be happier than anyone else?'

And after I'd thought about what he'd said, I wondered if he mightn't have a point.

By the time I got on stage it was late, and the audience had transformed from a perhaps a dozen people, almost all prospective performers, to a heaving, rowdy throng. It wasn't what I'd been expecting at all. A stand-up came on before me, trying out brand new material, which he had to keep checking, on a piece of A4 paper he put on the chair behind him. Some kid sitting right up the front answered his mobile 30 seconds into the stand-up's set. When the stand-up started ribbing him, instead of climbing down gracefully, the kid kept talking, and stuck his finger in his other ear to continue listening to the conversation.

Meanwhile, The Hopbine gents' toilets are past the 'stage', (which isn't a stage at all, just a patch of carpet where the pool table had been, until had Alex wheeled it out of the way earlier) and with the size of the crowd people were starting to just cut straight across in front of him. Also, with a standing crowd, the audience could only see about 3 deep, and those at the back were starting to talk amongst themselves.

I really felt for the guy, although he handled his shit really well and worked pretty hard on trying to win round an audience who hadn't paid and didn't really want to listen to him. But it was kind of the nature of a night where anyone can watch, anyone can perform, and there's lots of booze on offer. If something noisy and simple's going on, the audience roar and can hold focus for a while, but as soon as it becomes dull or difficult or the pace slows, they revert to drinking and chatting amongst themselves, and, since there were so many of them, that made quite a noise.

I found my set surprisingly tough. I haven't been doing my own gigs for a while, and I had to decide whether to attempt new material or go for old bankers. In the end, I tried a mix of both. My more involved, serious stuff struggled to grab anyone's attention, and my performance flagged a bit. But as soon as I went into the loud, bawdy material, everyone whooped and bellowed and got behind it. It was a very heckly crowd, and I found myself wilfully fielding heckles and riffing off them. Unfortunately their was one gormless grinning bollock who was completely shitted and spent a lot of my performance shouting stuff that didn't seem to even be in English. He was the alpha bellend of the night, and ended up standing almost right next to me making loud whistles while I tried to sing, which threw me off my flow and made me forget lines. It was shitty and hardwork and by the time I finished the night I was pouring sweat and shaking with exhaustion.

I don't want this project to be all about me doing tedious post-mortem exercises on the nights I've just done, and don't worry, its final iterations won't have too much of that, but I left The Hopbine baffled as to why anyone would put themselves on a stage, especially in a stand-up environment, where at any gig, one dickhead can ruin the night for everyone, including you, but you'll usually be seen to be just as to blame, if you didn't deal with it. Being an amazing performer doesn't grant you advanced mind control powers. Surely the best peeps in the biz still regularly have worthless streaks of knobgrease balls up their sets just by being pissed and obnoxious?

I'd wanted to stick around for a while afterwards, chat to Alex and Magic Phil more, quiz some of the acts on who they were and why they were doing it tonight, and be more of a proper journalist about it all, but I was knackered, and I knew that the next morning I'd have to pack my things, and get on a train to do two stand-up open mics in a single night in Manchester... and I didn't know when I'd see my own bed again.

Oh God. How the hell was I going to keep it up for two months? And what on earth was I hoping to learn? Already, I was worried that my open mic pilgrimage was going to batter the last grains of pixie dust out of me, and - worse - that I'd be so consumed by the pressure of my gigs, that I wouldn't have the time or energy to meet anyone, or discover things that might be of interest to other people. What if it turned out to be a crap project?

Press Shots

Who's this ludicrous pillock? I hear you bleat. Well, c'est moi.

I know. Reason insists I chose my wardrobe while distracted by hideous grief. What can I say? I'm a maverick.


Pics by Katie Utting: kattie_utting@yahoo.com

Preparations for the Open Mic campaign continue at considerable pace. Get in touch if you've got any open mic nights to recommend!