As part of Bristol Poetry Festival, there's a launch party for the new book, at Monty's Cafe, 62 Bath Buildings, just off Picton St in Montpelier. Monday 9th October. Starts at 7:30. Wine and nibbles and stuff, and guest readers.
There'll be an exhibition of the illustrations too.
It's a really nice cafe run by May Colquhoun, fresh back in her hometown after a couple of years of adventurous cooking in Australia.
I'm also guesting at Can Openers this Friday. More details on this and the rest of the festival, over at Poetry Can
So many sheep, if asked, would tell you how they’re wild and free and independent minded. Hell, they’d say, you won’t catch me consorting with the common herd. I’ve even grown a fine goatee and listen to Coltrane and Bird, and read the works of well-known potes. I think conformity's absurd.
But when they round up all the goats they'll hide inside their woolly coats.
for National Poetry Day, which is today, and this year takes 'Freedom' as its theme.
I picked up great piles of pictures yesterday! Minuteman Press had finished the new greetings cards, the magpies and the starlings, which you can find on the Etsy shop. And then over to Niche in Stokes Croft, where I collected a gert huge pile of prints for the upcoming exhibition. Unfortunately, IKEAL were out of the frames I'd been hoping to get, so framing is slightly delayed.
What exhibition? I hope you're asking. Why, the one to accompany the launch of Drawn Chorus as part of the Bristol Poetry Festival, down at Monty's, the fine cafe down in Montpelier. Full details to follow, obvs. Lord, exciting times.
The rain started as I drove through Bath. By the time I had reached the north of the city it was raining as hard as I've ever known it in Britain.
Then it really started to pour.
Driving over the Mendips was a bit like cruising along the canal, but with more splashes coming up through the floor.
So I took it nice and easy, because you're a long time dead.
Dropping into Pensford I remembered the flood there that washed away the road bridge in the ...1950s?
The van in front of me indicated right, and slowed down; it was about to turn into one of those lanes that come down at a sharp angle to the main road. I slowed to an almost-stop, and waited; then realised he needed to do a three pointer to get round the corner, I stopped.
There was an almighty THUMP. The van behind me had clouted the back end of the Moggy.
I won't go into details because TBH it's a bit upsetting. I'll be taking the car into the Morris Centre next week to have the damage assessed.
Anyway, I carried on with things, feeling a bit unreal. Later, I walked with Brendagh up the hill behind her house, and in the early evening sun we saw Brean Down, Steepholm and Flatholm, Lavernock Point at the tip of Glamorgan, and the far smudge of Exmoor and what was probably Countisbury Head in the far distance. You may need to click on the photo to enlarge it if you want to try spotting them too.
On Saturday I cycled down to the Benjamin Perry Boathouse on Redcliffe Quay in Bristol, for the bookstall that I was joining in with for the Bristol Doors Open weekend.
It was so busy that I didn't get time to tale a photo to show how busy it was. Here's a quiet moment with Mark Steeds of the Long John Silver Trust and Bristol Radical History Group, though.
Every now and then there would be another great deluge of rain and the place would fill up with refugees. Outside, the Guides, who run the boathouse these days, were rowing and canoeing gamely to and fro, and hordes of visitors shuffled into the Redcliffe Caves.
It was nice to catch up with the Bristol book people; it's been a few years now since we last did one of these stalls.
Later, up on the side of the Cotswolds, I stopped to take the panoramic photo at the top, because the sky was so spectacular. I think that's a big cumulonimbus cloud in the middle. You cant see the one that looks a bit like a cauliflower, next to it, because the tree's in the way.
I got a call from Roy Gallop of Fiducia Press. "Why not come to the boathouse for Bristol Doors Open?" he said.
I could think of no good reason why not.
So on Saturday (but NOT Sunday!), you'll find me, and several other Bristol publishers, offering bargain books for sale in this fine old building where you can also get the cheapest bacon butties, cakes and cups of tea and coffee on the whole harbourside.
Obviously, I'll be touting Drawn Chorus, my new anthology of bird poems and pictures, as well as a few other things.
We'll be at the Benjamin Perry Boathouse on Phoenix Wharf, in Redcliffe.
It's a good place to seek out; there it is, that big black wooden building there. You can either walk down the long ramp from Redcliffe Parade, or follow the cobbled road round from the Ostrich pub; or come through the gate on Redcliffe Way.
I've slowly moved down the Avon valley from Bradford on Avon to Bath, as late summer turned to autumn. The jays are all busy in the woods, gloating over their acorns and bobbing to and fro with them; if the valley isn't reafforested with oak trees, it won't be for want of their trying.
Where around midsummer at 4:30 in the morning the sun would be streaming into the forward window, casting a beam the length of the cabin, it is now decidedly dark with no hint of the dawn. Yesterday I lit the fire for the first time since spring, to banish the feeling of chill and damp that came as much from inside me as outside the boat.
Dashing to and from Bristol to sort out various admin things, like an overdue eye test and then picking up the new specs; the latest ones are reactive. You know, the ones that go darker in bright light. This will be a challenge; I rarely use sunglasses because I prefer my light unmodified as much as possible.
Driving back from Bristol, I stopped at the Waitrose on the Keynsham bypass. Returning to the Moggy and setting off along the A4, I suddenly had misgivings that I'd left my phone on the roof of the car. But I could hardly scrabble round in my bag, and the traffic was norrible so I kept on going. Up round the top of Bath and down Brasssknocker Hill. I'd been avoiding this route since the first time I went down it in the Moggy; it was a really hot day and by the time I was approaching the static queue of traffic at the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill, the brakes had faded so that they scarcely worked at all. Managed to avoid pranging the van in front of me by putting it into low gear and switching the engine off.... anyway, I've improved my survivability by going VERY SLOWLY down the hill and be damned to anyone fretting and fuming behind me.
And on arriving at Dundas I searched high and low and ...the phone was nowhere to be found. I took my laptop round to Craig's boat and piggybacked his internet, and logged into the 'find my iphone' thing. And lo, my phone was showing itself to be on the side of the A4 between Saltford and Newton St Loe.
So I drove back there. It is really a Very Unfriendly Road for anyone but motorists who are doing a hurtle. But I managed to pull over, and to find the phone.
Poor little thing; all mashed and smashed, but still presumably sending out its last faint SOS...
...so it's been an expensive old week. And, since (I tell myself) it's never too late to unlearn learned behaviours, I am determined to:
always put my specs back in their case as soon as I take them off, to avoid scratching the lenses
never EVER Put The Phone On The Car Roof For Just A Moment While I Sort Out The Keys
Look! This is me arrived at Bathampton and about to set off for Bath proper, having filled up with water.
And now I'm on Darlington Wharf, and Chris and Jinny are moored up next door too, and there's proper internet for the first time in weeks and I can catch up with admin of all sorts. And get on with some ART.
We were up at 5, drinking coffee, eating Asda's brioche swirls and looking at the sky. The air was almost still in Bristol Harbour, but the clouds above us were moving along at a brisk walking pace. It looked good to go; the lock out from the floating harbour down onto the Avon was set for 0630.
I'd driven up to town the afternoon before; parked out in Montpelier and cycled to the Arnolfini where Rick was moored. Juniper lay at the pontoon next to Boomshanka, another old familiar Kennet and Avon boat waiting to go tidal. The harbour was thronging; Bristol Samba were booming away over the water, and a DJ was laying down some shit on his decks outside the Arnolfini, for all the world like a drunk with a microphone at a scottish wedding. I looked into the Arnie, and recoiled from the video installations of the current exhibition. People, it was Hipster Central.
We walked over to Bedmo to stock up in Asda. South of the river is decidedly more old school Bristol. In the Magnet chip shop, I followed with interest the talk of the other waiting customer. "Wassee gone to Amsterdam for?"
"Pride, ennit? Amsterdam Gay Pride!"
"Dean's norra faag! I've known 'im fer years- Dean enno faaaag!"
(Sorry, clumsy attempt at rendering that Bristol accent there; it was so nice to hear though...)
The fish and chips were brilliant. We ate them sitting on the harbour wall, true hipsters we, and drank in the Nova Scotia, after we'd moved the boat down the harbour to escape Drunk DJ. Early to bed, we were lulled to sleep by the convoys of trip boats circling the harbour with crowds of drunk happy people singing fit to bust.
0600; Rick fired up the engine and we were away. A rainbow came out to accompany us across Cumberland Basin, and there were the dockies waiting at the already-open lock.
"These early tides are a killer", said the chap who took the bow rope off me. "Still, we'll get some sleep this afternoon before the next one". I recalled the difficulty of juggling a maritime working life with a domestic routine, and sympathised.
The water didn't have far to drop from the lock; the very last of the flood tide was eddying as we came out onto the river, and Rick opened up the throttle. Largesse, the other narrowboat that was making the same trip, seemed keen to go past, so we made way and off they went ahead; the owner having given his tiller to a pilot.
I pointed out the local stuff as we went down the river, and we admired the tree full of cormorants at Pill, the wide stain of their droppings bleaching the foliage below them.
Beyond the Avonmouth Bridge the smooth blue water close inshore changed abruptly to a bumpy brown chop, streaked with whitetops. Largesse reached the end of Avonmouth Pier, swung round westward, and began pitching.
Through the haze I counted off the landmarks of the Welsh coast; Twynbarlwm, Mynydd Machen, then finally away to the west, Lavernock Point, and Exmoor and Countisbury Head far and hazy beyond that. Here and there were the buoys marking the shoals; but I couldn't work out which was the English and Welsh Grounds buoy, which replaced the lightship that is now sitting in Bathhurst Basin in Bristol, and about which I wrote this poem
"Have you got video on that camera of yours?" Rick asked. I did.
With the breeze blowing F3 or thereabouts, and the increasing ebb of the tide, we were crabbing quite nicely as we pitched our way along the coast, the propellor occasionally racing as it lost water. Then the Portishead pierhead, that had been a distant vagueness for ages, was suddenly there above us and we were gratefully entering the lock.
