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The Pontypool College Years 1991-1992

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Riaz

“There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today.” – Joni Mitchell ‘Hejira’.

If old friends knew how much affection I hold for them, they would run a mile. There are some friends I made in college that I have not seen for twenty years or more. Others, from Brookfield School, I have not seen for more than thirty years. But there they are, in my heart, secure in their own little corner. I don’t care what they have grown up to be – whether they became successful or unsuccessful. Whether they became cruel or kind, good or bad. Because I knew them when they were 9 and they were part of my world. There they are now, with their grown up lives and grown up jobs. Some even have grown up kids and live grown up days, where they are sensible, responsible and serious. But I remember how we were, during those long summer days, as we sat on the grass and talked about our lives, wondering about our futures. I remember.

My first book ‘My Life With Kate Bush’ was a comedy memoir of my life between the ages of 5 and 19, taking in the years 1976 to 1990. Volume 2 ‘My Life With Joni Mitchell’ is currently being written. A substantial portion of the book, probably about half of the 80,000+ words, will be taken up by recalling, with warmth and humour, my time at Pontypool college between 1991 and 1992. I was there for about 9 months, leaving unceremoniously in May of 1992. I say unceremoniously only because I woke up one morning and decided I didn’t want to go anymore. I had dropped out of most lessons and academically had achieved very little. Socially though, my world had exploded and those 9 months were among the best 9 months I have ever lived. If ever I get anyone pregnant, then I expect those 9 months to be better, or at least more memorable, but for now, when it comes to enjoying the number 9 in conjunction with the same number of months, it is the 9 months at Pontypool college that were the best.

The main entrance to Pontypool College

The subjects I took were English Literature, Music, Drama and Theatre Studies. I have no idea why I took the latter two. I had never acted before, apart from the nativity play in Brookfield School during the christmas of 1979. I played one of the shepherds and Mr Baldwin had given me a little toy lamb to carry when I walked out on stage. Even at 8 years old I had this instinct that it wouldn’t be cool to be seen carrying a little toy lamb. In 1979 I was mesmerised by a new film out in the cinemas called Grease, which was full of teenagers wearing leather, smoking and singing about summer nights. None of them carried little toy lambs so why should I? In fact, why couldn’t I be a leather wearing, smoking shepherd with slicked back hair and a penchant for saying “Hey!”? So as I stepped out from behind the curtain, following the other three shepherds (yes, three. It’s a long story.) I deliberately dropped the lamb. After the nativity, Mr Baldwin took me aside and said, with a sad look in his eyes “Why did you drop the lamb?”
I shrugged and stared at the floor.
That was my only experience with acting.

But within three months I was rehearsing for the second play I would perform in during my life. It was A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. And in those three months I had become friends with a whole host of people – Scott Bailey, Martin Rowan, Lisa Osmond, Rhian Hutchings, Nigel Williams, Katherine Berriman, Catherine Slater, Catherine Stone, Kath Ayling (there were a hell of a lot of Cath’s back then. Sometimes I yearned to meet a Priscilla or Florentine, but it was never to be), Sarah Letton, Stephanie Virgin, Becci Senior, Trudi Jackson and several others, all of whom I took an instant liking to.

Sarah Letton

My persona then was different to the way I am now. I was quite flamboyant, dressing in tie-dyed trousers, hand painted boots, waistcoats and having hair that went half way down my back. I loved it. I loved being that way and entering into a world where you weren’t judged for being that way, as all around me were punks, mods, goths, grungers and other teenagers, all looking to find their own identity too and expressing it in such wonderful ways. These days I just wear jeans and a t-shirt to work. Sometimes I wear a cravat and a monocle, but that’s only after midnight, when I am alone and drunk.

In the mid 90s I became the sole full time carer for my grandmother and lost touch with most of my friends. Some twenty years later, mainly through Facebook, I managed to track most of them down. Most recently, it was Katherine Berriman that I was finally able to track down and message. Katherine was a wonderful actress and had such a sense of fun. I remember once she came back to my house in Cwmbran on my 21st birthday and we spent an hour on my bed, keeping an inflatable birthday cake in the air with our feet, before going to the Fairwater House pub where a surprise gathering of college friends was waiting for me. On another occasion, Katherine was involved in some production that took place in the evening at college. It was a monologue, if I recall, and she was so excited about it and looked forward to it a great deal. I didn’t turn up to watch her.
The next day she berated me, with a smile, saying “Why didn’t you turn up?”
I laughed it off, as I did with a lot of things back then. In truth, I was worried about transport, my Nan being alone in the evening, and money. I was such a worrier and it got in the way of things. I even worried about worrying. Of course, now I look back and berate myself even more for being so stupidly caught up in the cares of life when I should have been more carefree.
But I wish I had supported my friend.

Top row : Second from left – Nigel Williams, far right – Becci Senior
Bottom row (L to R) : Sarah Letton, Cath Ayling, Katherine Berriman.

A very good friendship evolved with Scott Bailey, another excellent actor. Scott had a very likeable, warm and friendly personality and an excellent inoffensive sense of humour. He was affable, personable and palatable. Back then, my sense of humour had an abrasive streak which sometimes bordered on the cruel. I mistook sarcasm for wit on many occasions. Scott was a good antidote for that, as I used to point out people on the street and highlight their inadequacies and Scott would ground me by saying “You’re wrong.” Now, with the luxury of hindsight, I know he was right and I wish I hadn’t been so John Lennon-esque with my attempts at making people laugh.

Lisa Osmond was another close friend and I have yet to track her down. She still eludes me and, like that line from Alanis Morrisette’s unsent, “I will always have your back and be curious about you – about your career, your whereabouts.” Lisa was a beautiful, short (although at 6’4, most people are short compared to me) girl with a kindness and generosity that stole my heart for a while. We became good friends and for a while after college ended, we would meet up on Tuesdays for a coffee and a chat. We even ended up going on an employment training scheme for a few months in 1993 – CTF Training, where we learned…actually, I can’t remember what we learned. I remember writing cartoons on bits of paper and sliding them across the table to Lisa. I also remember the tutor shouting at me at one point for sliding someone else a cartoon on a bit of paper. I even carried this through to the point I built a slide out of paper and turned it into a cartoon. But I digress. I love a good digression.
But Lisa…yes, I would love to contact her again and let her know how much I valued her friendship. She, along with others mentioned here, are never far from my thoughts. My life carries on, but I carry them all inside me where they are alive, vibrant and laughing. And I will always be with them, sitting on the grass outside the drama department, in the summer of 1992.

Lisa Osmond (left)

All these memories, and many, many others, will soon be available to read in –

The Hobbit : Desolation of Smaug

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Riaz

I’ve often wanted to be a hobbit. I have big hairy feet, enjoy food and live in the country. Unfortunately I don’t smoke a pipe and I’m 6’4. If I wandered into Hobbiton I would probably be bullied for not smoking and being tall, such is the way of things.

But I have been a life long fan of Tolkien. Well, not for all my life obviously. Not when I was two years old, for instance. I was a fan of pooing and saying “Sma smee smoo sma” back then. No, I have been a fan roughly since the age of eleven in 1982, when my best friend at that time, Wayne Weston, was bought a sinclair ZX Spectrum, complete with a copy of The Hobbit.

It was one of the first graphical adventure games available on a UK home computer. What this meant was that instead of just reading bare text, you got to see a picture too. Adventure games were quite popular in 1982 although the parser was quite primitive and fitting in a large vocabulary into the program was nigh on impossible. You might be faced with the description “The cave is blocked by a large boulder. To your left is a lever and on the right wall is a strange hexagram. Strange wailing sounds can be heard behind you and the magical orb in your pocket begins to glow.”
But if you tried typing in “Pull out my orb and throw it hard at the boulder while I begin the third incantation from the book of Bangor” you would receive the response “I do not understand.”
Most often, all the program would accept would be “Pull lever.”

If you are under 30, you probably will not get the subtle, complicated, cultural and life changing humour that this picture represents.

In my teenage years I finally got around to reading The Hobbit, swiftly followed by The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. By the time I was 16 in 1987, I had also read the wonderful biography of J.R.R.Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of Tolkien, The Silmarillion and Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo, which disappointingly had nothing to do with Middle-Earth.

Let’s fast forward twenty six years. I am now living in Avebury, on a large farm with horses, dogs, cats and enchiladas. It is Christmas and part two of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy is out in the cinemas.
Trilogy.
Yep. I know.
The original book has just 255 pages and yet Peter Jackson has turned it into three films each lasting three hours. The reason he has done this is because he likes the number three. It isn’t because he thought the Lord Of The Rings trilogy of films were so successful and spawned such a huge amount of lucrative merchandise that he wanted to repeat that to put more coffers in his pocket.
No, of course not. That would be obscene.

So on Christmas Eve I have a wonderful Christmas dinner with my landlady, landlord and landchildren.
“Hey, would anyone like to come and see The Hobbit on Boxing Day?” I ask, coyly.
Marcus and Theo were the first to respond.

“Sure,” they said in unison (that’s as in ‘together’ and not as in ‘representatives of the trade union of nurses and teachers’)
Imogen, Tarquin, Orlando, Diana and Adam also professed extreme interest in this anarchic night out, so the following evening we set off for Greenbridge.

Greenbridge. Now there’s a name. If ever you go there you will notice a distinct lack of bridges. And of green. There are, in fact, no green bridges in Greenbridge. It’s a retail park that has a cinema and tons of eateries all positioned haphazardly on grey lifeless concrete. There’s nothing green about it at all, apart from the radiation left over from the experiments into superhuman strength that were conducted here back in the sixties.

So we all piled into the auditorium and the film began.
To sum it up simply, Peter Jackson has turned it into a chase movie. The threat of pursuit and capture is constantly reinforced with the audience, with shots of the ugly twat-faced orcs lumbering some miles behind the squat bearded topically plump dwarves. The book is not like that at all. The book, published in 1937, has a far more sedentary pace and the characters are fully formed and not painted with the broad brush strokes that Peter Jackson has painted them with in his bloated excuse for a film.
In the book, Radagast the Brown is just fleetingly mentioned. In the film he is given a huge amount of screen time. In the book, Gandalf’s involvement with the Necromancer in Mirkwood is explained with the line “I drove the Necromancer out of Mirkwood.” – and rightly so as it had nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with the plot in the original book. In the film, this story line is given just as much weight as the quest to kill the dragon.
As Inigo Montoya was so fond of saying, “Inconceivable!”

However, this brings me to the redeeming feature. The Dragon.
Smaug is rendered majestically and through the art of computer graphics, has been brought to life in a way that Tolkien himself would have been proud of. Smaug retains all the smugly smirkiness that was apparent in the books, and his interactions with Bilbo towards the end of the film make the wait worthwhile.

So to sum up, if you like chase films watch it. If you like fantasy films, watch it. If you like dragons, watch it.
If you like sensitively directed hardcore Japanese porn accompanied by a classical soundtrack, then this isn’t the film for you.

All You Need Is Love

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Riaz

There is a lot of hate in the world. It’s very easy to do isn’t it? And the word just reels off the tongue.
“I hate you,” you say to your mum when she doesn’t let you watch porn on the internet.
“I hate you,” you say to the shopkeeper as he refuses to sell you the latest issue of ‘Classy Unshaven Matures Over 40′.
“I hate you,” you say to the driving instructor who has failed you.
“I hate you,” you say in your capacity as a driving instructor to the little spotty teenage nerd whose feet don’t even reach the clutch.
“I hate you,” you say to the little yellow goblin that is hanging from the nose of the pediatrician, as he cycles the wrong way down a one way street that leads to the Land of Topsy-Turvy.

Hate is a word that has a lot of meaning which is often diluted when we use that word in our day to day lives.

This is what real hate is –

I mean, what a waste of a day. All that effort – making the banners, scribbling the messages on, wrapping up warm on what is clearly a cold Autumn day – what a waste. They could have used their time much more productively on staying indoors, making a hot cup of coffee and watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Atcually, that would be a great prank would it not? Get a bunch of Muslim extremists together on the pretence of showing them a video on how to wage war and mass destruction and eliminate the infidels and instead, start playing The Rocky Horror Picture Show to them. I wonder how far into the movie they would get before realising they had been stitched up? My money is on them reaching the ‘Sweet Transvestite’ song.

Anyhow, back to that picture. When I first came across it on google images – I typed ‘Muslim extremist pictures’ – I was shocked and appalled, in equal measures, at how negative the message was. “What can I do?” I thought to myself that night, as I was lying in bed, reading Stig Of The Dump on my all-new Kindle paper-white, “What can I do to show them that love is really the way to go?”
So I booted up photoshop and had a go and sending them a message.

Result! Damn, I miss those Aztec bars. Apparently they were re-released back in 2000 for a few months. I don’t remember that. They were probably released under the cover of darkness in a hush-hush operation no doubt.
I love Aztec bars though.
I love them.
Love.
Now isn’t that a lovely word? It is soft and sensual and rolls of the tongue like a beautiful song. The word ‘hate’ is abrupt, angular and sharp. The ‘t’ makes it so. ‘Love’ on the other hand has a softer middle consonant and it sounds like it is just the beginning. To say ‘love’ on its own makes you feel that it is missing something after it. It needs the addition of another word, or a few more letters.
Love you.
Loveliness.
Love. Love. Love. Loveability. That’s the beauty of love.

So I had a go at spreading the love a bit more by kindly altering another picture.

Became…

Our Children Will Never Know The Link Between The Two…

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Riaz

The above picture was on Facebook this morning. It wasn’t new to me. I had seen it several months previously in a slightly different form. It’s a good example of how a picture can appear, do the rounds, evolve, appear again a few months later and so on. Ad Infinitum. The previous time I had seen the picture was like this –
And this -

And in another slightly different form, here we are again –

All quite witty, perceptive and funny. At least, they were the first time around. So It got me thinking. I love thinking, me. It’s my second favourite thing to do without the need for a lubricant. Though some people might argue that the mind needs lubrication as well as anything else. But I’ll keep that for another blog post. Maybe I will call it ‘Everything you always wanted to know about lubrication but were too afraid to ask’, a title in homage to that wonderful book by David Reuben published in 1969.
But yet again, I digress. I quite like a good digression, now and then. It’s healthy and keeps me from thinking about death and the futility of war.

So I got thinking – how far can something be stretched before it breaks? How far can a joke or idea be stretched, before it becomes less and less funny? How far? How? How far? Are you still with me? How far? How? How?
Or is there no such thing? Will an idea, if continually stretched, just become more and more absurd and yet still retain some comic value?
Let’s find out.

So the first thing we need to do is to create a rule. The rule is that the caption must remain *exactly* the same, no matter what the two pictured items are. If we start altering the words, then the whole thing evolves and nothing is being stretched.
So let’s try it now.

Hmm. Doesn’t quite work does it? What I was implying was that taking a book and sitting under a tree to read it on a glorious summer’s day is lost to the kids of today. They’d rather take an X-box out under a tree, along with a 60″ plasma TV. Also, the picture might be suggesting that kids don’t realise that books are made from trees. That what you are holding when you read a book, is actually the remains of a tree, possibly an old oak tree a thousand years old that has been sat in the corner of a field, somewhere in the heart of England, watching the centuries turn and the world go by, before ending up as another copy of 50 Shades Of Grey. Gosh, I’d better stop there as I might start crying now.

Right. Let’s try another idea then.

Right. Let me explain. This isn’t just a chicken and Hitler. It’s a WATERCOLOUR of a chicken. Because, you know, Hitler used to paint watercolours didn’t he? In 1920′s Vienna, before he got hold of this silly notion about taking over the world, he used to paint pictures of daisies, fields and unicorns. But the double whammy is this – all of his biographers clearly state he was partial to eggs. He used to enjoy a fried egg at breakfast and a boiled egg for lunch. So I was being extremely clever by not just using any old watercolour picture, but a watercolour of a CHICKEN! No kid of today would know the link between Hitler and a watercolour of a chicken!

No, they probably wouldn’t. On the other hand, it probably is a bit too obtuse. Let’s have another shot (excuse the bad Hitler pun) at this.

Now this is where I become a bit lazy. I just updated my Facebook status to read “Can somebody please list two unconnected items. Anything at all. First thing that comes into your head.”
Within a minute I had the following submissions -

Kate Jjm – Cheese philosophy.
Catherine Louise Cullen – Buzz shit (Buzz shit? BUZZ SHIT? Catherine, if I hadn’t gone to college with you in the early 90s, I’d think you were weird!)
Gareth Gruffy Evans – Squirrels Toe-nails.
Kathy Hales Owen – Sunglasses Custard
Jenny Brahma – Range cooker Text book
Eirwen Rogers – Flip flops & garden strimmer

Er…this is going to be a challenge. Let’s start with the first one then.

Okay. It’s cheese and philosophy. The idea being the kids of today who eat cheese, will never realise that it was actually discovered by Immanuel Kant and was ate frequently by him when he wrote his bestseller Critique of Judgement in 1790.

Next one (boy this is going to be tricky) – Buzz shit. Thanks Catherine.

So the idea here is that kids will never know that Buzz Lightyear is shit.

Doesn’t work does it?
Next!

Toe nails. Squirrels. Our children will never know that squirrels have toe nails.

Right. Okay. I’m done. I’ve just proven, with the help of my Facebook friends, that you CAN stretch a joke to breaking point!

Until next time…

Riaz.

On Friendship

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Riaz

Between my moments of lucid surreal stupidity and high octane frivolity I get periods of quiet reflectiveness. This is one of those times when, for no reason at all, I drift back to my childhood and memories of the friendships I forged.

They say we are social creatures, us humans. I think, to all intents and purposes, that is true for a great many of us. But I think it is also not true for far more of us than you might imagine. As we grow older, and the snow grows colder, my head grows bolder, like an old landrover. God knows where that last sentence came from but as it slowly appeared, my smile grew wider so I am going to leave it in, just sitting there, until it finds a better place in some book of mine years from now.

That’s the trouble with being a writer. Thoughts come and go and whizz around in the firmament of your head until they pop and beg to be given life on a page somewhere. In this case, on a blog that no bugger will ever read.

But, as usual, I digress. Let’s try and get back to the crux of the nib of the matter.

The first friend I ever remember having – apart from Benny Bunion who was a little lateral deviation of my big toe on my left foot that appeared when I was four – was Paul Barnes. I was five years old and had just started Brookfield Junior & Infant school in Cwmbran, Gwent and Paul, an irascible, mischevous and very naughty boy took a liking to me, and I a liking to him, and we became firm friends. Brookfield School was blessed with a huge playing field. I know everything seems bigger to you when you are a child anyway, but this field was massive.

Hang on a minute. Let me just check a thesaurus.

The field was a vast, gargantuan, monumental prairie at least three miles wide and the grass was forty fathoms deep. That’s how big it was. And if I want to measure grass by the fathom, I bloody will.

Paul and I would claim that field for our own, inventing games, mostly revolving around him being the leader of some gang and I was the follower. But that suited me. I was happy to follow.

“Riaz,” he said one day, looking up to me (at seven I was already well over five foot. Paul was about three foot two inches). “Have you seen Grease?”
“Grease?” I repeated blankly. I thought about the stuff that I saw my Bamp sometimes put on the tyre rims of his vauxhall viva. “A bit.”
“It’s a movie,” said Paul. There’s two gangs. The T-Birds and the Pink Ladies. They’re mods. If you want to stay my friend, you have to become a mod.”
“Okay,” I said happily and I became a mod.
Now let me explain something – Paul didn’t fully understand what a mod meant and neither did I. To ‘become’ something at seven years old simply meant one person asking the other and the other person agreeing. So for a few weeks I was a mod and the only way I could let other people know this was by telling them, as they’d never be able to guess just from looking at me.
“Grease is the word!” said Paul.

My book ‘My Life With Kate Bush’ goes further into my friendship with Paul. Those of you who have read that will know that our friendship ended purely due to the intervention of my over-protective mother and her concern that I was mixing with the wrong crowd.

So at eight years old I then became friends with Andrew Moreton. Andrew was a completely different kettle of fish to Paul. Not that I have ever owned a kettle of fish, or even two kettle’s of fish, as if I only had one, I wouldn’t be able to compare it to another one. But Andrew loved football and unlike Paul or myself, didn’t come from a single parent family. Andrew was quieter in his own little way and we complemented each other. For a brief time in my life I actually really really enjoyed playing football and Andrew taught me a lot in that respect. Back in the classroom, Andrew was less studious and lacked my level of concentration, and I would only be too happy to help him out with sums and reading. Reading in particular was not one of his strong points and even today, at 42 years old, I can remember us sitting together when we were 9, him resting his chin on my arm as I read out to him a particularly difficult passage from one of the Ladybird Key Word Learning Scheme books featuring the perfect sister and brother – Peter and Jane.

Andrew and I were best friends for a while. Having a best friend was very very important at 9. It made me feel safe and secure to know that I could ring him any time of the day or night and say “Was Stig of the Dump real?” or “Can you bring me over some crack cocaine?”.
Andrew did seem more popular to me too and exuded confidence. He never seemed shy at organising an impromptu football match or talking openly and assuredly about, well, any topic really. Even Kerplunk. I always was, and still am, more of a listener than a talker. I feel I can talk and hold my own in a conversation, but it’s not my most favourite thing in life to do. I’d rather listen, absorb, and then create a humorous parody of the conversation days, weeks or years later in a book…

Our teacher in the fourth year of Brookfield was Mr Graham Baldwin and Andrew and I used to share a big wooden table with Marcus Griffiths and David Powell. For most lessons we would sit there, the four of us, whispering nonsense stuff to each other during Maths, flicking bits of Blu Tack at each other during English.

These are just memory fragments. Little splinters of time that are stuck inside my head. They are always there and when I sit in the quiet, late in the evening as I am now, I can make those memories real and I am transported back to my days in Brookfield School.

To the time when I had the best friends that I ever had in life.

The Fantastically Amazing Library Inside A Telephone Box And Other Wiltshire Attractions (And A Bit About Charlie Pepper Too!)

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Riaz

Will I win any awards for having the longest title for a blog post in history?
No? Didn’t think so.
Anyway…

Okay, so I was writing – honestly I was. But I check my phone and there’s a message off Charlie Pepper (Yeah – I know someone called Charlie Pepper and you don’t! Ha!)
“Riaz,” she texts, “are you free sometime this week? I’ve got something amazing to show you. And bring a book”.
So I ring her.
“That’s the most enigmatic text ever Charlie,” I say to her.
“What?”
“That text is enigmatic.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mysterious.”
“Oh right. Are you coming over now? Bring a book that you don’t want.”
So I pop over and she makes me a cup of tea and sits me down. She then rummages around for a map, finds it, and spreads it out on the floor between us.
She studies it for a while and says “Hmm. I’m not the best map reader.”
I point out that what she thinks is a map, is actually a blueprint of the Hoover Dam.
“Ah, that makes sense then. Anyway Riaz,” she says, “there’s a phone box in Marden, and it’s a library! It’s full of books! There’s a sign inside saying ‘bring one, take one’ so you just need to leave a book there to borrow one!”
“A telephone box? Turned into a library?” I repeat.
“Yes, I was out there walking Buster earlier today and passed it.”
I looked around at Charlie’s bungalow. Everything seemed quite normal in here. Outside though, was a world full of telephone-shaped libraries.
“Okay, I’ll go and explore. By the way, I’m looking for an antique wooden box. Any idea where I could get one from?”
“Try Woodborough garden centre,” suggested Charlie, giving me the directions. “And while you are there, there’s a crop circle information centre there which is worth investigating.”

So I hopped on my trusty scooter and rode to the nearby parish of Marden on the river Avon. And there it was.

I had a browse of the books, took The Borrowers and replaced it with The Joy Of Sex and then left to find Woodborough Garden Centre.
As I rode through the juicy, leafy lanes of bulbous Wiltshire, I reflected on my friendship with Charlie Pepper. When I first arrived in Wiltshire from Wales during the winter of 2010, I ended up in a house share in Graham Street, just off Manchester Road in central Swindon.
I didn’t do my research first.
Manchester Road was often frequented by ‘Ladies of the Night’. These ladies of the night would often be about during the day too. They offered a range of services, from being your personal nanny for one hour – a snip at £375 – to whipping you senseless as they screwed the heel of their stiletto into your one-eyed trouser snake. That only cost £1,350. About the price of an imported Chinese 125cc scooter. I shared a house with a psychopathic paranoid actor. That in itself is deserving of a blog post of its own so I won’t dwell any longer on the five months I lived there. Interestingly though, since I have moved from that destitute hotspot of nefarious night time activities, I notice they are trying to cash in on me.

I left that home for another house share in Calne. I then rented a cottage in Calne for a year and after that moved into another house share with Charlie Pepper. She actually responded to an ad I had put on the internet as I needed to find a place quickly as my current landlady had chosen not to renew my lease as she wanted to sell the cottage. I mulled over whether I should do a ‘full rent’ again and look for a one or two bedroom place for myself. But financially, if you’re lucky enough to find the right person, a house share can be a perfect living arrangement.
So I telephoned Charlie, we met a few times, and I moved into her cottage in Quemerford.

Again, Charlie definitely deserves a blog post all of her own, so I won’t dwell on the five months I shared a house with her either! But unlike the psychopathic paranoid actor, Charlie and I became friends and although in many ways we are very ‘chalk & cheese’, it’s sometimes the chalkiness and cheesyness that draws us to others.

I arrived at Woodborough garden centre. This was yet another undiscovered gem of the area in which I lived. Although I guess undiscovered gem is something of a misnomer as lots and lots of people had discovered it previous to me. It was in fact very busy on the day I arrived. So it wasn’t undiscovered at all by anyone but myself, and I discovered it within thirty seconds of parking. Following that logic, I guess there is absolutely nothing in the world that is undiscovered. There’s simply a lot of stuff waiting around to be found.

So Woodborough garden centre looks a little like this –

Part of Woodborough garden centre. Inside this thatched building are several rooms, all thatched, staffed by thatched people. When I was there I saw a thatched cat too and drank from thatched cups. Even the money was thatched.

I wandered into the antiques shop there, which has the wonderful name of ‘The Antiques & Tat Shop’. It was the perfect shop for me – a mish mash of bric-a-brac, genuine antiques and ‘odds & sods’. I did find a beautiful old antique wooden ‘shoe box’ from the 1940s.
“This is just what I want!” I said to the extremely alluring lady stood behind the counter. “However, I have only driven here on a scooter and I am not sure if it will fit in my underseat storage. Can I try it and if it doesn’t fit, I’ll bring it back?”
“Of course you can,” said the raven-haired mistress of the night, tracing an imaginary line into the top of my box with a long red painted fingernail.
I raised my eyebrows and gulped. Discreetly, I hoped.
So I took the box out to my trusty steed and nope, it didn’t fit.
“Where do you live?” asked Guinevere, casting her myth-like eyes upon my factual face.
“Avebury,” I whispered.
“Oh I have to go to Devizes later so I don’t mind swinging by later to drop it off for you.”
Primeval lust urges aside, I have noticed that the majority of people in this neck of the woods are simply kind and generous. I never found that back in my home town of Cwmbran, where the six year olds used to go around with flick knives. But here, in the little parishes, hamlets and villages of North Wiltshire, people everywhere just seem so, well, nice.
Later that day she did bring it to my current home in Avebury. I know you all like to see pictures of nice boxes, so I won’t disappoint you. Here’s mine.

So anyway, after arranging delivery of this, I then visited the Crop Circle Information Centre that Charlie had told me about. As a teenager back in the late 80s, I had an interest in all things supernatural and paranormal and back then, most people believed that crop circles were either created by aliens, natural weather phenomena or John Noakes. Or even a combination of all three. In recent years everyone has come to realise that they were all man made, and there has even been organised competitions in Wiltshire to see who can create the most impressive crop circle. But to find an actual Crop Circle Information Centre was quirky, odd, bizarre and right up my street. I love stuff like this – things a bit off-centre and away from the normal safe roads of everyday life! So I entered.

Inside the Crop Circle Information Centre at Woodborough Garden Centre. A few seconds after I took this photograph, Mulder & Scully walked in…

It was bigger than I thought. It was like a large open plan office but with alcoves dotted here and there dedicated to different aspects of crop circles. There was even a little room with a sofa in and a television where you could watch documentaries on crop circles. It was a crop circle conspiracy theorist’s heaven.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my latest adventures in Wiltshire. And remember folks, don’t spend too long wandering around the stones in Avebury, else your head will shrink due to the cosmic vibes.

Marcus and his 21st Birthday Bash – Part Two

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Riaz

My Sainsbury’s online order was delivered this afternoon. Due to me not checking my current stock levels, I now have 47 x 1 litre cartons of milk. If anyone would like to help relieve me of milk, please meet me at The Red Lion pub in Avebury this evening at 8pm. I’ll be wearing a raincoat, fedora and sunglasses. Under my right arm will be a newspaper. We can make the swap in the pub car park and after that, I never want to see you again.

Anyway, sorry for that digression. Here, now, is part two of the account of Marcus’s 21st birthday celebrations.

He began, of course, with a riddle.
“My first is in Weather but never in bed
My second’s not blue but always in red.
My third is in tea, but never in coffee.
My fourth is dessert – tart or banoffee.
My fifth is a dialetical analysis of a priori conjecturing, that postulates a transgression.
My sixth is a blancmange…”

A pause.

“I need to rethink this,” he said.

It was The Riddler. And yet…I knew it wasn’t. I knew that lurking beneath that plush green suit with the strange hierogrlyphics was a certain Theo Wethered.
Theo Wethered.
I am sure that name conjures just as many images and scintillating tales of wonder and delight as it does with me. Many a time I have regaled an interested thong with stories of Theo’s derring-do. Tonight was no exception as -
Hang on a minute.
Yes, yes, I see that.
That should read ‘throng’.
Anyway, as I was saying. Theo has inspired many people throughout is brief time on Earth and so, in homage, I have put together a video in which I feel perfectly reflects this.

I circled around some more, raising my glass occasionally and smiling. Alcohol is a funny thing. You can go for minutes without taking a sip and then, the next time you do, it feels like the first sip all over again. I gazed at the milling people, just…milling. In my alcohol-fuelled detached state of reality, I wondered if any of them were actually millers. I wondered if millers would mill together, at a party, or just huddle together swapping stories of wheat.
And then -
“Ahoy there!” came a voice I recognised.

It was Orlando, dressed as a miller.
“Hi Orlando!”
This was my stock greeting for people I liked. People I didn’t like were subjected to “Sorry but I’m closed today.”
“Are you enjoying yourself Riaz?”
I found this question a bit personal. In fact, it was downright audacious. We had only met a handful of times previously and yet, here he was attempting to understand my psyche, to probe my ego, to reveal the tempestuous fires that burned within my heart.
“Yes,” I said, playing it safe.
“Ahoy! Jim lad!” he said playfully.
My name wasn’t Jim, I wasn’t a lad and I had never been to Hanoi. Apart from that he had everything else right.
We talked for a while. Outside, flashes of light intermittently lit up the dark study. The wind howled against the window, and the sound of gunfire could be heard in the distance. Tomorrow I would visit Horsell common once more to try and discover more about the Martians, but for now most of London was asleep, and the real terror was yet to begin.

The night wore on. My ageing decrepit body constantly argued with my young fertile mind, pleading with it to be taken to a place of safety, such as a bed. At the completely unsociable hour of 11pm I stepped out of the tent and slowly walked back to my flat.
Very slowly, as it happened, as there was nothing to light my way, save for a glimmering beacon of hope.
But I found my flat, kissed Joni goodnight, and fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning I was advised to meet everyone back at the tent for breakfast, so at 10am I moseyed on down to the bottom of the field again. I had drunk a fair bit the night before and had trouble coordinating my many complex and trustworthy simian appendages. I reached the tent and an orderly queue had formed in front of an orderly table that had a selection of breakfast goodies on it, arranged in order. I chose scrambled eggs in a bun, with some bacon and a large paper cup filled with hot steaming coffee.

I sat there, contemplating my existence as I chewed slowly on strips of crispy bacon. The party had been a success, I felt. Marcus’s father, Adam, had given a rousing and very witty speech at the close of the night. There was much dancing, fun and laughter. All in all a fantastic night and I’d like to thank everyone who made it possible.

Okay, I have a bit of space left now, so here’s some classified ads.

LOST & FOUND

Found – one needle. It was in a field near my home, right in the middle of a haystack.
To claim, ring 01633-999888111.

FOR SALE

LIBRARY CARD – Only done two hundred books. This year’s registration. One previous owner. Will be accepted at most Libraries in Wiltshire. £30 o.n.o. Contact Mr R. Ealie-Phunee on 01799-977611

JOBS

Cladistic taxidermist wanted to accompany time-travelling proletarian salesman.

Marcus and his 21st Birthday Bash – Part One

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Riaz

Late last week I noticed a pavilion being erected in the field outside the barn that I rent. It irked me, because I was planning to pitch a tent in the very exact spot the next day, along with a shrubbery, but now a pavilion was being erected. As I stood watching I felt a strange stirring in my loin. Can one become aroused by a pavilion? As pavilions go, this one was as seductive as Ally Sheedy when she eats a crisp sandwich in The Breakfast Club.

The Breakfast Club – a fantastic teen movie and wonderful ‘coming of age’ film from 1985. One of my favourite films ever and if I can give it a gratuitous plug in a blog, then I will.

It turned out that the pavilion was actually for the 21st birthday of Marcus Wethered. I had got to know Marcus a little by this time (see my previous blog ‘Man Of Steel – Not a Movie Review’) so was honoured to receive an invite from my illustrious and gloriously kind landlady, Diana™

I enjoy parties but have always had trouble mingling. ‘To mingle’ as the great philosopher Socrates oncee said “Is to subjugate the masses and produce a corporeal dystopian reality.’

Which probably explains why he hasn’t got a Facebook fan page.

Even so, I am drawn to parties. The socialising, the networking, the drinking, the flicking peanuts into the plant pots, the dignified vomiting. I am not a huge party-goer mind you. I remember the first adult party I went to was when I was 17 years old. It was at my sister’s, in honour of her surviving a cesarean section. It was full of people a lot older than me – surgeons and foreign diplomats. I can’t quite remember the guest list, but it was on pink paper with a floral border.

So next – what should I wear? I picked up an interesting Dickensian shirt from a charity shop in Devizes the other week. Should I wear that?

Nah. Maybe not. I found a pair of jeans and a red fabric shirt I had bought in a Nepalese shop in Newport some months ago, and walked down to the pavilion.

I had been watching the cars pull into the farm for the last hour or so and there were already a fair number of people there. I felt nervous. I was a lot older than them. These were all healthy, vibrant twenty-somethings at university. I was only 16.
Mentally.
42 physically but let’s not dwell on that.

I reached the glorified excuse of a tent and peered cautiously inside. I knew no-one. Coincidentally, no-one knew me either. Also, everyone was in fancy dress. I saw Superman, Hannibal Lector, Spiderman. I even saw Catwoman arm in arm with a Roman Legionary.

And then, thank goodness, I spotted Marcus.

On the far right, Marcus Wethered. I never did find out why he was holding an axe…

“Marcus!” I said. “I guess I am gatecrashing.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Let me introduce you to some people.”
And he did. If only I was a suave and as debonair as him when I was 21. He exuded confidence like a sieve from Asda. I could barely say hello to the girl behind the counter in my local library without turning bright red when I was 21.
But in all seriousness, Marcus, Orlando and Theo had always been polite, pleasant and friendly towards me and I was grateful for that. However, they had an older brother and that is who I was introduced to next. Although they introduced him as ‘Tog’ which confused my tiny brain. Diana had told me she had four sons, naming Tarquin as her eldest. How was I to know their pet name for him was ‘Tog’?
I shook his hand.
“I’m Riaz,” I said. “I didn’t realise they had another brother. They never mentioned you.”
“They didn’t? The bastards!” he said.
I felt a bit awkward.
“Maybe I just forgot.”
“No,” he seethed. “They probably just didn’t mention me.”
Suddenly, in the tiny recesses of the thing that I call a brain, two synapses that had previously hitherto been enemies, suddenly became friends.
“Oh hang on a minute. Tog…are you Tarquin?”
“I am,” he said. And order in the universe was regained once again.
We chatted for a while and he introduced me to another of his friends, George. George introduced himself as a sort of dogsbody within the world of investment banking. Now investment bankers were the butt of many a Monty Python sketch and as he talked to me, I couldn’t help but smiling inanely. I think he picked up on my inaneness and general inaneability, but was too polite to mention it.
“And what do you do?” asked George.
“Well my day job is a support worker in a mental health rehab unit. But really, I am a writer.
“Oh yes,” said George.
“I’ve written a memoir. It’s called My Life With Kate Bush. It’s about me, growing up in a welsh town in the nineteen seventies and eighties.”
“A memoir?” said George. “Is it all true?”
“It’s not completely true,” I conceded. “I have embellished parts of it of course, purely for reasons of entertainment. And the conversations I had thirty years ago are, well, approximations of the truth.”
George nodded. “It’s a writer’s prerogative.”
“I mean, if I write up an account of this party, most of the conversations that I will put down on paper will be embellished. Do you realise I was once married to Sandra Bullock?”
George nodded and began to rise slowly into the air. “Anything to entertain the reader, I guess,” he said, and then exploded.

The food was free. The drink was free. And I took advantage of that – what author wouldn’t? I drank a few cocktails of something or another – I’m not quite sure what they were. As a direct result, my confidence suddenly knew no bounds and I went up to a girl dressed as Caligula’s best friend and began chatting with her.
“Hey!” I said. A bit of an opening gambit but its worked for me in the past.
“Hello,” she said and we began chatting.
“I am studying history and politics,” she said.
“Ah. They compliment each other,” I said knowingly. “History and politics. The two last bastions of the empire, aloof and yet not alone. Have you ever heard of Mark Knopfler?”
I realised that my confidence had now began to work against me and I was beginning to sound like John Noakes.
There was a pause. Possibly an uncomfortable one as her eyes started roaming around the room.
“Nice talking to you,” she said, “but I am just going to get a drink.”

And then I saw him.

It was The Riddler. Arch Nemesis of Batman.

This could be interesting…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Peter Cook

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Riaz

“Alright Pete?” “Alright Dud?”

I am a child of the 80s. I was 11 when The Young Ones hit our television screens in 1982, 12 when The Black Adder introduced Baldrick to the world and 17 when Alexei Sayle’s Stuff was inflicted upon us. I remember some sit-coms of the late 70s too, mind you. Robin’s Nest and Rising Damp are the two that bring back the strongest memories for me. But throughout the eighties the ‘alternative comics’ ruled the roost.
There wasn’t the glut of television channels that we have today either. I remember there being just three. When Channel 4 was launched late in 1982 that brought the number of channels up to…four. So there wasn’t that much opportunity for repeats of the old classics. I do remember The Goodies being repeated a lot. And BBC2 would screen regular Laurel & Hardy shorts. But the classics I love today – Not Only…But Also, Hancock, That Was The Week That Was – I can’t remember much stuff from the 1960s ever being repeated in the 1980s.

A dear, long lost friend, Wade Hughes, introduced me to Monty Python sometime in 1987. He brought over The Meaning Of Life one evening, waxing lyrical about its anarchic, clever, insane humour. So he slotted the VHS tape into my Nan’s rented video recorder and pressed play.
Now I was 16 at the time and, as most 16 year olds do, was going through a ‘It’s a weakness to show emotions’ phase. It was shortly after my ‘I’m God’s younger brother’ phase and before my ‘Let’s settle down to watch Eastender’s’ phase.
So I sat through the whole film holding back my laughter. I didn’t want to be seen as weak, of course. All part and parcel of exploring who you are as a teenager I guess.
From that evening onwards I became a Monty Python fan – but that’s a story for another time. I mention it here because the only reason I stayed up late one evening a few months later to watch a repeat of The Secret Policeman’s Ball – the amnesty international benefit revue from 1979 – was because John Cleese and Michael Palin were in it. When Peter Cook appeared I had no idea who he was.

And there it was. I found myself laughing. Months of my ‘I’m a better person than you if you don’t see me laughing’ phase suddenly went down the drain. The irony of it was, I didn’t even know the history of this sketch. I didn’t know who Jeremy Thorpe was and the political shenanigans that went on surrounding his trial. All I knew was that this tall thin man on stage, Peter Cook, had made me laugh and I wanted more of it.
The ‘more’ was hard to come by in the late 80s. It was the video retail boom of course, but the weekly releases were mostly movies. I scoured the bookshelves and stumbled across this wonderful book in an old book shop in Newport one day.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution of British comedy from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. It details the formation of Beyond The Fringe, comprising of Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller in 1960. This revue suddenly pushed comedy forward, away from the music halls of the previous decades. This revue, in 1960, suddenly made comedy hip and trendy and ushered in the satire boom that continued with the formation of The Establishment Club and the television series That Was The Week That Was (1962-1963).
But going back to the Beyond The Fringe team – what an incredible mash-up of talent! Although that is easy to say now, in hindsight. None of these performers were that well known at all in 1960. Look at the career paths that each of them followed. Each of them accomplished so much with their lives and were so talented. And look at this ageing photograph now. A snapshot of what once was. See the fire in their eyes. The warmth of their humour. Their zest for life. I look at old photographs like this and my heart quivers. But then, I’m a sentimental old fool.

On 17th December 1993 Peter Cook appeared on the CLive Anderson Show. I was there when it happened. Some people are proud to have been alive to watch the moon landing on TV in 1969, other’s claim to fame might be watching Ali beat Foreman in Zaire in 1974. I even know one person who thinks witnessing his cat open his fridge was a momentous occasion. I, however, was there on that day when Channel 4 screened this classice episode of the Clive Anderson Show, where he appeared in the guise of four different characters and proved, if ever proof were needed, that he was a genius. I don’t use that word lightly. In fact, I have never used the word ‘lightly’ until now, and that was only to prove to you that I don’t use it.

He was a dashing character as well, in his youth. I’m a bloke. I’m not gay. But I know a handsome fella when I see one and I can tell that Peter had that wonderful debonair flair.

Peter Cook died on 9th January 1995, aged 57. I never even got to write him a letter. I wished I could have, just to thank him for his legacy. To thank him for making me laugh in my times of sadness, for making me realise that the zany and absurd should always come before the serious and dignified. I thank Peter Cook for the way I am now, for I don’t take life *that* seriously really. I will always pretend to have ‘one leg too few’, from time to time.

Superman – Man of Steel – (NOT a movie review…)

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Riaz

I was seven years old when the first Superman film was released. Christopher Reeve played the titular hero. I didn’t know what titular meant back then of course. I thought it meant ‘having one’s breasts swinging in a pendulum like fashion’. Anyway, I was seven years old when the first Superman movie came out and my mum marked this grand occasion by buying me a packet of bubblegum cards.
My mum could rarely afford to take me to the pictures so she used to buy me packets of bubblegum cards whenever a new film came out, as if it was ample compensation. I had the bubblegum card collection of Superman, Star Wars, Pete’s Dragon and Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo. She never was able to find the bubblegum cards of The Omen, though she did try.

I ended up watching the first Superman movie on a small black & white television, sometime in the early 80s. I loved it. I loved fantasy and science fiction back then, as most of my friends did. I wanted to be a super hero and wear tight fitting spandex suits and meet female super heroes in tight black lycra. I even formed a ‘Spandex & Lycra’ club when I was in junior school but that was short lived, due to the intervention of the social services.

So now, at the beautifully youthful age of forty-two – an age Douglas Adams would be proud of – the latest Superman film had been released. Man of Steel. After the frightfully ghastly and atrociously abysmal ‘Superman IV – The Quest For Peace’, released in 1987, there was no Superman film until Bryan Singer’s ‘re-imagining’ of the first film. Superman Returns, released in 2007, had mixed reviews. One mixed review was by me, where I wrote in the persona of Bugsy Malone contemplating Cartesian Theistic Duality. It was one hell of a mixed review, as mixed reviews go, and I am still very proud of it.

I currently live on a farm in Avebury, renting a gorgeous little converted chimney at the top of an old manor house.

The best chimney I’ve ever lived in

My fellow co-cohabitants were students – Marcus, Theo and Orlando, each renting a different part of the derelict spaceship disguised as a house. It was they who invited me along to the Man of Steel.

“I can’t,” I said initially. “I’m writing.”
“Everyone goes through a writing phase,” Orlando said, dismissively.
“Don’t you think you can automatically make something sound condescending by adding ‘going through a phase’ at the end of a sentence?” said Theo. “Everyone goes through a ‘going to the pictures’ phase.”
“Yes,” agreed Marcus. “Everyone goes through an agreeing phase.”
“Well,” I added, “I think most people go through a ‘going through a phase’ phase”.

The nearest cinema to Avebury is roughly seventeen miles away, in Swindon. Marcus drove us there, in his DeLorean, and we reached the cinema and queued for our tickets and popcorn. Marcus, Theo and Orlando are significantly younger than me, which might explain why at this point, they started referring to me as Dad. This might have been to impress the young girl behind the counter who was filling their popcorn buckets. ‘Filling popcorn buckets’ isn’t a euphemism by the way, although I think it should be.
“Three students,” said Orlando, handing over the cash. “Our dad will buy his own ticket.”
I figured that having a cat-owning Welsh Asian author as a dad was currently a hip and trendy thing among Oxbridge students.
We entered the auditorium and the film began.
It was good. We enjoyed it and left.

Elaine : “We laughed and laughed. Do you remember ever laughing like that?”
Judge : “Yes. Yes I do.”
Airplane II – The Sequel

We popped into Chiquito, a hacienda style restaurant a few doors down from the cinema for something to eat. Crowded around a small table, I was reminded of that wonderful scene at the beginning of St Elmo’s Fire, a classic brat-pack movie from the early 80s. Of course, I couldn’t share that thought with my three friends. I was their Dad, for goodness sake.

I was served a burger, coated in spicy breadcrumbs, topped with crispy bacon, sandwiched between two fluffy pillows of white bread goodness. It was a bit odd because I ordered ice-cream, but I ate it anyway.
We discussed Man of Steel for a short time and then, as often happens in these situations, the conversation turned to communism.
“It works great on paper,” I reasoned. “But then, so does naughts and crosses.”
Marcus spoke eloquently and concisely about politics, humanity, morality and burgers. All three were bright, inquisitive, intelligent people. It made me nostalgic for my days at Pontypool college, when Kathryn Ayling, Scott Bailey, Becci Senior and I used to throw popcorn at passing cars.

It was nearly midnight when we left Swindon, travelling through the washed darkness of a summer’s night back to Avebury. Marcus drove carefully through the twisting, winding country lanes, which had a fair share of hairpin bends.
“Where did you learn to drive?”asked Orlando. “Thorpe Park?”

And so we returned to Avebury. I jumped out of the car as it passed my flat, bidding them a goodnight, and rolling John Mclane-like through my front door and into my bed, when I immediately fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of Jor-El, Kal-El, El-El and Swell-Mel on the doomed planet of Krypton.