BACK TO EARTH:

Back in Essex I’m shaking, making re-entry into civilian life is a
car crash of emotions. Drive, find a corner of a cafe & write.
The pen in meditation with the paper, finds discipline between the
lines, breathes deep & regular again. Been talking all day, every day
for five days straight. Running off the end of the runway into barbed
wire. Prompted, probed, pulled to pieces, dissected, directed,
laid bare, investigated & observed. Photographed when I’m trashed,
rabbit in the headlights, every last ounce of poetry extracted.
Sat on the plane last night vibrating, some foul mouthed twat givin’
it the large one in the row behind, regardless of company.
Geezer mouth, no etiquette, women & children in earshot,
big-shot-little-man, throw-back to the eighties. The inside of my skin
crawls, itches, the legs, the feet begin to dance beneath the seat.
The woman next to me sneezes, the theatrical steward hard-sells
scratch cards, repeating the same inane poetry.I begin to mutter
& rock, strapped in, 30,000 feet above the earth.

(K)

AT HOTEL HASH-TAG FAVOURITE:

The boys in funny hats take a table in the corner.The one with the
white canvas fur lined backwards, the one with the backwards cap
& headphone necklace, one leg black, one leg grey. They got a
‘backwards’ theme going, unites them, makes them happy. In walks a
tight wool hat, pulled over thinning hair, tight beard, tiny eyes,
stares. Gives attitude to the waitress who smiles, requesting his
room number as he grunts & walks away. She keeps smiling,
smelling great, makes his aggression pathetic. When I return from
the second of many visits to the breakfast buffet of heaven a couple
have materialised at the next table avoiding each others eyes. Begs
the question, ‘what happened last night?’. They don’t talk to each
other & it makes me sad. Time is moving to fast to fall out of love.

Back in my hotel room I write about the streets of Berlin, preparing
to meet the world & it’s press. Taking time to chill with my current
favourite label – listening to Locomobile ‘Music Is Random’

(K)

AT HOTEL FUNKY:

The beauty of alone you’re never alone. Watching faces reflected
in black glass. The world outside still waiting for the sun.
Have you finished? – Yes – Have a nice day – Hello!
Some distant emotion, how are you today?
Saint, street sweeper, cow playing drums, case of butterflies,
beauty preserved. Got one foot on top of the mountain.

(K)

AT HOTEL CONVENIENT:

Keep it under the table, the jungle outside. The stripes, the food
arrives. Roasted garlic, abandoned plate, everything on hold.
She smiles in mother tongue, everything coming through headphones,
lips caressed with linen.
Hair grows from the face at the end of a long day, the mouth tells
stories above the table as the foot goes wild beneath the chair.

(K)

AT HOTEL SOFT PORN:

Lipstick kisses, mirrored walls, red rose carpet, red line take you
where you need. Red light, black door, room 42, the key, naked
black & whites hang on the walls to greet. Man walks in with a camera,
dressed in black, woman in heels insists she bring my bag, brings me
tea on a little red tray. Everything arranged. Looks at me & bends
with hooded eyes. I only just arrived, dazed from the fields of Essex.

(K)

FIRST HOTEL:

The good & bad of ‘alone’. The irritation of a pocket alarm
that can’t be swerved. The body glimpsed in unfamiliar mirrors,
breakfast not included.

(K)

DAVE, COLIN & TERRY:

The news hit me hard this morning as I breezed into the bathroom
singing the theme from Blazing Saddles. The radio was playing
Clifford T Ward’s ‘Home Thoughts From Abroad’, one of the few
of his songs I ever got on with. Cliff was the man who started me
on this journey, it’s all in the book I just delivered to the
publishers, but basically without Cliff I wouldn’t be a musician.
Ha ha ha, I bet you never expected the man who wrote the kind’ve
songs Cliff did to have had a hand in ‘Born Slippy’ – art knows
no boundaries. When Cliff passed away, BBC master broadcaster
Terry Wogan was a great supporter of his family & a champion of
Cliff’s music. As a kid I’d grown up listening to Terry’s radio
shows & had admired his calm self-afacing interview style
when he eventually transferred to the TV with his phenomenally
successful chat show. It was something I rarely missed, treating it
like ‘school’ as I soaked up all I could about interview technique
from both sides of the mike & how to treat people with respect
regardless. Terry’s iconic presentation of the Eurovision Song
Contest will forever remain unsurpassed. He set the bench mark high,
delivering a tongue-in-cheek commentary that remind us never to take
life too serious. A gentle gentleman yet with a razor wit that allowed
him to transcend age & bridge generations. It really didn’t matter
what his musical taste was on any given day, for me it was all about
him, his presentation, the presence of a unstoppable, bright & buoyant
sense of humour that was warm, generous & inclusive, never cynical.
A broadcaster that I always felt was laughing at himself & inviting
me to treat myself the same. To all you hardcore ravers,
headbangers & EDM-ers it might seem totally out of character,
but this morning, when I heard the news, I broke down & cried.

(K)

GAS & AIR:

The radio talks farming as I turn it on. Some mornings I like the
poetry the farmers speak, but this morning I need a melody so flip
the station just in time to catch my my friend Colin singing,
‘Wonderful Life’, his voice still alive in the airwaves. I sing
along in the shower, learning the words so I can slip them into
an underworld song when no one’s looking. Then a woman sings about
wanting to pull a man & we’re back into the river of life again.
The DJ confides she was ‘bopping a bit’ when that one played & I
loose the rest as I start to shave, harmonising with the hum of an
electric friend nibbling on my skin. Pack the lap top in a bag,
load it in the car & drive before the sun comes up. A solitary man
walks a black dog in the fields, a car pulls into the slot in front
of me, disgorging eager young boys in football boots. The market
square smells faintly of fish, fleets of freezer vans abandoned in
side streets. The traders are setting up their stalls in heavy
winter clothes, a solitary man leans against a shop front up an
alley for a smoke, catches me clock him as I pass, looks guilty.
Two geezers conspire outside the betting shop, lighting cigarettes,
heavy necks retracted into shoulders. I turn of the street into
the welcoming glow of a cafe. All my favourite seats are taken,
so I find a table in a new location next to two boys getting off on
drum & bass rattling the tiny speakers of cell phones in their hands.
It’s a new day, anything could happen. I’m turning left instead of
right today.

(K)

LIFE IN THE STICKS:

Coms down, doing press phoners from the car parked up in the mud on the edge of fields where to move slightly left & right means no signal. The new album is causing a stir so I don’t mind freezing my nuts as hungry squirrels circle.

(K)

GAME ON:

Back in rehearsal, out Essex with UW. Brilliant sunlight, beneath
vast clear skies. This is the turn around, the healing, miracles
& wonders. Rock-bottom desperation sends the dark-stuff running,
releasing you, familiar, funny, bright & life affirming, returned
to us with all the future that was stolen returned. The look
in the eyes tells the story. Money can’t buy a look like that,
nor a feeling this good. Everyone witness the light transmitted.
Your recovery, the journey, all light you bring in, given away
freely you will now receive.

(K)