Oh Mighty Pitchfork Of Catalonian Massif

I feel desiccated from another night
of boutique 4-star hotel air-conditioning
The great outdoors, I tell myself, despite the
ungodly hour, must be doing me some good.
The make-up girl’s breath carries with it
the stale aroma of cigarette smoke and
the first thick black café solo of the day.
And when she leans in close, I can tell she didn’t
have time to take a proper shower this morning.
My sneakers, for the record, smell of day old Pyrénéean sheep shit.
In the grand scheme of things, I guess that makes us about even.
The make-up girl asks if I’m okay with her
touching and prodding my face and
restyling my hair this way and that.
And as she asks these questions, I can hear the
West Wind whistling through the gaps in her teeth,
from here all the way to the tiny principality of Andorra.
My head nods my approval, but what She doesn’t realise
is that I’ve long since left my physical form behind
and stepped onto a different plain of existence entirely.
My soul has passed through 7 stages of consciousness.
Many hands of light are busy dancing in front of my eyes.
White spots of light dance in front of my eyes.
Indigo spots of light dance in front of my eyes.
Maya blue spots of light dance in front of my eyes.
Bright green spots of light dance in front of my eyes.
Orange spots of light. Yellow spots of light. Red spots of light.
A pincushion of colours and a taste of ambrosia on my tongue.
Pyrene was a nymph who took courageous Heracles as a lover.
But she died alone, in the woods, after giving birth to a serpent.
The demigod piled-up stones to make for her a tomb,
and thus formed this great mountain range upon her corpse.
The twin forked peaks of the Pedraforca above me.
Vapour trails above me. The Dog Star above me.
The halls of Mount Ólympos always above me.

With One Final Finger In Dane's Dyke

Upon this pebbled beach is where our story ends.
This is where I hang up my langseax knife.
Now am I housecarl. Now have I earned mine spurs.
July 1066 was a cruelly hot summer by all accounts.
July 2008 has proved itself to be anything but.
Yet we have persevered. Yet we have remained resolute.
Men of great spirit stand either side of me.
These proud men of the Shires. These plucky sokemen.
This brave Band Of Brothers beneath the banner of the wyvern.
No hairy star hangs overhead this night. No portents of doom.
Only a silvery Hay Moon rising high above the salty whale-road.
Illuminating the great chalk spur of Flamborough Head.
Reflected in the faces of those warmed by campfires.
I shall fight to the death for my king.
If my king or my earldorman shall die,
I shall take his place and fight
just as he would have fought.
If any man here see me taken with weakheart,
and run away, he shall remind me of this pledge
made here before my kith and my kin.

Vivat Harold Rex Anglorum!

The world sure is a big place;
full of many people seeking an escape
from the pressures and anxieties of everyday life.
Some choose to play World of Warcraft.
Some choose to learn Klingon (or tlhIngan).
Others still choose to dress in chainmail
and spend their weekends bashing 57 shades
of Living History hell out of each other
in muddy fields the length-and-breadth
of this Merry Olde Kingdom Of Enga-lond.
With a worldwide membership of around 600,
Regia Anglorum are one such organisation.
They're like the Sealed Knot "on acid". Or maybe bogmyrtle.
There’s Nigel and Roland and Big Joe.
There’s Johannah and Christine and Grace.
There’s Mike the field-archaeologist from South Wales.
And there’s Wōden-lookalike Kim, their self-appointed Eolder
(who doesn’t fight anymore, but takes 40% of all earnings).
Head shots are strictly banned in re-enactment combat.
As are all strikes to the hands and the feet and the joints.
When not skirmishing, members like to whittle wood,
drink mead and sew inside seams and undergarments
in a manner entirely appropriate to the period.
The gentleman playing King Harald Hardraada of Norway
is a systems-analyst from Nuneaton back in the “real world”.
He’s taken the day off work today.
Platted his hair before calling in sick.
Painted the skin around his eyes black with grease
whilst drinking a cup of tea from a polystyrene cup.
He’s promised to take a look at the stunt coordinator’s
broken laptop when we break for lunch.
But first, the small matter of the Battle Of Stamford Bridge...

Join Regia Anglorum

Ten Sixty Six And All Of That

Welcome to the Shieldwall fellow fyrdsmen.
Chin up. Stand firm. Parry and thrust.
You're suffering from both constipation and hayfever.
Your hauberk armour is hanging wet and heavy on your shoulders.
Your Spangenhelm helmet is digging into your nasal bridge.
Your kite-shield’s rough wooden surface is skinning your knuckles.
As we all know, The Battle of Hastings
didn’t actually take place in Hastings at all.
As we all know, the area surrounding
Senlac Ridge came to be known as Battle.
And not the other way around.
Long, fierce and bloody-beyond-belief
they began fighting at dawn on October 14th
and fought for as long as the daylight lasted.
And then they fought some more.
Neither side willing to concede.
The Anglo-Saxons refusing to yield.
The Normans refusing to give up the ghost.
The sandy stream transformed into a sanguine lake.
But don’t believe everything you read on a Bayeaux embroidery.
Tall dark and and handsome, King Harold Godwinson
was only identifiable from tattoos found upon his torso.
He was beheaded and gelded. Though not in that order.
And there was likely no arrow in his eye.
Whilst the king’s body was carried from theatre
and buried beneath stones in an unknown location,
the corpses of the 5,000 Englishmen who’d died in his name
were left to rot in the open-air for the next 10 years.
As a warning. As a deterrent. Like so much cheap manure.
The wyrds remain wholly inexorable.
The wyrds go ever as they will.
Where’s a Russian linesman when you need one?

The Smelling Of The Greasepaint. The Roaring Of The Crowd.

Over the past 4 weeks
I’ve developed something of a routine.
Between curtain-up and my first entrance,
stage-right, I like to make myself
a cup of fairtrade gold blend tea
and sit on my own in the basement, listening
to the crackling ripples of laughter over the intercom.
After my first exit, stage-left, I push through the
double set of heavy doors marked; “Push This Door Only”
and follow the signs for; “Toilets, Studio Bar, Cloakroom”.
Whilst waiting for my second entrance, stage-right,
I find time to plan my escape route in the event of a fire.
Our designated Assembly Point is Trafalgar Square;
beneath 1st Viscount Nelson’s Corinthian Column
and across approximately 6 lanes of fast-moving traffic.
In the gap between my second exit, stage-right,
and my third entrance, stage-left,
I return Understage to collect a bunch of flowers
and a pair of sunglasses that I bought from
a Premium Outlet Mall in Cabazon, California.
Leisurely re-ascending the 10 concrete steps,
I push through the spring-loaded door marked;
“Private, Authorized Personnel Only”
and tippy-toe through the crossover and vomitory
back to the airlock between off-stage right and the thoroughfare.
Past the photograph of Samuel Barclay Beckett (1970).
Past the photographs of Alan Bates (1962) and Brendan Behan (1952).
Past the photograph of Sir Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi CBE (1960).
Inbetween my third exit, stage-right,
and my fourth and final entrance, stage-right,
I undress and lay down on the rough dark blue carpet
to pull some sit-ups in my American Apparel underpants
and my UNIQLO vest. My record is 161 (during a Thursday matinee).
After my fourth and final exit, stage-right,
I pull my clothes back on, tuck myself in,
and fasten my belt using the Flash Gordonesque buckle
I bought from a hipster store in Williamsburg NYC NYC.
I return the flowers to their vase of water downstairs.
I return the sunglasses to the prop-table.
All this helps kill a little more time.
Whilst waiting backstage for my curtain-call,
I’ve been known to skin a rabbit or two.
Sometimes I turn an imperial unit of base metal into gold.
Sometimes I fold a thousand multi-coloured origami cranes.
Sometimes I memorize Pi to its 722nd decimal place.
Mostly I remotely update my social networking status.
On a good night we can be in the pub by a quarter past nine.

Northeast Veering Northwest 6 Or 7 Occasionally Gale 8 Later

I’m been out chasing cumulonimbi
in the lowlands for the past four days,
and eventually they’ve led me here.
To the so-called Fun Coast.
To the very brink of the North Sea.
A bracing north-easterly gale is howling along the sand.
Beaufort scale 8 and rising.
Bottons Pleasure Beach is closed for the season.
The donkeys have all been sent to the glue factory.
I park the SAAB 900 Turbo near a low coastal wall,
squeeze on the handbrake, and open the automatic sun-roof
to allow the polar breeze to swirl around the cockpit.
According to the Met Office, the odds of being struck
by lightning in your lifetime are about one in three million.
Higher than your chances of ever winning the lottery.
However, between the years 1942 and 1977,
U.S forest ranger Roy Sullivan was struck
on no less than seven different occasions,
and always survived to tell the tale.
Minus a toenail and a eyebrow or two.
Not once did this man from Shenandoah
go off in search of the lightning bolts,
and yet always, the lighting bolts seemed to find him.
I watch through the windscreen as the squall line
moves off in the direction of the Dogger sandbank.
Heligoland was renamed German Bight in 1956.
Finisterre became Fitzroy in 2002.
With any luck, this will all make some kind of sense in the end.
Though it’s true, I have my doubts.

No Commercial Value. Non-Pornographic. For Cultural Use Only.

So, there’s this short film I made
which has been travelling the world.
It lasts for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Except, occasionally, it lasts for 19 minutes and 3 seconds.
Depending on the speed of your projector.
25 frames-per-second as opposed to 24.
For the record, I’ve never had a Scandinavian girlfriend.
That part of the film’s narrative is entirely fictional.
But much of the rest of the film’s storyline
is inspired by things that really happened.
I guess “based on a true story”, is how the
freelance tagline writers of the world
might choose to describe it.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
You know the score.
Thing is, somewhere along the line,
this offbeat little romantic comedy of mine
also began proving itself to be
somehow wonderfully miraculously
prophetic too. Life imitating art, imitating life. Or somesuch.
The girl came back. Just like she does in the movie.
If that’s not giving away the ending too much?
She sat next to me in the darkened auditorium yesterday.
Her hand-in-mine. And she saw the
heart-on-my-sleeve dedication to her
up on the big-screen for the first time
as the credits rolled, white text over black.
The screening lasted for 18 minutes and 20 seconds.
Not that either one of us was counting.

"Pop-Promo" from 'English Language [With English Subtitles]'

KMIR-TV: Good Morning Palm Springs

The headlines this Tuesday morning:
At least 2 dead in fatal ambulance accident…
NFL quarterback pleads guilty to dogfighting charges…
Embattled Attorney General announces resignation…
It's 5.30am. The lunar eclipse ended half-an-hour ago.
Only me, the cicadas and the water-sprinklers are awake.
Rancho Mirage, clear, 84 degrees.
Banning, clear, 84 degrees.
La Quinta, clear, 86 degrees.
I’m sat in a canvas chair opposite a man called Gino.
He’s clean-cut, well-drilled and borderline thermoplastic.
Gino’s quoting Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
Or is it George Bernard Shaw?
Thousand Palms, clear, 84 degrees.
Indian Wells, clear, 84 degrees.
Cathedral City, clear, 84 degrees.
Gino was born and raised in Orange County.
His wife’s Portuguese and they have a young daughter.
Gino’s been in the TV News business for 10 years now.
Since 1997. He warns me that we’re about to be broadcast live
to the fine-and-upstanding people of the Coachella Valley.
Wish me luck…

The Former Playground Of The Stars

Back in The Swinging ‘40s and The Nifty ‘50s
you couldn't move along Tahquitz Canyon Way
without bumping into the likes of
Bing Crosby, Humphrey DeForest Bogart,
Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jnr or Judy Garland.
They came here to play golf and to sip cocktails.
They came here to escape the glare of the West Coast spotlight.
Al Jolson, Wladziu Valentino Liberace
and that arch-reclusive Greta Garbo too.
The Chairman Of The Board and his Rat Pack
came to Riverside County to play high-stakes baccarat
around a swimming-pool shaped like a piano.
Elvis and Precilla came here for their honeymoon in 1967.
Steve McQueen and his Porsche 356 Speedster
visited so many times during the early Nineteen Seventies,
that they knew the tarmacadam of Vista Chino Drive
and Avenida Caballeros like the backs of their hands.
Known more these days as a haven for senior citizens
and those of the gay-and-lesbian persuasion (33%),
Palm Springs averages 354 days of sunshine per year.
Now, that’s one hell of a lot of sunshine, let me tell you.
354 days of glorious sunshine and less than 6 inches of rain.
Date Palms thrive in that kind of climate. Which is lucky for them.
It helps their fruit develop high glucose, fructose and sucrose content.
Unfortunately for me, I’m not a Date Palm. I’m nothing of the sort.
I'm busy melting out here. I can feel my brain oozing from my ears.
Little wonder former mayor Sonny Bono enjoyed skiing so much.
The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians
survived in the harsh desert for 500 years
without the need for Starbucks coffee houses
or used-car dealers or steak houses or casinos.
Their original name for the area was "Se-Khi",
which roughly translates as "The Place Of The Boiling Water".
Today, its 110°F in-the-shade, so it’s something
of a blessed relief that the cinemas are air-conditioned.
Less blessed, is the fact that most of the films
I've seen at this year’s Shortsfest blow so hard
they're in danger of coughing-up their own sigmoid colons!
Mad dogs and English short film-makers anyone?